Impossible To Summarise

[deird_lj]

"So, in your opinion, am I going to hell?"

Such a simple little quesiton. So entirely impossible to respond to.
Every time someone asks me this, they seem to be expecting a yes-or-no answer. So, what should I say?

"No, I don't." -I can't say that, because it's absolutely untrue.
"Yes, I do." -Technically accurate, but the cultural context of our conversation means that my answer will inevitably be interpreted as follows:

"Yes, you ARE going to hell! Because you're nasty-wrong-bad, and you have no redeeming features, and God hates you, and I hate you too, and you might as well DIE right now, you good-for-nothing SCUM!"
-which is not what I mean at all.

The problem is, to actually give a real answer, I need maybe ten minutes of discussion - and you can rarely do that at a party.

Really, I need to develop some kind of time freezing device...

Comments

[taiba.livejournal.com]

Well, now that you're a qualified engineer... :-)

Honestly though, what a dumb question. The correct response would be "do YOU think you're going to hell?"

[thelusankya.livejournal.com]

Hey, I think you're the one missing out by me going to hell. After all, even if I get the whole eternity of pain thing, I'm still getting better than I expected. I wish I believed in an afterlife - any afterlife - because to tell you the truth, the idea of just finishing when I die isn't particularly nice. I can't just make myself believe in it either. There's a phrase I like to use for making oneself believe in something, and that is "pretending really hard", which is quite dishonest, really, and isn't true faith/belief/whatever you want to call it.