How To Go To Hell? Concept Of Hell In Different Religions

Today it is usual to consider the concept religion to be a taxon of sets of social practices, a concept-category whose paradigmatic examples are the so-called world religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. The intervalent interaction of religious and secular realms has led some scholars to question the usefulness of the term religion, since it has been claimed to represent world religious traditions reified, essentialized, isolated from the political, social, economic, and cultural worlds in which they are embedded. Religion is a set of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews which link humankind with spirituality, and occasionally with moral values. 

Religions and other belief systems in our environments influence our identities, regardless of whether or not we identify as religious or spiritual. Religions, along with related social and cultural structures, have played a major role throughout human history.

Religion is an organized system of beliefs and practices that revolves around, or leads up to, transcendent spiritual experiences. Alternatively, religious beliefs can also be about values and practices conveyed by spiritual leaders. In its most basic sense, Religion describes the relationship between humans to that which they consider holy, holy, spiritual, or divine. This is often accompanied by an organized body of practices which cultivates a community of persons sharing this faith. 

The religions of the world offer answers to the questions that human beings have about life and death, and, in that respect, are not unlike the faiths practised around the world today. In many traditions, these relationships and concerns were expressed in terms of ones relation with, or relationship to, God or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they were expressed in terms of ones relation to, or attitude to, a larger human community or to the natural world. Some individuals may view spirituality as belief in ideas with religious implications (such as God, the soul, or heaven), but do not feel bound by the bureaucratic structures and creeds of any particular organized religion. 

If this terminology is valid, religions across the three concentric circles may be understood to be sets of practices that are based on a belief in the supernatural. The worlds five largest religious groups, estimated at 5.8 billion and 84% of the total human population, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism  and traditional folk religions. 

Hell in Christianity

Scripture tells us how we can have eternal life by believing in Jesus Christ, rather than an eternity apart from him in Hell. Gods love brought Jesus Christ down from Heaven into Earth to live, die, and rise again, providing the possibility that we could have eternal life through faith in Him. When we trust in Jesus by faith, Gods risen Son and Lord, we can believe in the promises of the Lord to keep us forever. In Jesus Christ, God lives among us, teaches us, and heals usabut these things are not the final work of God. 

For God did not send Christ Jesus, our Lord, into the world to condemn the world, but so the world could be saved through him. God calls us to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, accepting the death of Jesus Christ as a complete and fair price for our sins. Declare to God that you are trusting in Jesus Christ to save you from hell. 

The only way you are going to Hell is if you do not really believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior from sin. If you want to escape hell, accept Christ as your Savior and enjoy an eternity in heaven. Tell God that you acknowledge you are a sinner and deserve to go to hell. 

Some believe that they must keep the Ten Commandments all of their lives in order not to end up in hell. Some may preach hell so strongly that people will only reform their lives because of self-interested fears about avoiding consequences, rather than love and faithfulness to Jesus. This might be because a God-rejecting person does not believe that hell exists, or might have convinced themselves that hell would be a bearable alternative to heaven. When A person decides to oppose God, and thus essentially chooses hell--or when they make jokes or curse it with their friends that they would rather have hell than Heaven, to boring religious folk--they have no idea what they are doing. 

Hell in Islamic

The concept of Jahannam, or Hell, as well as the gates of hell, or seven levels, are described quite extensively in the Quran, which cautions Muslims against engaging in the sins identified with Islam. Muslims also believe in hell (Jahannam), that is the place where individuals will end up if they live bad lives or have committed acts that are disobedient of those around them. In Quranic hell, the punished people are hit by angels, drank from a hot well, and eaten from a tree called the Zaqqum, which bears fruits like devils heads. 

Those who engage in these sins are punished greatly in hell, in case they fail to genuinely repent for the three sins (backbiting) prior to death. This means those who indulge in the three sins (backbiting, slander, improper hoarding) will be cast in a Valley of Hell. Hell is a place and condition where the sinful are punished upon the day of judgment. Surely, those who do not believe, who commit sins; God will neither forgive them, nor lead them in any other way than that which leads into hell, so that they may spend eternity in it. 

Whoever does disobey God and his, surely, the Fire of Hell is unto him, and he shall ever be in it. Prophet Muhammad, was Allahs favorite prophet, and he was said that his ummah (people), which is Muslim, would be sent to Jahannam, or hell, when he had completed the punishment for his ummah (people). Other groups of sinners, like those who disbelieve in God and his laws, and those who perish because of their sins, must wait for the Last Day before entering hell. All Muslims want to spend eternal life in heaven (jannah), but many will come up short. 

Then, their places therein will be given to people from Paradise, while places in Hell which were reserved for the people from Paradise will be given to people from Hell. During the judgment process, God will determine if the individual is going to heaven (Jannah) or hell (Jahannam). It is also believed that flames from Jahannam, or Hell, are 70 times more damaging than worldly fires. The Quran also threateningly depicts Hell to its listeners in graphic images, described using a variety of terms, including Jahannam.

Hell in Hinduism

In Hinduism, different schools of thought have differing opinions about hell, called Naraka. According to some schools of Hinduism. Naraka, in Puranas, is the location to which the souls are sent for expiation for their sins. In hell, the souls are punished and tortured for sins committed in the course of their lives.

It is believed that those who have committed sinful acts are sent to Hell, where they must suffer the punishments corresponding to the sins that they committed. People who commit evil acts and have built up negative karma are sent to hell in order to cleanse their souls. Whether or not someone goes to heaven or hell depends on what kind of karma has been accrued during the previous lives. Those guilty of these [fearful crimes] are redeemed upon death, either through a one-time or multiple soul-transmigration into some detestable animal, or through torment at Naraka, that is, Hell. 

The Guilty, are punished according to the nature of the sinners. Yamadutas torture the souls according to their masters orders. The names of many of the hells are common across the Hindu texts; however, the nature of sinners tortured by specific hells differs between texts. Each hell is merely one of many places a soul may end up, whether connected or not with any specific act. These hells, as well as hundreds and thousands more, are places where sinners pay for their crimes. 

Hell is a place without all enjoyment, where sorrow is felt every single moment. Life in this world becomes temporary hell (or purgatory), which generates the desire to liberate oneself (moksha). This is an attempt to implicitly demonstrate that the idea of eternal hell cannot exist in Hinduism. From a Hindu perspective, heaven and hell are simply different worlds bound together by time, space, and causation. 

If we use the Vedas as a point of reference for studying the evolution of Hindu concepts of heaven and hell, we will find that while heaven is mentioned in the first book of the Rig Veda, only in the final book does heaven come into prominence. Naraka is commonly translated as hell, Naraka is not eternal, though when given a time scale, it is suggested to be remarkably long. According to the Hindu sutras, Lord Chitragupta, keeps records of individual actions of each living being in the world, and on a thorough review of their actions, sends the spirits of deceased persons to the Svarga, or various narakas, according to the nature of their sins. 

Hell in Buddhism

Buddhism denies that hell exists, but it does teach that a purgatorial state exists. All this makes the inferno of Buddhism one vibrant, yet tiny, part of the larger cosmos of karmic ongoing existence. Buddhists do have the notion of the universe we call Samsara, which describes the world that we are living in, and it is about this life (not an afterlife). The Buddhist conceptions of heaven and hell are different than the concepts in other religions. 

The religion share a belief that karma defines every life, and it assigns a number of experiences which may include different Heavens or Hells, or rebirths as humans. The work of karma, which follows a creature from one realm of existence to the next, is usually the result of psychological and physical actions throughout multiple lives; rebirth into a hell is the worst among the six possible categories. The Wheel of Life charts the fates of individuals who are reborn into one of the six realms, such as humans, demi-gods, god, animals, ghosts, and hell realm. Purgatory is just one of six realms, or states of existence, that can rebirth a creature, the others are heaven, human realm, animal realm, realm of the jealous spirits (asura) and the hungry spirits (peta). Now, it is important to realize that these six realms are not dungeons located underground that sent out criminals to get punished. 

The original documents described the punishments specific to each location, and the agents who administered these punishments, but all sinners go through all of the halls in order to recover their karma; Hell is not specific to sin. The moral context within which a Buddhist hell exists has none of the rhetoric about original sin. Not all Buddhist texts subscribe to the literal interpretation of hell as the place that the dead go because of their transgressions. 

The Karandavyuha Sutra is the first instance of a Buddha who is endlessly compassionate, who has been tortured in Hell. The torment here is like that in Tapana Naraka, but piercing a living thing is done with the pointy end of the spear in more bloody fashion. In addition, black lines are drawn on the bodies, and used by Hellguards as guides for cutting through the beings with firesaws and sharpened axes. 

Then, hellguards impale the living creatures across the anus with burning iron rods that come out of the crowns of their heads; burning flames erupt from their mouths, eyes, noses, ears, and all pores. Tapana (Jiao Re ; Yan Re ) is the heated Naraka, in which the hell-guards impale beings on the fiery spears until the flames emerge from their noses and mouths. 

Naraka (P. niraya; T. dmyal ba dmyl-b-; K. diyu [youqing/zhongsheng]), or hell-realm, is the lowest of the six spheres in Samsara; it is marked by severe misery. A type of hell or lower realm called naraqa, or Naraka. Buddhisms Narakas are strongly associated with Diyu, a type of hell from Chinese mythology. 

The brutal, gratuitous multilayered torments of the Narakas, or the realms of the hell, rival the torments of any Abrahamic tradition. Unlike the latter, however, the Narakas are not eternal: some only have a lifespan of a few billion years. In that regard, Buddhas ideas of hell-worlds are like one of these, as they are not considered to be permanent -- although timescales are enormous, since the consciousness of human beings is transient through experience of death. 

Rather than perpetual rewards or punishments for a persons lifetime on Earth, the Buddhas heavens and hells are temporal places, in which individuals are reborn according to the lives they have led on Earth. In Buddhism, there is no notion of punishment or reward, nor is there any god-being that determines who goes to hell or Heaven. 

It will come as no surprise that there is an enormous body of literature in Buddhism about suffering, rebirth, and karma, but oftentimes people, with a lot of certainty, that in Buddhism, there is no heaven and hell. The Buddhas teachings tell us there is not just a paradise or a hell outside of this world, there is also one inside of this very world. For the Buddhist, the notion of endless hells creates further doubts about the existence of the God, presumably the one that is just and merciful. The easiest way for Buddhists to define hell and heaven is this: wherever there is greater suffering, whether on this world or on some other plane, the place is a hell for the sufferers. 

In Buddhist cosmology, hell is not merely implied; it is a landscape, described accurately and in depth. The Buddha described hell as eight fiery underworlds, one on top of another, stacked on top of one another. From a Buddhist perspective, one who enters hell may be working on their own ascent using merits that have been gained before. 

Hell In Judaism

Jews might not believe in an afterlife--in heaven or hell--but Judaism clearly does. Ultimately, there are a number of Jewish views on heaven and hell, as well as on the afterlife. There is not a single thought that is universally held by Jewish people on any subject, including heaven and hell. 

Like other spiritual traditions, Judaism offers a number of views about the afterlife, including some that are similar to the concepts of heaven and hell that are familiar to us from the dominant Western (i.e., Christian) doctrine. There are certainly views of the afterlife within Judaism, but, unlike in some other religions, there has never been an official consensus in the Jewish faith about any single vision of life after death. 

While there are some strains of Modern Judaism which would advocate against life after death, the overwhelming majority of Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish theology, and Jews themselves unequivocally believe in Olam Habah - the World to Come.  

In kabbalistic traditions (mystical Jewish religions), much is discussed of a journey by a persons soul into the Garden of Eden and into other celestial realms while living one earthly life. Jewish tradition also describes the Garden of Eden, which is the destination for the truly just souls after their death. 

Traditional Jewish thinking is that only truly righteous people are sent straight to Heaven; all others have to purge themselves of remaining sins. According to traditional Judaism, sins not purified before death are removed at the time of death to a place called Sheol or Gehinnom (also written and). The souls of those who lived bad lives are punished in Hell, while those of those who are morally virtuous enjoy an eternity of joy and serenity with God in Heaven. Christianity accepted the Jewish views, but it has in time refined the idea of hell to include elements of purgatory, where the soul is not only instructed on his or her faults, but punished for them as a means of atonement.