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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1238 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 15, 2026

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Inspired by the fear the reaper thread, It's always been odd to me that so many Christians and ex-Christians report being scared of hell. It always seemed pretty easy to avoid to me absurdly easy in Protestant's case but even for Catholics and Orthodox you just need to ho to a priest.

I think that either I'll be saved, or else never stood a chance; if my ongoing sincere repentance isn't enough, probably nothing would have been. My problem is that I don't know what hell is or what to expect after death.

I'm not really worried about eternal conscious torment, but put it this way: I've had enough experience as a psychonaut that my horizons in terms of possible states of consciousness and being have been enormously broadened, and I'm viscerally aware of terrible possibilities that probably wouldn't occur to most.

Even if I look forward to what ultimately comes after death, I'm afraid of the transition. I'm afraid of my brain shutting down, and what that's going to be like. I'm very afraid of what it will be like to face judgment, even if mostly pretty confident in the outcome. Are we faced with the entirety of our own sinfulness before absolution? Why? To what end? And how could I stand that? Or does Christ just show up immediately and say "Don't worry about it, you're done, I've got it from here, welcome to eternal bliss"?

Will I be called upon to live again? Does following Christ mean choosing to go back into the world and suffer as a human for others? My life is amazing and I have no trouble seeing it as a gift, though shot through with pain, hopefully for the purpose of spiritual growth. But I look at the lives of almost anyone else and think, no, I don't want to experience that.

I can imagine endless possibilities, and expect that the reality will be far beyond even those; incomprehensible to my current imagination.

The right attitude here is to trust and bear in mind the solemnity of what's coming. And I do those things. But I find that it's best to not dwell on it too much.

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