I have been reading about Heaven, Hell, and the afterlife. There are many passages in the Bible about hell and the fear of God. I haven’t really thought about it much. I guess it is because when I feel fear in a negative way, I act in ways that aren’t my best. In fact, I act at my worst without kindness, understanding, or love. I can’t understand why I would want to act out of fear when it comes to God.
Yet I think maybe it might make sense if I think of fear in the positive way. Although I didn’t have the healthiest relationship with my father, I know that I wanted him to be proud of me and for him to love me. I didn’t want to let him down and I feared that I would. In the same sense, I fear that as well with God.
In the Middle Ages, the Gothic churches showed picture after picture of Judgement Day and sinners being cast into Hell to be burned alive for all eternity. Maybe at that time, that idea of Hell is all that they were capable of understanding, but for me, I can’t see Hell as a place filled with fire and brimstone. If my life is meant for communion with my Creator, then finding out that I didn’t understand it or that I did get it right scares me and frightens me. What if all the Mormons have it right? I don’t fear God because I think He is full of wrath, I fear God because I don’t want to let Him down. I don’t want to have this amazing miraculous connection and then spend a lifetime not honoring it.
I guess my best thought experiment would be being born with a sixth sense: an ability to read other people’s thoughts and emotions, but never realizing that I could do it and never harnessing that sense. Then, after I died, realizing that talent and power I had, but never used. I am afraid of that. I think that’s what Hell is like. It isn’t a place; it’s a state of being: a spiritual torture. A mistake that I can’t never fix and for someone with OCD that is torture. My feeling of wrongness would go off the charts and I would spend an eternity not being able to fix it. Maybe Hell is different for each person. I just hope that when I die, I will know that I tried to honor my relationship with God. I want to know that I realized that my life was a gift and I tried my best to be thankful for it each and every day.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
