Musings of a "not so good" Christian

She lived in a large city in some developing country somewhere. She was 13 years old. She shared a small one room living space with 11 other girls ranging in age from 6 to 14. She got to eat a bowl of rice once every two days. She was always hungry, always lonely, always scared. For the first three years she cried herself to sleep, but over time she became numb  and fell asleep to escape the life she had been forced into living.

She used to have a family, a Hindu family, with a mother, father and three younger sibling. One day a man came to her home and offered to pay her parents money to take her and give her a job in the city. The offer was substantial enough to help her family buy food for several weeks so they packed her up and sent her with the man. He took her to the city and bought her some food, some clean clothing. When they got to the house she was given a bath and told to get dressed in one of the outfits.

She was taken to a room with a nothing but a mattress on the floor and told to sit down while the man went to get a “guest”. He came back with a middle age white man who sat on the bed next to her. Then the other man left. The white man began to stroke her hair, talking to her in a language she did not understand. She was very afraid…too afraid to move. The man put his hand under her skirt and touched her. After a few minutes he took off his clothes and then hers and raped her. It was so painful but when she started to cry he yelled at her in the strange language and slapped her in the face. She stopped crying .

She had experienced this scene over and over again, hundreds of times in the last few years and she thought that night would be no different. The middle-aged white man with the strange language she had begun to understand seemed angrier than most. He tore her dress taking it off her and shoved her down onto the floor. He was harsh, and aggressive. He put his hands around her neck as he raped her. She was scared and wanted to scream, but she couldn’t and she couldn’t breathe either. The last thing she felt as she began to lose consciousness and slip into the arms of angel of death was the pressure around her neck and the searing pain between her legs.

She awakes to a thick blackness, the smell of the rotted eggs she remembers from her family farm, and a burning the consumes her from within and without. The pain dwarfs anything she experienced in life. She cries out but her voice is absorbed into the blanket of silent, dark nothingness. The terror of the alone-ness only magnifies the physical pain that goes on and on and on. Hopelessness,  and despair swirl around her.

Forever…

She is in hell.

According to some Christians she is experiencing the justice of a righteousness god. And depending on the theological bent she either chose  hell or was assigned to hell before she was ever born.

I don’t understand eternal torment.