Issue #6: One Life, Many Hells

You think You’re frightening me with Your hell, don’t You? You think Your hell is worse than mine - Dorothy Parker, A Telephone Call

I was raised in a Christian home. My mother is a fervent and prayerful woman who attends mid-week services. My father, on the other hand, only attended church a few times a year. I don’t think he attends anymore. 

Growing up in a home where both parents had different levels of religious fervour meant they didn’t present a united front on the issue of attending church services. My mother wanted us to be churchgoers, but my father couldn’t be bothered. On some Sundays, I went to church with my mom, and on other Sundays, I stayed at home and watched CNN with my dad. It followed that I never became fully immersed in Christianity. It is difficult to indoctrinate someone who isn’t a devotee.

My parents may be religiously unevenly yoked, but they are equally open-minded. They didn’t forbid me from mixing with people of other religions. One of my best friends in secondary school is a Muslim, and I often followed him to pray at the mosque. Close to our house was a Hare Krishna temple, where I spent an inordinate amount of time. I found their chants both fascinating and calming.

Followers of these religions I was exposed to believed in religious exclusivism - an unwavering belief that their religion is the only true one and the only path to God. Believe in our God, follow His way, and be saved, otherwise face eternal damnation, they’d say. These people didn’t want me to burn in hell, so they often proselytised to me. The Christian wanted me to accept Jesus. The Muslim wanted me to perform Salah. The Hare Krishna man wanted me to accept the deity Vishnu.

The effect of these interactions on my young, curious mind was that countless questions formed in my mind, all of which I threw at these religious people. “How do you know you are practising the right religion? The same way you are convinced about Islam is the same way I am convinced about Christianity, so how is it fair that God would throw me in hell for my conviction?” I would ask doggedly. None of these people ever provided a satisfactory answer, and that was because they always resorted to quoting their holy books to defend their beliefs. Suppose you justify your belief using another belief in your holy book. In that case, you’ll have to justify that other belief with another belief in the book, which you’ll have to justify, ad infinitum. This infinite regress problem occurs because there are no universally accepted fundamental beliefs about religion that we can use to justify our religious beliefs. Yet, these religious people always tried to justify their positions to me.

For years, I carried with me the weight of these unanswered questions. Still, the human brain is hardwired to seek answers and resolutions for tough questions, so I started developing theories, the most interesting of which is my “One Life, Many Hells” theory. I hypothesise that maybe at the end of our one life, we would face God, and his retinue of angels would line us up according to the religion we practised on earth. If we pass our religion’s evaluation based on our deeds on earth, we would be allowed into our religion’s Heavens; perhaps there would be a Heaven for each religion. Consequently, maybe there would be many hells. For each religion we didn’t believe in, versions of us would be cloned and thrown in the hells of those religions. So if there are N religions, you would make one Heaven and N-1 Hells. You would only end up in complete hell if you also fail to make your religion’s Heaven, or if you were an atheist (I giggled when I wrote this. It’s crazy, I know).

What if I wouldn’t want to end up in many hells? What if I would like to make the Heavens of all religions? The only reasonable option I thought one could adopt is religious pluralism - an acknowledgement that maybe every religion is true and provides a path to God. It would involve syncretism, where one would amalgamate elements of every religion into one new multifaceted religion. That way, since we believed all religions to be true, and given that our deeds on earth pass the religions’ evaluations on judgement day, we would make all Heavens.

Interestingly, my search for answers led me to a relatively new religion that is syncretic and teaches the essential worth of all faiths. It is called the Baháʼí Faith, and it originated in parts of Iran and the Middle East. I find it totally fascinating, and I am now trying to learn everything about it. You can learn about it here, here, and here.

My “One Life, Many Hells” theory may sound ridiculous, but I ponder on it a lot, and I think it is an interesting thought experiment more people should consider. I’d love to hear what you think about it and your methods for dealing with the many unanswered questions I am sure you have.