I'm not Christian, but I will give my two cents on this, as per many years of religious studies, a fair knowledge of Judaism's predecessors and antecessors and a current Master's Degree research proposal with psychological and sociological arguments on morality, religion and indoctrination of several types.
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Historically and contemporarily, Jews from mainstream sects do not tend to officially doctrinate specific views on the afterlife in the ways that Christian and Muslim scholars do. Various views, contingent on the specific scholarly school of Judaism, posit various notions about the life after death, facilitated by their varying perspectives on God's instrinsic nature, but few if any claim to know for definite what the afterlife holds for man.
Such a broad range of speculations exist that for the most part the Jewish community of scholars is at large wiling to be liberally interdenominational in this respect; they allow for various interpretations regarding death and the hereafter, in fact most scholars are in this manner liberal with many aspects of Judaistic doctrine. In this light, Judaism might be considered unique among the Abrahamic religions; denominational conflict is unusual by virtue of the Judaistic tendency to comprehend and even condone different renderings.
That said, one almost unanimous belief perserveres throughout the majority of renderings; that the human essence resides in 'shoel' after death - shoel, which, depending on the scholar is anything from a place of rest to a purgatorial experience. Note that few if any Jewish scholars assert the existence of an eternal realm of torture for humanity. Many do, however, merit the notion that an ungodly life means simple annihilation upon physical death.
Christianity and Islam are therefore the major advocates of hellfire doctrine. It is strange then, that these religions would spawn with such vehement ideas on the afterlife, from a religion which roundaboutly admits ''we simply don't know what happens when we die''.
Morally speaking, a notion such as eternal torture at the hands of an all-powerful creator throws up some extremely troubling dilemmas, particularly when it is taken into account that the Christian perspective of God is that he is a God of love who created man with foresight that man would fall short of his apparent expectations and require forgiveness, and so people ask 'what commonality have love and forgiveness with torture?' This dualism within God's character is perhaps the single most cognitive-dissonance-inducing aspect of Christianity, but before we attempt to address it, perhaps we should look historically at how the concept of eternal damnation to fire found its way into Christian doctrine.
From the biblical scripts in Greek and Hebrew, there exist several Greek and Hebrew words which most mainstream translators collectively render 'hell'. These words are 'shoel' (Hebrew for 'resting place of the dead'), 'hades' (Greek for 'underworld', which can be considered equivalent to the Hebrew 'shoel' as aforementioned) and 'gehenna', which is perhaps the most troublesome word. 'Gehenna', in Jewish history, is a small valley a few miles outside the walls of Jarusalem, where many graves currently lie and which can be visited at any time. It is a short trip from the City.
The first two words, 'shoel' and 'hades', historically - up until translations rendered more than a thousand years after Jesus death which rendered these words as 'hell' became commonly used - had no connotation with fire, with torture, or with eternal punishment. In Judaism, in both of the old Hebrew and the more modern Greek styles, these words simply meant 'the resting place of the dead', where all humans go after their passing to rest.
The third word 'Gehenna', however, has always had connotation with torture, right back into the older books of the Old Testament, but that connotation was not always attributed to actions carried out by God, contrary to popular opinion. 'Gehenna', as spoken about in the books of Joshua, Isaiah and Kings, was a valley outside Jarusalem, which several hundred years before Jesus' birth was home to a particularly nasty Jewish tribe who ''burned their children day and night'' and offered the charred remains as sacrifices to God. They were so vile a species of human beings in fact, that God denounced their practices and stated plainly to King Josiah that He had told them to commit none of the atrocities they commited towards their children, then God instructed the King to destroy them for what they had done.
How then, does this word 'Gehenna', a place full of people whom God opposed vehemently for burning their children, come to be translated and rendered as 'hell', the place many believe God will burn many of his children for eternity? Doesn't it seem odd to you -- poetically tragic, unrealistically ironic even -- that God would oppose the Gehennites burning of their children, only to burn most of his own children in a place called 'Gehenna', which we translate 'hell'?
Doesn't it also seem odd that evidence would suggest that the first mention of a burning hell to which God sends sinners is in Greek fiction more than a thousand years after Jesus death, and was later adopted by the church as a doctrine?
The duality implied in God's character when we assert the existence of an eternal torture in hell which somehow confirms his status as 'a God of love' is evident from the earliest infant conceptions we all may have of 'hell'. 'Love', and eternal burning are indeed contradictory terms, and this can be conveyed not only as a literary faux-pas on part of translators and as a historical contradiction in God's character, but also as a moral conundrum evidenced by study of biblical definitions and the character of Jesus christ himself.
Paul defines love, in his letters to Corinth, as 'patient, kind, non-boasting, non-proud, something that does not dishonour others, something unselfish, soft tempered, not delighting in evil, truthful, not begrudging, protective, trusting, hopeful and persevering'.
In Jesus Christ, the moral teacher whose instructions provide the basis of all Christian morality, we see these traits. Jesus showed great patience in answering many difficult questions. Jesus showed great kindness is healing those who were suffering. Jesus showed great reserve when thrown awry questions and requests to show his magnificence by the Pharisees. Jesus showed great humility in washing his disciples' feet. Jesus showed a desire not to dishonor by not disclosing Judas' identity as the traitor, even when he knew who it was. Jesus showed great unselfishness in being captured willingly so that his disciples could escape unharmed. Jesus showed soft temperament in many instances, even when he had cause to be angry. Jesus showed no delight in evil, not even in evils being used to repay evils, and many times reiterated the cause - to do good to those who do evil against you. Jesus told the truth. Jesus did not begrudge those around him. Jesus protected and sustained those with him. Jesus trusted his disciples. Jesus had hope for man and the goodness his disciples would do after he was gone, and Jesus persevered until his death.
It is quite obvious then, that the characteristics of love are displayed in the actions of Jesus' daily life, and it is only logical that if God's character is displayed perfectly in Jesus, that God abides by the same loving tendencies as listed here. John says that 'God is a God of light, no darkness exists in him whatsoever' and goes on to note that wickedness is darkness. Wickedness is against God's nature. Jesus, of course, is light just as God is, and showed no wickedness, but rather he 'loved his enemies'. He abided by his own instructions, for if he did not, he would be a hypocrite. Thus, it becomes God and Jesus to live by the standards they set; standards of forgiveness, kindness, and love. How, then, if Jesus did not torture nor physically harm a single person, did not commit an act of hate, sacrificed himself, forgave continually, and upheld the characteristics of the love he commands, can God torture his own children and still be considered a God of love in the definitions He gave us?
The simple answer is that he can't.
When Jesus speaks of 'gehenna' he uses the term as a warning. He talks about those who sin and do not change their ways living in an 'outer darkness', a great 'fire', burning the soul, where the wicked have no peace of mind in the day or in the night. But is Jesus really saying, despite all his instructions to love which he himself adhered to, that he will actually carry out the burning of most of humanity, day and night, for all eternity? It seems rather contradictory to think so, a very difficult dualism that is almost impossible to entirely accept or reconcile, if we are to assert that Jesus remains steadfast in his moral character.
What if, rather than proclaiming that either he or God will burn those who do not repent, Jesus is actually suggesting that those who have no regard for their sins will end up as morally blind as those who burned their children in Gehenna hundreds of years before his birth? Gehenna and its atrocities were no secret to the Jewish people of Jesus' time, and in fact the mere mention of the place would illicit a shamefulness among the people; a revulsion at the idea that God would be appeased by the offering of charred remains of infants and toddlers. And so, perhaps Jesus used the term as a deterrent, a way of saying ''look outside the city walls to Gehenna, remember it, look and see where recklessness leads'', for of course, it is recklessness and heedlessness that led the citizens of Gehenna to the most grave immorality in the first place -- burning their own children.
I'm not a Christian, but this dilemma's answer seems quite obvious to me; the people who hold God to the highest standard of love, like the standard above -- the standard that can be reconciled with itself -- tend to hold themselves to the highest standard of love, yet those who are quick to talk about God's judgement, wrath, and hatred, are usually the first to display judgement, wrath and hatred. Nowhere does Jesus command people to be judgemental, wrathful or hateful, and nowhere does Jesus display judgemental attitudes, wrath, or hatred.
Doesn't it seem odd to you that this man could disregard his teaching to others, which are upheld by his own character, and send billions upon billions of his children to burn for eternity, particularly when God despised human beings for burning their children? It seems to me that a Christian person who believes that God (the highest moral authority) can be both benevolent and malevolent, yet totally loving, are quite satisfied to display both love and hatred and still consider themselves the most moral beings on this planet.
What is the saying -- ''The morals of your God are the limit to your ethics''? ..
Perhaps a better rendition is ''You are made in your God's image'' ....