I have some good news, and some bad news. Which do you want first?  I always want the bad news first, so that’s what you’ll get. OK, the bad news is there is a hell.

But the good news is that it’s not as bad as you might think. It’s not where you think it is, and it doesn’t last as long as some claim. Hell is only your worst moments in this life, not the next life. It’s not a place. It’s a state (but not Mississippi). And it can be over in an instant. In fact, it’s already over. You just keep replaying it’s supposed moment over and over again in your mind. That’s where hell is: in your head. All you need do is make up your mind, and, POOF! Hell is over in an instant so brief that it never really was. There is no hell, ultimately. Boy, that’s good news, isn’t it?

What about paradise? As with hell, most people describe it as an afterlife state, a state of permanence. It’s associated with reward, and with a place (most often Hawaii).

Heaven and hell. God’s in charge of both, right? That’s the conventional assumption. God guards the gates of heaven and of hell, puts his bouncers there. They check your ID to make sure you belong, and then ask you for the cover charge; good deeds for heaven; bad ones for hell.

It can’t really be like that, though. We choose, on a moment-by-moment basis, whether we’re rewarded in paradise or condemned to hell. And heaven isn’t a reward for suffering or good acts any more than hell can be a punishment for living it up or for stiffing the church’s new building fund.

When humans came up with these concepts, maybe they were being metaphorical, abstract. Bad actions usually provide their own punishment, a kind of rebound effect, right here, right now. That’s hell. It’s not God that’s punishing us. It’s the operation of a natural law. Same with paradise. Some call it karma.

If God exists, then It exists outside of time. It’s not into the waiting game. Reality is present, not a future fantasy based on what you did in the past. God would never deprive you of heaven, or God would certainly be lacking in the quality of generosity and forgiveness we often ascribe to God. If God is right here, right now, why would It make you wait for anything?

And so, heaven and hell are each right here, right now. Each is a choice you make in each and every instant. Heaven is the decision to be happy, and you don’t have to wait for it unless you make yourself wait. If you have free will, then you can choose to be happy right now. Paradise is now. In fact, heaven is only now, never before, never after. Never in the past or in the future. You’re never really happy when you think about the past or project into the future. When you’re there and then, you’re only deluded.

Hell? It’s the decision to be angry or afraid. And like heaven, you choose it now. Usually, when I’m angry, I’m in the past, resentful about something that’s happened and that I can therefore never change. To be at peace is to give up hope of a better past. And when I’m afraid, I’m worrying about something that might happen. Why borrow trouble from tomorrow, which has yet to come?

You may ask how God could have let it all happen. Maybe God didn’t. Maybe we did. If we have free will, we can choose hell in place of heaven. Our minds are very powerful, and we can delude ourselves into believing in all sort of things that aren’t true or real. We can hypnotize ourselves into believing that we’re in hell even as we’re surrounded by paradise, kind of like being in bed having a nightmare.

As far as heaven being reward, it doesn’t work like that either. If there is a God, and God is this infinite beneficence, then why would It make you earn what It is. Joy would be your birthright. You couldn’t be deprived of it by God. That would make God rather cheap and petty. You could, however, deprive yourself of bliss by choosing to believe it’s not there. Then, you’d be back in hell again, which is simply the absence of joy, the denial of the present, of the presence of Love.

In the end, only the good news is true. That’s the best news. Happiness is present for all of us, at all times, in all places, with anyone and everyone we’re with.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just