happyboy

wouldn't hell become a useless punishment after awhile? wouldn't you eventually get used to the pain, the endless scorching fire, the torture inflicted by demons/fallen angels/etc? wouldn't it become just something you endured? wouldn't it eventually stop being hell and start being just something that was happening to you?

is the real hell boredom, and is that why you're tortured there? are all the demons so bored after who knows how long that they torture people just to have something to do?

i don't know about you, but i think after a few centuries of pain, you'd become desensitized to it all, no matter how great the torment.

thoughts? opinions?

happyboy

Steve K

But since God is all powerful he could make it so that you never get used to the pain. Maybe he keeps increasing the pain without limit? It's all because he loves us. Right....

Regardless of whether you get used to it or not, hell is useless because it can't teach you anything - there is no after hell time where you might put your reforms into action. I think hell is the most obnoxious idea from christianity.

- Steve

Thieving Magpie

I believe the idea of hell is not necessarily something that is associated with physical pain, but rather spiritual pain... remember, that the body just rots in the ground in Christianity - it is the soul that passes on. Feeling physical pain from 'scorching fire.. torture' et cetera are things that a body would feel, but not the soul. Also, getting 'used' to physical pain is something that the body does, and not the soul, necessarily. The idea of physical pain being associated with hell, is, I believe a sort of analogy for the spiritual pain that someone would go through in hell; basically, for uneducated farmers of the Middle Ages physical pain would make a lot more sense to them than 'spiritual pain' would.

Besides, 'spiritual pain' (I'm guessing) would be very little like anything we could really imagine as it would not be pain in the way we might think of pain. If hell is a place without God, then for Christians, that truly is the worst possible place, because God is supposed to be everywhere here on Earth, so can be a source of unknowing comfort, even for non-Christians. Without God, a Christian would feel terribly alone, and they believe that that is the same for everyone - just not everyone realizes it.

HOWEVER, some people link the soul directly with the mind and body, so if the soul is sent to hell, then part of the mind and body are sent with it. This would make physical pain very possible in hell, but, as Steve K said, with God, anything is supposed to be possible.

I'm not saying these explanations are bulletproof, but they are not my own.. they are merely those of the Christians I have come into contact with.

braces_for_impact

Great, now hell is incredible emotional discomfort...wonderful.

On the reverse side, wouldn't one become used to eternal bliss and so endure that (after a fashion) in heaven?

Argh, this whole heaven/hell thing makes no sense.

Thieving Magpie

Once again, to become 'accustomed' to something is a physical sensation, not necessarily a spiritual one. Also, God is supposed to be capable of anything, so that question really has no baring.

Also, a small point, but an important one is that in Christianity the emotions, and the soul are not always the same or even closely connected.

For example, dogs (probably, I don't really know) feel anger, sadness, loneliness, and yet they do not have souls according to Christianity.

Pee Pee Poodle

Thieving Magpie

I think Pee Pee Poodle has said it best.

Taffsadar

The "soul" is just a primitive belief from the time when we didn't know what the brain did...

Thieving Magpie

That's an opinion, and not a fact, friend.

happyboy

but even mental discomfort can b/c just another thing that happens to you. ANY discomfort or pain can become passe, just another sensation that the mind eventually learns to block out. this goes for good sensations as well as bad sensations; indulge too much, and it ceases to stimulate.

happyboy