We have often heard statements such as “War is hell” or “I went
through hell.” These expressions are, of course, not taken literally.
Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a
descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no
human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try
to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we
have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality
of hell.
Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use
the word lightly may be a halfhearted human attempt to take the concept
lightly or to treat it in an amusing way. We tend to joke about things
most frightening to us in a futile effort to declaw and defang them,
reducing their threatening power. Continue at R. C. Sproul
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