C.S Lewis once said that the essence of hell is separation – from God and from others. To be forever cut off from God’s presence …to be separated from other creatures, to be wholly and increasingly self-absorbed, makes that self smaller and smaller, and ultimately will result in the person ceasing to be a self. …The torture of separation and ceasing to exist are better seen not as punishments imposed by God, but as the natural and inevitable outcome of choices humans themselves make and attitudes they themselves develop. Some of us have seen this in people who, despite their one-time attractiveness, grew increasingly self-centred and unattractive as they aged, and whose self-imposed misery grew accordingly. To project that on into eternity is to get an idea of what damnation really means.