I don’t believe people who say this world is hell, even if they have lived the most miserable and painful life among all human beings on this earth. It’s half self-pity and half delusion.
I used to love saunas, but now I can’t. I found that I could sit in the hottest sauna for quite a long time, about 15 minutes, by repeatedly going back and forth between the cold and hot baths. But while sitting in the hot bath, I often saw people who had come from the hot bath dip only one foot and then turn around saying, “Ouch, it’s hot.” Every time I saw that, I thought, “How are they going to go to hell if they can’t even get into a 45-degree bath?” It wasn’t a specific thought about someone, it was just a thought that often came to me spontaneously.
No matter how painful life is, as long as you are alive, you will eat a certain amount of food every day, have a roof over your head to protect you from wind and snow, and wear clothes that will keep you from dying of hypothermia.
Sometimes you can eat sweet snacks, and occasionally you can have a drink of soju with a protein-rich side dish and complain. In fact, by Korean standards, the vast majority of people live in a much more affluent environment. Nevertheless, 40 people commit suicide every day because life is like hell, and people suffering from depression can be found everywhere.
People say they have lost their dreams. That the world has taken away everything precious. That they haven’t done anything so wrong. Why do they have to suffer so much? So this world must be hell that God created to punish fallen humans.
But what is hell? If we look at the “original meaning” of the word hell, it is a place where all desires remain the same but nothing can be satisfied, a place where one must feel the pain of burning all over the body forever. Your throat is as dry as a desert but you can’t take a sip of water, and you’re starving but you can’t eat a grain of rice. Your sexual desire remains the same and your self-esteem remains the same, but you have to be naked and exposed to everyone forever as you writhe in pain. It is a place where even death is not allowed, a place where you must endlessly look at the maggots crawling out of your own flesh that does not disappear even when burned.
And yet, humans conveniently delete the original meaning of the perfectly good word “hell” and attach it anywhere they want. When they are sick to the point of death, when they are deceived or betrayed, when they cannot get what they want, when they lose what they have, people say they have “experienced hell.” It’s the wrong attitude. But I understand. I was like that once too.
The fact is, if you are still alive, no matter what pain you have suffered, you have not even come close to experiencing hell. As long as you are alive, pain is nothing more than “the labor pains to form your conscience and personality.” Far from hell, it is a “guide to heaven.” What would happen to a person’s personality if they could not feel pain and could have whatever they wanted? They would probably try to conquer the whole world.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”
In this verse, the “field” is the world or all the people in the world. Because the field (world) is made up of soil (people). But one man who found a jewel hidden in the soil hid the treasure and, for joy over it, went and sold all that he had and bought that field. This is what it means that Jesus Christ took the jewels hidden in this world by giving his own life as a price. And who the jewels are is hidden, so it is implied that they are mixed with the soil and cannot be easily recognized.
This world is the field that Jesus Christ bought with everything he had. It’s not hell. It’s a field where sparkling jewels are buried here and there. Although it looks like a worthless field on the surface, heaven is hidden within it.
So how are jewels made? They are made by enduring great pressure and time in the soil. They are not made on the ground or in a flower bed where there is no pressure.
Hell is a museum where the person who bought the field harvests as many jewels as he aimed for and then plows it up and puts it in a furnace to announce to the world forever how the jewels were made. Since he bought the whole field, he has the right not only to the jewels but also to the disposal of the soil. We should not confuse the land where the jewels are made with the soil that is discarded and melted in the fire.
If we fail to accept the pain of living in the field as pressure to refine our conscience and personality and complain, we will not become jewels but remain as soil and be put into the furnace. This world is not hell. It’s a jewel field. You and I know a few people who could be proof of that.
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