Tuesday 18 January 2022

Paradise is Hell... in experience, in practice

A religion might offer some version of Paradise to its faithful adherents, it might give them exactly the experience they have asked for - and yet this may also be a demonic bargain. 

If paradise is considered as an experience (that is, a 'subjective' experience) then there is the fact that getting 'what you asked' for can in practice be an appalling outcome - as can be seen from the sexual revolution over the past 60 years. 


Western people (in one country after another) asked-for and were given no-fault divorce, unlimited promiscuity, same sex and any perverted 'sexuality', the recognition of changed sex... Asked that these be not only tolerated but praised and rewarded... 

And now these people have exactly what they asked for. They have been given Paradise. 

But do people like what they have been given? Has Paradise made them happy? Seemingly not. 

Yet will they admit their error and give it up? Seemingly not. 

To refuse to give-up that which makes you miserable, is to be addicted to sin. 

And that is Hell, in microcosm. 


I suspect almost any "Paradise" would have exactly this Hellish quality, in practice. Yet people are, after all, being-given what they have asked for... It is 'just' that when they get what they have asked-for, actually have the experience they wanted; they find it is not what they expected.  

And people are even given the chance to repent and be saved from their self-chosen Hell... Yet they choose not to acknowledge their error, their sin... (This refusal is sometimes called Pride.)

Instead, they assume they are miserable because they do not have enough of what they asked for; they just want more of what they want. 


This can be seen all around, as a matter of daily observation; and it is more than an analogy of what induces Men to choose Hell rather than Heaven, and to keep making that choice. It is the actual mechanism of self-damnation.

And it explains why any religion that offers Paradise without the self-transformation, purification by love, and divination of Resurrection; is offering a kind of Hell - even-though/ exactly-because it delivers on its promises. 

It is indeed by delivering on the promise of Paradise-experience for un-resurrected Man that Hell is made. 

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