God's Gone AWOL

[2] An Ironic Interaction

[EPISODE 2: SQUABBLES]

Over the course of a few hundred years, humanity made quite a few attempts at interpreting a modern image of the place known as 'Hell'.

Most of these interpretations were grossly inaccurate. Hell, as seen by the modern and very misled human mindset, was a flaming and bloody landscape filled with the screams and wails of lost or condemned souls, and the charred remains of those who had sinned beyond repentance. It was a place where evil cultivated into horrible and twisted demons who delighted in torturing anyone unfortunate enough to encounter them. It was a place ruled by a Devil with cloven hooves and a pointed red trident, who's name varied constantly depending on which misinformed individual happened to be describing them. Truly, the whole thing was a horrible and entirely inaccurate image.

The real Hell only bore the same name as the human fabrication because the word "Hell" was ironically and voluntarily adopted by demonkind after the King James version of the Christian Bible was set loose on the world like the plague, and people actually started to believe that such a terrible place —one filled with fire and brimstone— actually existed. Initially the realm in which demons typically resided had been referred to as "The Underworld", "The Underneath", "The Cavern", or in some cases just straight up "Anti-Heaven". But due to the strange myth of damnation that accompanied the image of demons arising from the ashes of a Jerusalem slum (commonly known as Gehenna) alongside Zoroastrian tradition and a chaotic mistranslation of the Ancient Roman afterlife, more and more demons started using the term "Hell" just to poke fun at themselves and the minds of mortals. Eventually the name ended up sticking as the common term, and after some time, it evolved into the official title as well.

However, the true Hell still did not even begin to resemble it's portrayal amidst humankind. In fact, it was even closer in appearance to Earth than Heaven was. There were no screams or wails of the damned, there was nobody being tortured (intentionally), and there was certainly no charred remains or wandering souls cluttering up the scenery. It was actually a very clean place, with perfectly friendly residents. Not at all how anyone would expect it to be, going off of modern beliefs.

So then there came the question most people ask at some point. Where the heck did the flaming, screaming, toxic wasteland image come from?

The ancient Greek and Roman afterlives both had an underworld to which souls, having been separated from the body during death, would travel to potentially reincarnate, be punished, or just dwell for eternity depending on the situation. However, such a place was not quite of the same nature, and some confusion occurred between religions as Ancient Rome decided to take up practicing Christianity after years and years of violently oppressing it.

Gehenna, the valley Hinnom a little ways outside of Jerusalem, was another source. Having been a garbage dump, a place of punishment, and a location of human sacrifice, it actually fit the description to some extent. However, it was on Earth.

So as for the waste left behind? It was left by mortals. The punishments? They were passed down by a mortal to a mortal. And the human sacrifices? All were carried out by mortals. None of it had anything to do with demons at all. It was all made by human hands.

And that was the root of it all.

Because the only places that truly resembled the modern understanding of Hell, were always made by human hands. Damned and destroyed landscapes, smoke, fire, screams of the tortured and dying... the only places where these images have occurred in the flesh have been in the wake of humanity's constant urge to destroy.

Hell was a projection.

Because no matter the magnificent powers bestowed upon angels and demons, no matter what destruction they can bring, there was nothing more terrifying to a human, than the power of another human.