The confusion comes from taking the image as a literal place when you're trying to understand it. Humans don't normally think past the noses on their faces (to quote mary poppins).
Hell is extremely effective at creating a stable society NOW versus having people learn from mistakes in the future. It's the ultimate deterrent to bad behavior in irrational individuals who's sense of self preservation only involves themselves and not those around them as well.
I do not advocate disregarding it as a sociological tool, but it only works if you are dominated by fear/desire and not rationality (the ability to think past your own nose). So having a discussion like this indicates that you no longer need be bound by the notion of hell. For some people it is VERY real, and it plays an important role. Be good in short time now = reward forever when dead. Choice seems simple.
The analysis of Heaven and Hell shouldn't be thought of as temporal things in the future, but as current states of mind.
There's an old chinese proverb where all of the people in the world are eating at a table. The ones in hell have chopsticks that are too long to get the food from the plate to the mouth (they can't bend it such that it gets back to their mouth). In heaven, you find that people are sitting at the same table and in the same predicament but they feed the person across from them.
There's also the quote from the recently uncovered gospel according to thomas (i paraphrase):
Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven will not come to the earth with people shouting 'it is there or here.' The kingdom of heaven is, now, laid out upon the earth and men do not see it."
This is the power of religious imagery. Don't cast interpretation of symbols into somewhere outside of you at some other time. Interpret them in terms of what is inside you here and now. We express ourselves in myths. The constellations get named after hunters and majestic animals because these are what were important to the minds of the people of the time.
Gods and heaven and hell are an expression of the human psyche. That's the disconnect you're having with your girlfriend. When the idea is read as if it's a newspaper report, it doesn't make sense. When it's read as poetry it becomes illuminating.
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Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
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