Or so I thought...
Well you know I just love school SO much that I just couldn't go 3 months without it, so I had to take a summer class. Yeah, something like that. Anyways...
So I'm taking a summer online class - World Literature. Might as well make the best of it, right?
This is a Discussion Board posting assignment after reading Dante's Inferno. The assignment was to place someone in whichever circle of Hell (as described by Dante) they deserved. It is a difficult thing to write of, so I decided to put a little spin on it. See what you think...
You may recognize the name Rahab. Well, you may know her better by her full name: Rahab the Prostitute. Rahab lived in the city of Jericho - a pagan, godless nation. Jericho was a city surrounded by walls, hence the song, “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came a-tumblin’ down.” Anyways, Rahab was known for her profession, be it wholesome or not.
Rahab lived just inside the wall of the city. Perhaps she was in a corner or just on a wall. Either way, her location undoubtedly helped her business. Her “clients” knew exactly where she was, and word-of-mouth advertisement was easy to describe her location.
Not only was she a pagan (which would have left her in Circle one, melancholy and hopeless), she was a panderer, a seducer. According to Dante, Rahab’s final resting place would be in Circle VIII, in Bolgia 1. Her punishment would have been, as Dante described it, “whipped by devils.”
The cool thing about Rahab’s story is that it doesn’t end with her eternal punishment. After a rendezvous with a couple of Israelites (the people who followed the one true God, Jehovah), her heart was changed. She also became a God-follower, thereby escaping the perils of Hell. Whether or not Dante’s description was accurate, she was prevented from eternal punishment. You can read Rahab’s story in the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapters 2 and 6.
(The Good News is: You don’t have to wind up in any part of Hell, either.)
Perhaps it will cause some to ponder the afterlife and their final destination. Perhaps it will open some discussion. Or maybe it will just fester in someone's heart. I'll never really know, but one thing I do know - we are called to bring hope to a lost world and if I can, I'm going to slip that hope into any corner I can find. Even in a discussion board based on a secular piece of literature.
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