What is the purpose of hell in Christian or Muslim theology?
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Anonymous
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Hell is frequently imagined as a burning wasteland, a dungeon full of cauldrons and pitchforks, or an underground city filled with ghosts and goblins. Popular depictions of hell often involve a flaming torture chamber or a spiritual jail where evil things reside—and where good things travel to battle evil. This version of hell does not exist.
The Bible actually gives very few particulars about hell. We know that it was originally intended for demonic spiritual beings, not people (Matthew 25:41). The experience of being in hell is compared to burning (Mark 9:43; 9:48; Matthew 18:9; Luke 16:24). At the same time, hell is compared to darkness (Matthew 22:13) and associated with intense grief (Matthew 8:12) and horror (Mark 9:44). In short, the Bible tells us only what being in hell is “like”; it does not explicitly say what hell is or how exactly it functions. What the Bible does make clear is that hell is real, eternal, and to be avoided at all costs (Matthew 5:29–30). Hell is a place of suffering originally prepared by God for the devil and his angels (Matthew 18:9; 25:41). Our culture defines a “loving God” as a completely non-confrontational being who tolerates anything we want to do. But that is not a biblical definition. First John 4:16 says that God is love. That means that He does not possess love as we do; He is the very definition of love and therefore cannot do anything that is unloving. The law of non-contradiction states that something cannot be both true and untrue at the same time. So, if God IS love, then He cannot be at the same time unloving. The fallacy presented by the question “how can a loving God send someone to hell?” concerns the word send, which denotes an action only on the part of the sender. If a man sends a letter, sends a request, or sends a gift, all action was done by that man. No action was taken on the part of the letter, request, or gift. However, this understanding of the word send cannot be applied to the question at hand because God has given human beings freedom to participate in their life choices and eternal destinations (John 3:16–18). The way this question is worded implies that, if anyone goes to hell, it is the result of God’s unilateral action, and the person being sent to hell is a passive victim. Such an idea completely disregards the personal responsibility God has entrusted to each of us. |
Anonymous
Yes -- simply believe in "the personal responsibility God has entrusted to each of us" (thank you god, for being so trusting! /s) and it's totally understandable that he sends us to hell for being personally irresponsible. /s Also - Thank you God, for making your servants so clever that they (or at least some of them - the GOOD ones) can find so many ways to rationalize your ways. /s Because if they didn't, Christianity would be dying. Opps - it IS dying! |
Anonymous
Christianity has been estimated to be growing rapidly in South America, Africa, and Asia. In Africa, for instance, in 1900, there were only 8.7 million adherents of Christianity; now there are 390 million, and it is expected that by 2025 there will be 600 million Christians in Africa. Christianity rank at first place in net gains through religious conversion. According to "The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion", approximately 15.5 million converting to Christianity from another religion, while approximately 11.7 million leave Christianity, and most of them become irreligious, resulting in a net gain of 3.8 million. While Muslims have an average of 3.1 children per woman—the highest rate of all religious groups—Christians are second, with 2.7 children per woman. By the Pew Research Center's estimates, the Muslim fertility rate and Christian fertility rate will converge by 2040. Studies estimate significantly more people have converted from Islam to Christianity in the 21st century than at any other point in Islamic history. Conversion to Christianity has also been well documented, and reports estimate that hundreds of thousands of Muslims convert to Christianity annually. https://denverseminary.edu/article/a-wind-in-the-house-of-islam/ Many of the Muslims who convert to Christianity face social rejection or imprisonment and sometimes murder or penalty, for becoming Christians. Conversion into Christianity has significantly increased among Korean, Chinese, and Japanese in the United States. In 2012, the percentage of Christians in these communities were 71%, 30% and 37% respectively. |
Anonymous
good images In truth and fact, the trend is going to be (globally) an increase in the pattern of growth in religious populations vs a decrease in percentage of unaffiliated people. The populations with high birth rates are embracing religion, and countries with aging populations and low and declining birth rates that are the places where unaffiliated populations (atheists, agnostics, people who don’t identify with a religion or organized religious beliefs) are highly concentrated. Though the numbers of unaffiliated people increase, they will decrease as total percentage. So the trend globally is increasing for religious people. |
Anonymous
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Hell is the destination for those who have died, whose soul has deliberately rejected God's love after having felt or experienced it. If you bother to research old Catholic sources, there have been accounts of souls who appeared from hell to warn those still alive that there is indeed such a state of being. There is no purpose of hell to scare people - it is a real consequence of where one will be if they choose to reject God after God has revealed His love, either during life on earth or after death (nothing is impossible for God to show Himself to non-believing souls).
Souls who do not reject God, but have sinned on earth, go through puritification, which Catholics call purgatory. There is a place in Europe where marks of souls in purgatory have been documented. These souls are not in Hell, but their souls are cleansed for sins committed on earth. Check it out. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/museum-holy-souls-purgatory |
Anonymous
The very link you post says "supposedly". This is not reliable evidence. You are going to base your whole life on the cardiff giant? There is no reasonable evidence hell exists. There is no reasonable evidence god exists. There is no reason there wouldn't be reasonable evidence if they did exist. |
Anonymous
Nice large print but no attribution. |
Anonymous
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The Changing Global Religious Landscape
Babies born to Muslims will begin to outnumber Christian births by 2035; people with no religion face a birth dearth https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/ |
Anonymous
This presumes that babies born to Muslims will be raised muslim and remain muslim as adults. There is no guarantee of that. |
Anonymous
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It’s no surprise that the areas with the largest growth of Islam and Christianity are places specifically targeted for conversions due to less education and poverty.
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Anonymous
Nahhh https://www.barna.com/rise-of-atheism/ Percentage points for all religious segments saw little to no shift over a decade, from 2003 to 2012—but by 2018, Christianity in the United States had witnessed a significant loss of followers, from 81 percent in 2003 to 72 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, the atheist / agnostic / none segment has seen the greatest increase of all groups analyzed, nearly doubling in size from 11 percent in 2003 to 21 percent in 2018. 
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Anonymous
Your statement fails to mention the reason why Christianity spread so widely in Africa from the 1900s... it’s called COLONIALISM. A system where Christian Europeans exploited African lands, people and resources while also proselytizing the local population. |
Anonymous
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Think Christianity is dying? No, Christianity is shifting dramatically
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/20/think-christianity-is-dying-no-christianity-is-shifting-dramatically/%3foutputType=amp While Christianity may be on the decline in the United States, the world is becoming more religious, not less. While rising numbers of “nones” — those who claim no religious affiliation when asked — claim the attention of religious pundits, the world tells a different story. Religious convictions are growing and shifting geographically in several dramatic ways. The colonial era is over, btw. |
Anonymous
I am compelled to point out that your article contains NOT A SINGLE DATA POINT supporting growth in the number of religious people. Every single survey supports the exact opposite. Your article says people who are already religious are moving to the USA. This has no effect on the net growth of the religious. The article it links to -- which is 6 years old - says because population growth is higher in countries that are more religious makes it "expected" that the numbers of religious will grow. But the article from 5 years later, shown above, shows that did not happen, no matter how much it was "expected". So, fail, epic fail. |
Anonymous
Wrong. There are still European colonies in Africa to this day. Ceuta and Melilla come to mind (and were recently in the news). |