One person’s heaven might be the idea of another person’s hell. Some people think life on earth is actually hell, but others would consider it heaven. It might depend on your optimism / pessimism, and the way you look at things. Is there really a heaven or hell?
The general perception of hell, is the devil punishing people for their sins in a
‘fiery furnace’. This image is obviously man -
It does make sense though that if there is a God, there must be an opposite? Evil people must be punished for their sins, surely? Maybe our punishment, or indeed reward, when we die, is simply reviewing our lives and feeling the emotions we have inflicted on others, whether they be good or bad. Understanding how you have made others feel. That could be hell for some people!
Whether we have a choice about our actions is unsure, (whether we have free will), but as humans we like to feel as though someone who has done wrong would be punished. Our whole community is based on this, from fines to prison sentences. Many people feel that if they don’t take the correct moral path in life, that they will be punished when they die by God, and that is enough to keep them on the straight and narrow. Some faiths have ‘confession’ where you can ask God to forgive you through the church for any sins you may have committed.
Most of the time, Hell is depicted as being ‘below ground’, and Heaven ‘Up in the sky’. It is easy to see why ancient people would have thought God lived ‘in the sky’, with their lack of knowledge about the stars and the way the earth moved, yet their witness to such awe at what was happening above. Of course they would have presumed that God was up there lighting the stars every night and using the stars to guide them through their lives.
Would you have to do something unimaginable to go to Hell? According to the Bible, simply not accepting Jesus as the son of God is believed to be the greatest sin one could commit. Every religion, of course, has a different description of Hell, some being a place of loss and sadness rather than literally being tortured by demons.
Heaven is often portrayed as a place of paradise, often ‘up above’, where we go when we die and see our loved ones again. Some people think you can only ‘get in’ if you have met certain criteria such as been very good and not committed any sin. Often we imagine big gates at the entrance to Heaven, where God sits waiting to judge you and tell you if you are allowed in or not.
Modern thinkers might say that there is no such place as Heaven or Hell, but just
an afterlife where we go to be judged, perhaps by ourselves. Really, no-
Some people say they have visited heaven, or even hell, while having a ‘near death’ experience when being very ill or technically dying on an operating table only to be revived. Very common are reports of bright lights or a feeling of rising through a tunnel towards a bright light. People also report intense feelings of love and
well being. Cynics would say this is down to a combination of the drugs used during an operation, and the brain releasing endorphins during those times of stress on the body. They have also been described as hallucinations or vivid dreams. The question could be asked: why do many people report having the same thing happen to them during an out of body or ‘astral’ experience? Is it because we have at some point read about it? In which case, the experiences for people who belong to different cultures and religions should be quite different. Some people see Buddha, some Allah, and some Christ, but generally all the experiences are very similar. Whether heaven is different for every person, or whether it is a world rather like ours with schools and houses, one thing is for sure. We will all find out one day if there is a heaven and a hell!