The difference is that in Indian religions, one always gets more chances. In Christianity and Islam it is an eternity in hell.
Actually that's a common misunderstanding (albeit for understandable reasons), but one that I think is quite wrong. It's too simplistic (although there are many, I know, who would like to reduce everything to me-right::you-wrong).
I would say that eternal damnation is a choice open to us, rather than a judgement cast upon us.
The Catechism teaches:
"At the end of the parable of the lost sheep Jesus recalled that God’s love excludes no one: “So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” He affirms that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”; this last term is not restrictive, but contrasts the whole of humanity with the unique person of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us. The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: “There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.” — (CCC, 605)
A dogmatic theologian offered:
"If in terms of theology death is a meeting of a man with God ... it would be surprising if in the moment of dying the chances of taking position never were given, even contrary to the outward look. (...) One cannot apply to experience as counter-argument, because (...) what happens then in the interior and behind the physiological processes is only known by someone who experiences dying itself, and this unto its very end. We may assume that in the dissolving process of the earthly union of body and soul and with the progressing breakaway from earthly entanglements, a special awakeness accrues to man (...) in which he can say yea or nay to God" (Michael Schmaus, Der Glaube der Kirche ("The Faith of the Church") VI/II p. 84.)
The list of commentaries to refute the implications of your notion are many. Notably Julian of Norwich, who had such a profound impact on T.S. Eliot that he recorded her words in the last of his Four Quartets, Little Gidding:
"Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching."
So I would ask again that people please be not so quick as to jump to judgements or pronouncing their own notions as to what is or is not dogma.
St Paul said "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).
One might note that the verb translated as 'I am sure' is in the Greek,
pepeismai, which might also be translated as 'I am persuaded'.
Lastly I would just reiterate that perhaps the only thing that can separate us from the love of God is ourselves. We are free, even at the last, to deny Him if we so choose.
But the original Bible did not teach of an eternal hell, so the original Bible was correct.
Which original Bible is that?
