For many years after they disowned me, I struggled with the fear that I was going to go to hell. Their religious views impacted everything, from the language I used to the clothes I wore. People without a background in different religions often don't notice when people are using religious terms in every day life. A Christian person might say they are "thankful" or "blessed" instead of "happy," and are more likely to say they are "tempted" to cheat on their diet, for example. This happens in other religions too, but with different words. If you know what words to look for, you can often tell what a person's religious background is. The point I'm trying to make here is that your religious upbringing impacts everything about your life, from the words you use to the thoughts you think.
Even after leaving religion, most people who were raised with the concept of hell struggle with the fear of hell. I was in a cold sweat many a night thinking about whether I had made the right choice. When I took to YouTube 7 years ago to explain why I no longer believed as my parents did, it was primarily for my own benefit. I doubted my parents would ever see the videos; they had never had internet or even cable, and they were never interested in a dialogue with me. I made videos to put my mind at rest about my fears, and to get support from other people.
In a very real way, the internet is the best thing that ever happened to me, and probably saved my life. I was exposed to the idea that I could make up my own mind on issues for the first time in my life, and I was given a forum where I could gestate ideas, organize my ideas, let other people see them, and receive feedback. It was because I was able to get on the internet at my job (that really I had far too much free time at, but kept because of my good organizational skills that saved them money) that I left my parents' cult. Gaining a personal identity and personal opinions has been a downright terrifying process. Most of the time since I was thrown out by my parents, I have tried to get my opinions from others, and been codependent on others for everything.
For a while after I stopped believing in my parents' version of hell, I believed in a temporary hell, a sort of purgatory where, if you were evil, you could reflect on your ways and change, and then be admitted into heaven. This was a much more comforting thought for me, but also raised the possibility that my incredibly evil parents might some day be admitted into heaven, which I was against. In a way, I still want there to be a hell, because I think they deserve to go there for all the things they've done to me that have destroyed both my physical body and my mental health.
I think something we are all afraid of, to some extent, is facing the great unknown of death. I do not fear death, and I never have. My "imaginary friend" as a child was the Angel of Death, and I had extremely vivid dreams where we would travel together and I would witness people's deaths, sometimes from within their bodies or the bodies of their families. What makes these dreams particularly memorable is that the emotion centers of my brain were fully engaged with them, and I felt all the emotions a person who is dying or watching a loved one die might feel. This, combined with emotion-laced memories and flashbacks (that were not my own) of the person's life, made the dreams very real to me.
This led me to a belief that these were real people, who were really dying sometime, somewhere, and that I had the power to help them overcome their fears in their last few moments by sharing with them my lack of fear. By experiencing death alongside them, I could ease their suffering. I want to stress that I was very aware, even while dreaming, that I was not the person I was experiencing the life of in the dream. I knew that it was another person; sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, from different parts of the world. Twice it was men from India (one of which was gay), once an African American woman, once a suspected spy for an Eastern European government who had been poisoned, etc. When I spoke in my dreams, it was with their voices, when I looked at myself either in a reflection or just looking down at my hands, it was their bodies.
Even though my fear of fiery torment abated with time, I still believed in an afterlife, in large part because of the experiences in these dreams. I thought that perhaps the incredibly evil people would cease to exist after their deaths, but the mostly good would live on. The notion of everyone ceasing to exist was hard to swallow, and as I learned more about other religions, I wondered why for Buddhists exiting the circle of rebirth would be seen as positive. I still don't really understand that one.
I also learned about the true evolution of the belief in hell. Many religions had a world of the dead, but it was often just a place of rest. Some had trials before that rest, but a few of those had nothing to do with your actions during life. The keeper of the realm of the dead was not usually portrayed as evil or punishing, he usually was your guide and helper, who protected you on the journey to your rest. The concept of Satan as a tormentor is a very recent addition. Many of the more recognizable features of a Dante's Inferno-style hell are actually Zoroastrian in origin, and some features have ceased to make sense after making the transition. Why would Satan, who is portrayed as an angel who rebelled against God, wish to torment humans for rebelling against God? What would his motivation be? These are people who sided more or less with him during their lives, why would he torture them for it? If, on the other hand, it was not a rebellious angel, but rather a general force of destruction that wreaks havoc and creates evil in the universe, it would make sense that its domain would be a place of chaos and troubles.
Another thing that many people grapple with is how a good, merciful, benevolent God can send people to hell. How could an all-knowing God who created the universe in full knowledge that men would rebel against him choose to punish mankind that he created for sins that he had the knowledge that they would commit? Does he have a choice about whether or not to send people to hell? If he has a choice, how could he be called merciful if he sends even one person to be tortured? If he has no choice, then who or what is actually in control?
One of the main functions that the fear of hell serves, besides controlling your actions, is to provide you with a belief in the superiority of you and your group of people and their beliefs, and the inherent inferiority of other beliefs and the people who hold them. If you believe that everyone who does not believe as you do is damned, and you can be brought to believe that they deserve torture after death, then you will have less objections to subjecting them to torture while they are alive.
The Crusaders, when faced with difficulty in distinguishing Arab Christians from Muslims, said, "Kill them all, and let God sort it out." Because they believed that the good would enter heaven, and the evil would enter hell, they had no problems with ending the earthly lives of people regardless of their perceived guilt or innocence. This type of mentality still exists today. When faced with the evidence that some of the individuals tortured by the US government in Guantanamo Bay and other locations were completely innocent, the most common response of the Fox News type of Christian Conservative was that they are going to hell anyway, and we should send them Bibles.
Here are two videos that deal with the question of hell excellently:
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