the day after hell day

Hell is real. Absolutely. However not many people will qualify for hell. It's reserved for a very special few.

The devil isn't red.

I'm on record. And yes, I do have an open mind.

Unfortunately, the problem with "qualifying" for hell is that everyone except God qualifies and really, once you qualify for hell, you don't qualify anywhere else.

You sort of have to depend on God to assign heavenly qualifications to you to get out of the fire.

As for your second question, the Devil is red because of the camoflage paint he wears.

Hell (which is most certainly real) is the eternal separation from the presence of God. In Hell, a person's soul will endure suffering for eternity. Every person qualifies for Hell. The only way to Heaven (spending eternity with God, paradise, the opposite of Hell) is through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The devil is portrayed as red because society has generated a (misleading) cartoonish representation in which satan is red, has horns and a tail, carries a pitchfork, etc.

Hell -- or eternal separtation from God -- is very real. Maybe not a real place -- but a real situation.

Hell is only necessary because we make it necessary. God created us for a relationships with Him and others -- but we continually refuse to be a part of the relationships we were created for. This refusal is what we call sin. The consequences of our sin is separation from God -- or hell.

The problem is that we can not correct the problem. We can not live in the relationships God has created us for -- and therefore can not escape hell. Only Jesus can do that for us. But if we respond to Jesus with faith we can be forgiven for our sins.

As to why the devil is red -- I agree with Jim -- that is a misleading cartoonish caricature that many times creates a problem because it seems to trivialise a serious issue!

"Hell is other people." - Jean-Paul Sartre.

I always smile at that line from Sartre, and when I'm feeling my most misanthropic I sometimes tend to agree.

As I see it, "hell" as interpreted in traditional Christianity is an eternal separation from God. And if we truly are free moral agents, then we do have the ability to choose eternal separation from God, right? So how could hell not exist if we have true freedom of choice?

AC

P.S. - At Duke, the devils are blue.