So, personal encounters with spirits tell me there are spirits, and that consciousness exists not tied to body.
4 hospital studies tell me that I am not mentally insane and hallucinating my encounters with spirits. Thousands of other people have encountered them too, and in controlled studies in three countries, peer reviewed and appropriately medical, the phenomenon of post-death consciousness is demonstrated. That the congenitally blind rescucitees could SEE in their post-death experiences and were as formerly-sighted people afterwards is particularly persuasive.
The Shroud of Turin and Oviedo cloth are the photograph of, and necessary cross-reference to, a miracle that occurred by natural processes, but which COULD NOT have occurred under the laws of probability as we have experienced them.
The international scientific committee has been medically documenting medical miracles at the Marian Shrine at Lourdes for over a century.
That the other religions have no equivalent of the Shroud of Turin or Lourdes persuades me that Christianity in fact has the actual favor of the being with power over spirits and nature. That Lourdes is a place where MARY, specifically, appeared in the 19th Century persuades me that the Catholic Variant of the Christian faith is the one to which God imparts the greatest power. There is only one Lourdes, and it's at a Shrine to Mary. Ergo, Christians who deny the singular importance and blessedness of Mary are demonstrated, by the visible power of God at Lourdes, to be mistaken.
Thus is the general nature of my belief, and my particular Christian denomination, determined.
As to hell, I think that the Christian idea of it derives from the desperate desire to see justice done to the wicked for the really horrible things they do, like kill people, torture them, etc. The Christian apostles, and Jesus with his comments about sexual sin, all said that everyone is sinful, and that God's standard is perfection. Given that, everyone is condemned to die for sin, because everybody sins. And so everybody dies. That's part of it. Death is painful and terrifying. IT, I believe, is the balloon payment for sin. We are all sentenced to death. That's a MAJOR punishment, it's losing it all. We all experience that horror of execution, by God himself, first hand.
But then, at the other side, we wake up, and we encounter Jesus. At that point, everybody believes in Jesus, because they're looking at him. I think that the balloon payment for sin has been paid, largely, by the torture of death we all have to go through. God never grants a pardon. He is hard. And then comes the embarassment and the terrible remorse for bad things done in the life review on the other side. The NDE studies all refer to this life review. ANd THEN comes the forgiveness and grace of Jesus.
Does anyone reject it?
I don't know.
WHY?
I think that God has his own reasons for having things so, which are completely separate from the various stroeis we've made up for ourselves as to why. Remember, WE think that life is great and fight to hold onto it. But God dips souls into flesh then calls them back. Why? Perhaps because it makes us more interesting to HIM to be with on the other side.
Hell is the human conception of eternal justice.
I think our stories are seen through a glass darkly, and that we cannot base our belief in the way God orders things on those stories.
Thank you, while I do not agree, I appreciate the time you put in to answer. Perhaps we will find out for sure some day.