If people are willing, allow me to interject.
There are a lot of Christians (myself included), who view hell a little differently. When the Bible mentioned a "lake of fire", it's likely that what it was actually referring to was symbolism referring to an actual lake outside the Western gate of Jerusalem. This lake was surrounded by hills, upon which a number of pagan worshipers made sacrifices to their heathen gods. The light from their fires would reflect in the lake. This provided strong symbolism for the "lake of fire" being representative of a life devoted to heathen worship.
I personally don't believe that hell has anything to do with actual fire. After all, if God really took the mindset of saying, "You don't believe in me? Fine! Suffer for all of eternity!", He'd be pretty damn petty.
Instead, I take another view. Hell is a complete absence from God. Now, given that most Christians believe God is all around us, absence from Him would be pretty unpleasant. Hence the idea why hell is so bad.
Really, what this comes down to is the issue of free will again. God says, "You get to choose. Either you can willingly serve me and spend eternity with me, or you can choose to have nothing to do with me and go to hell." Ultimately, God is going to give you what you want. After all, He wouldn't FORCE someone to go to heaven if they didn't want to go. That would be ludicrous.
Most Christians with this view would hold that if you choose to go to hell, you won't really understand just how nasty it is to be separated from God until you're in hell. There are a multitude of questions that could be asked here. People are welcome to ask them. (This message is getting long, so I don't want to go into all of them right now.)
So what about the people who've never heard of God/the Bible/etc? There are 2 ideas on that.
1) They go to hell because, after all, why hang out with some dude you've never heard of for all eternity?
2) They'll be given a chance to choose after death. i.e. jungle native dies, sees God, then says, "Ooooooh! You're the great spirit I've been worshiping that whole time? Dang! If I had known your name, I would have happily followed!"
You'll find a pretty solid split in the above point among Christians.
There are a lot of Christians (myself included), who view hell a little differently. When the Bible mentioned a "lake of fire", it's likely that what it was actually referring to was symbolism referring to an actual lake outside the Western gate of Jerusalem. This lake was surrounded by hills, upon which a number of pagan worshipers made sacrifices to their heathen gods. The light from their fires would reflect in the lake. This provided strong symbolism for the "lake of fire" being representative of a life devoted to heathen worship.
I personally don't believe that hell has anything to do with actual fire. After all, if God really took the mindset of saying, "You don't believe in me? Fine! Suffer for all of eternity!", He'd be pretty damn petty.
Instead, I take another view. Hell is a complete absence from God. Now, given that most Christians believe God is all around us, absence from Him would be pretty unpleasant. Hence the idea why hell is so bad.
Really, what this comes down to is the issue of free will again. God says, "You get to choose. Either you can willingly serve me and spend eternity with me, or you can choose to have nothing to do with me and go to hell." Ultimately, God is going to give you what you want. After all, He wouldn't FORCE someone to go to heaven if they didn't want to go. That would be ludicrous.
Most Christians with this view would hold that if you choose to go to hell, you won't really understand just how nasty it is to be separated from God until you're in hell. There are a multitude of questions that could be asked here. People are welcome to ask them. (This message is getting long, so I don't want to go into all of them right now.)
So what about the people who've never heard of God/the Bible/etc? There are 2 ideas on that.
1) They go to hell because, after all, why hang out with some dude you've never heard of for all eternity?
2) They'll be given a chance to choose after death. i.e. jungle native dies, sees God, then says, "Ooooooh! You're the great spirit I've been worshiping that whole time? Dang! If I had known your name, I would have happily followed!"
You'll find a pretty solid split in the above point among Christians.
