A lot of people believe in Hell as the place where we go to be punished for our sins. They feel punishment is necessary. Why do they believe in the need for an eternity of punishment? There are only two reasons to punish: vengeance and rehabilitation. I know that the Bible says that “vengeance is mine saith the Lord’ but God is merciful and receives nothing from vengeance only sadness. Vengeance only benefits the person who the evil was done against. The Bible says “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 1 Peter 3:18” How much more will God behave as we are told to behave (we were created in His image) in this verse and the many others like it? – Luke 6:26, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:12, Proverbs 28:10, etc.
There is no point to rehabilitation for eternity. Rehabilitation is based on you being made better and thus gaining release. God is merciful; He would not offer false hope; instead he sent Christ that by the merits and death of Him we and his whole Church may obtain remission of our sins and other benefits of his passion. When we die we are taken up in his arms and offered salvation. If we believe, renounce our sins and accept him we are granted peace everlasting. If you reject God, He rejects you and you are without God and sent back to the void from whence you came. There is no life or identity left. That is God’s final mercy to you. God is merciful and loving and forgiving.
Hell is the absence of God and surely to be without God is the greatest punishment of all. Without God you cease to exist, become part of the void
Without God nothing exists. God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. “All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” – John 1:3. God is LOVE and Love is stronger than DEATH. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Enduring is part of Christian love, the love which brought Pat and I together in marriage. The end of the great journey is when you discover God has been calling you to become true man and wife united in one eternal resurrection body in Heaven. C. S. Lewis’ GOD and US at last. Christianity has always held that the difference is, in fact, soul deep, that the souls and resurrected bodies of men and women are masculine and feminine through all eternity. Men and women are equal but different. They complement each other. They are the Chinese Yin and Yang. How can anyone reject God and his Love when they are in His presence and have discovered his Love and been offered the Peace that passeth all understanding. The alternative in nothingness in the Great Void.
All Christians and Jews I talk to believe in life after death and look forward to rejoining their loved ones in heaven. Mind you many have not thought it though and have no idea what heaven or life is going to be like after death. I suspect but don’t know that all world religions believe in life after death. A god and life after death are after all what “religion” is all about. Life after death is a compulsion of the human mind; it is very difficult for a human being not to believe in it even if it is just a belief that something lives on after we die. Christians believe Christ’s promise that there is a place for each of use believers prepared by Christ himself. Yes, Pat and I believe that completely. We also believe the New Testament passages promising we will recognize our loved ones even in their new eternal Christ-like body and that our loved ones will be waiting for us when we get to heaven to help our rebirth into the eternal resurrection body.
Patricia dwells in me and I dwell in her. She is me and I am her. God made us one forever. Our love is forever. I’ll see her again in our place in heaven.