Reading Dante's Inferno really opened my eyes to something. I don't think the Bible gives any justification about why you can't get out of Hell once you're in there. I think it implies that you're there because you were bad, and you can't get out because you only get one chance to not be bad.
But Dante's Inferno gave me another idea that I felt was interesting enough to post. It gave me the idea that people in Hell never want to stop sinning. That's why they can't get out. If they suddenly decided to repent even in the depths of Hell, God's all powerful love would free them in an instant. But they don't want that. They want to continue to sin MORE than they want to be freed from the tortures of Hell. That's how much they love sin. And their afterlife is nothing more than a continuation of their life on earth. They sinned on earth more and more as they aged, craved it more and more, so much that before they even left earth they were already too wrapped up in it to ever let it go. They don't even need an external source of pain like flames to punish them. Letting them continue in their own sin is punishment enough. That's very clear in many cases of the TV show Intervention.
One may ask "God, why'd you create them then? Why didn't you just let them never be born so they wouldn't have to go through so much torture?" But if God in his mercy asked the Hell-dweller, "Hey, you want me to reverse time so you're never born, or give you a second chance or something?" They'd say heck no. They don't want God's help. They want sin's help. They trust that their own sin gets them out of Hell. That's why they keep pursuing that path indefinitely. And they refuse to be persuaded otherwise. They are exactly where they want to be. They don't want paradise because there's no sin there.
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