Why is hell such a major issue for christians? reposted since not a single christian answered?

You are correct but do you know why you are correct? The concept of "hell" was never the intention of God. Replace every instance of "hell" with "sheol" when reading scripture. It's a slightly complicated answer because the subject is so whack! I'm a Bible believing Christian that can fully proclaim that Jesus Christ is my God and my Savior and yet...if I died tomorrow, I will go to hell. Yep. Here is why. Hell is a concept that didn't arise until around the 11th century and was derived from the name of a Norse pagan goddess/ruler/queen/overseer of a mystical abode of the dead. As cultures migrated and traversed the earth terminology was adopted and definitions changed but during this period...folks went there when they died but it was not a place of torture at all. Then around the 14th century the Roman Catholic Church adopted this term "hell" as a replacement word for the Hebraic "sheol" which means grave/death or more literally.."to be covered over". Death in the Bible is called "a sleep" repeatedly. The dead know nothing, feel nothing and are nothing except remembered in the mind of God. He is the only immortal Spirit. We don't each of us have our own lil spirit that discorporates (thank you Steven King) from our bodies and flits about from place to place. No one goes to a hell or a heaven. Heaven is all that blue/black spacious area above your head and there are three of them. The atmosphere around the earth, space which contains all manner of space object and then the third heaven which is way, way, way out there and that is where the heavenly "beings" hang out...according to scripture. So. When you die you are dead. I'm dead. Pretty much everybuddy save a coupla folks who have surpassed that phase and of course anyone who has been resurrected again just a few folks including Jesus the first born of the resurrection. Hell, the term, is also used to describe the end state of the earth but it replaces the other Hebraic term Gehenna which was a literal location...a burn dump right outside Jerusalem…where trash, rubbish, carcasses of animals and even folks to poor to afford a proper burial were tossed. It was perpetually burning and Jesus used this place allegorically to describe the "lake of fire" which means that the earth and all its contents not belonging to God will be consumed, destroyed, annihilated in that scourge. There is no afterlife...there is only eternal life or eternal death. Jesus said "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him will not PERISH but have everlasting life". The Bible even predicts in scripture that men will fabricate a falsehood covenant with "death" and teach it but they won't escape the truth. If you belong to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...Ya'hovah, God of the Bible then you are redeemed and will be born again on new earth, under a new heaven where there will be no death, no suffering, pain, loss, aging, etc...just life. If not then you will experience the second death once and eternally and you will be gone and forgotten. That is where the weeping and gnashing of teeth comes in. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that any one person will suffer for an eternity in a lake of burning sulfur and brimstone being poked at by devils with pitchforks while their loved ones from heaven look on. Life is life and it is through Him, by Him and for Him that we live, move and have our being...He can't abide with us on this earth and limited our years to 120. Why would He even before judgment day immediately dispensate someone to either a heaven or a hell only to resurrect them on that last day, judge them and then send them back? We are flesh and blood beings. Fire would consume us immediately and will. We cannot live in a "heaven"...not without some serious Buzz Lightyear style equipment. All of this is in scripture. I've read it and put it together because the other traditional teaching made no sense to me. Why would a loving creator God torture folks for eternity for a finite life of transgression on this earth. The answer? He does not and will not. Choose life. Love in Christ, ~J~