Assalamualaikum,
The other day I was about to watch Hell's Kitchen with my parents. We didn't make it through the opening 5mins because my mum didn't like all the swearing. Anyway, my parents then started talking about how we are so used to referencing "hell" that it seems like we're not afraid of it anymore, "it" being hell.
It's an observation I think not many might have noticed. We say so many things referencing the unseen such as heaven, hell, angels and demons/devils, that we sometimes forget that those things are actually beyond our realm of understanding. By constantly referencing them, we are in danger of forgetting how grand they are in magnitude.
For example, we are used to people comparing beautiful scenery with heaven, often saying things like "heaven on Earth". When in fact, heaven is nothing like Earth. "Hot as hell"; no way can we compare how hot it is here to how hot it is in hell. The beauty we see in females on Earth is nothing compared to that of the beauty of the angels, similarly as evil as some people may be, none are more evil than syaitan himself.
These kinds of comparisons are made when we want to emphasise the magnitude of something. And by comparing to ultimate examples, such as heaven for beauty or pleasure, hell for torture or heat, devils for evil and angels for kindness, we are emphasising how high in magnitude something is. That's fine as long as we remember that despite these comparisons, the ultimate good (heaven and angels) and the ultimate bad (hell and the devil) are nothing like we experience on Earth.
The danger is that we are so use to referencing heaven and hell in our daily lives, that we no longer strive to get into heaven, and we are no longer afraid of going to hell.
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