by Aanya Rose

Created on: November 25, 2010   Last Updated: November 26, 2010

The Definition of Hell

The idea of hell can be “damned” scary. There are many ways to define hell. It can be:

1. A Lake of Fire and Brimstone.

2. The place where people will gnash and gnarl their teeth

3. Sheol or Hades

4. Eternal Darkness

5. The house of Satan.

6. A place of torture, chaos, and confusion.

7. The home of the beast, the leviathan.

It is not somewhere (hell that is) that I would like to visit anytime soon. Sometimes however, I believe we live in hell on earth. The world we live in is one filled with chaos and confusion; it is a living hell of sorts, because we live “beneath” the heavens. So I for one, aspire to seek the light, to rise above, so that I may one day enjoy the paradise of God.

The Abode of the Dead

Some describe hell as the abode or the house of the dead. This might make sense, if you believed that you were actually going to die one day. Many Christians and other spiritualists do not believe they will die. They will simply pass away into a new body, a heavenly body to sit at the right hand of the Father with Christ, their Savior. Some believe they will find their resting place in purgatory, or in a state of in-between. Others believe they will be raptured into heaven when Christ comes during the second coming.

Others believe that hell is simply a state of living chaos and confusion. In Dante’s Inferno, the author describes many different levels of hell where souls are tortured according to how awful and sinful they were in life. There are houses for the gluttonous and lustful for example. Hell might be a kingdom much like the kingdom of heaven, with various mansions for people to live in depending on how "bad" or evil they were in life. Some may suffer a little, and some may suffer a lot.

The Term Hell And Its Meaning

The term “hell” is an expletive at best. It is an unpleasant sound we all mutter at some point to describe something that is unpleasant or tortuous, something we’d rather not experience. Certainly one can conclude that hell is the opposite of heaven, a paradise we associate with living color, bliss, pleasure and the fulfillment of all of our dreams.

The Void, The Blackness

For many, hell may be nothing more than returning into the darkness from whence we first came. It is the loss of the “I” or the ego. This for some brings on a state of panic that in itself is hell. Many people cannot let go of the idea that “I” is something important,

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