Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
I think that Dante got it wrong in his Divine Comedy. I think that Purgatory is the worst place that one could be in the afterlife. If you think about it in terms of interaction, then Heaven and Hell are pretty much equal. Now before you go declaring me a heretic and start piling up wood at the bottom of a big stake, let me explain myself. Heaven is a place where you are rewarded for essentially being good. Hell is a place where you are punished for essentially being bad. But, purgatory is a place that you go to when you are not good enough to get into Heaven or bad enough to get into Hell. You are essentially ignored by both sides. That, to me would seem like the worst place in the afterlife. Instead of thinking of the afterlife as a line going from worst(Hell) to best (Heaven), with purgatory being in the middle. I think of it as being in the shape of a V. You could even place this V on a graph. The left arm would be Hell and the right arm would be Heaven. The point would be purgatory and would be at origin. The X-axis would be treatment (positive versus negative). The Y-axis would be level of interaction. [Insert picture of graph here.]
Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 1:00 PM
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