Going To Hell, Or Not

THE CORPULANT CURMUDGEON made it perfectly clear, as Trickie Dick Nixon might've said. All Democrats go to hell, and I, poor I, shall inevitably join them not soon enough, seein' as how I am a dastardly Democrat, and even worse, not a tongue talkin', snake handlin' Pentacostal, nor even, for that matter, oh horror, a Christian. You heard right. All Democrats go to hell, he said. Mere membership is a particular political party is sufficient qualification for eternal damnation. Democrats, after all, kill babies, or if they don't actually kill them, they want to allow desperately pregnant women, including rape and incest victims, to control their own bodies and reproductive process. How dare those liberal demons allow God and woman alone to be the determiners of reproductive outcomes, and to leave the American government out of it! Precisely how he knew so definitely where I would end up remains a mystery; was it possibly one of those "been there done that" sort of things? I retorted that when I arrive, I would be grateful if he would refrain from speaking to me, or associating with me. He glowered at me as per usual, like an angry, wrathful vengeful Old Testament God, and for a moment I thought, even hoped, that we might physically fight. He was about six two two sixty, but in his mid eighties, and I thought I could take him, using quickness. I glared right back at 'im. We locked eyse, in mutual hatred. Offering a truce, I glanced away. When a moment later I fixed my eyes back on his, he blinked, and looked away. The cuban missile crisis was over. A wise man, my roommate who later became an attorney once said that there is nothing wrong with despising someone who is demonstrably despicable. I despise people who believe in hell, and then liberally consign others to it, but never themselves. Isn't that God's job? I almost beleive that belief in hell is a form of mental illness. Haven't we enough nightmarish misery in this world of "reality", without invening yet more in some imaginary nightmarish place where there is no hope of misery ever ending? And, of course, there isn't the slightest evidence that such a place even exists, and abundant evidence that it does not. The Bible, a mere book if an extremely important one, makes only vague references to hell, and those aren't exacly what we moderns conceive of; more of a shadowy dark place "gehenna". between life and death. I don't want to live in a universe where a hell exists, and I despise a God who would allow the existance of such a place. I love people who believe in heaven, hate people who believe in hell. Those who believe in hell seem to be totally accepting of the concept, as if they take some perverse pleasure in it. That is their madness, and theirs alone. If there is a hell, I hope sincerely that those who believe in it are the only ones who end up there. After all, it is their creation, or the creation of their cruel God. At least the rest of us have enough sense and sanity to refuse to believe it exists, even if it does.