II. Hell, and Heaven too

I ceased grappling (or even dabbling) with the concept of hell quite some time ago. I got to a point where the term seemed so laden with the glorification of our tendency to cast judgement on others and our insatiable propensity for personal guilt, that I simply let go of it. I think that was a necessary and positive thing for me to do. And I think it is a healthy thing for anyone to do to at least try and work off the beer belly that adorns the doctrine of hell. There is some excess to it that we'd be better off without.
Ideas often (always?) spring board off of other ideas on their way to becoming their own thing. There's no shame in that, and no harm in dissecting an idea, acknowledging it's sources, as a means of better understanding its meaning. Today's most prevalent Christian concept of hell is a hodge-podge concept that has borrowed from the images of various traditions and sources. Hades is where the dead go in Greek mythology upon passage of the river Styx. Gehenna (the Valley of Hinnom) was the location of a trash dump in the middle east with powerful metaphorical potential. Sheol is the Hebrew image of "the grave", the leveling place, the state of death that comes to us all. These words aren't synonymous with hell. They are each complex images in themselves that have lent portions to the development of Christianity's idea of hell. Hell is an idea that has evolved and developed, with purpose that is not strictly harmful. Hell is not a place, but an idea of a place, a powerful one. And bloated by our fears and prejudice the idea of hell has grown, in some articulations, into a means of ridding our eternal experience of those with whom we disagree, a sort of final crusade, genocide to the farthest extreme possible.

I don't believe in the eternal torment of sinners (or, for that matter, of the innocent). It seems plain to me that sin is nothing short of torment in and of itself, whether doing it yourself or having it done to you. If hell is in any way essential to the Christian enterprise then, as I understand it, it is like this: all of the happenings contained in the Christian message and metaphors happened in order to be rid of hell; not in order to provide a means of avoiding hell and bidding for a lot outside of it. Most heroes of the Christian faith saw hell for what it is, and the most inspiring of them waded waist deep into it and did what they could to extinguish it.
Hell, if anything at all, is what many people experience everyday and what all people experience at least some days. Humans experience hell when they are disregarded by others around them. We create hell by our failure to evenly distribute food and water, shelter and dignity to one another. Making heaven the realization of ones dignity, the satiation of hunger and thirst, the remedy of malnutrition and illness (whether that malnutrition has to do with a scarcity of meals or not). Indeed, and remember this, for some heaven does not find them until death does.
I'm a believer in the quiet rest and the holistic realization of contentment that comes, in one way or another, one day to us all. My left-column friends would perhaps call me a universalist. Maybe "hopeful" according to the right-columnists.