Greetings...

I made this post in recent response to DaBear's thread.  I wanted to repost it since I think its the flip side view of this post and there isn't much in the way of movement on that thread anymore (I think).

 I believe the original post was actually right on in some ways (and I am a Christian).  Hell is a difficult concept to defend as a Christian.  As a literal Christian, it may be impossible to reasonably defend against this attack.
 However, I think you can defend the doctrine of hell if we keep in mind that God attributes tremendous value to free will.  In fact, God values free will over temporary suffering.  In other words, we live with people who mistreat us, and we will mistreat them, in an abuse of our free will.  God sees our suffering, does not want us to suffer but allows it to happen as a natural consequence of free will.  In succinct terms; moral evil exists as a necessary requirement of free will; natural evil exists as a necessary requirement of a rational, orderly universe that is necessary for rational, ethical decisions to work out in consequential form.  If I shoot someone and some of the time a hole magically opens up to prevent them from dying, and sometimes that doesn't happen, how could we call that a logical universe?  How could the universe have any ethics if consequences of actions sometimes existed and sometimes didn't?
 Keeping this in mind (how much God values free will), plus adding ideas from near death experiences and people who have literally died, come back and told there story, there are some similarities and common themes.  One is a life review, where people are made aware of how every action and word they have spoken (maybe every thought and attitude as well) have fully affected others throughout their lifetimes.  Often people are overwhelmed when put through a life review.  Not everyone goes through a life review.  I believe (as mentioned I believe by Swedenborg) that often people will go through a life review if there serves some higher purpose.  If someone is totally rejecting of love and respect of others (including God) then they may not have a life review because it would just be a harmful experience of the person without a chance for bringing about redemption.  On the other hand, I suppose God might want them to go through a life review even if they are completely selfish so that they understand what is going on.
 In any case, I thought it was fascinating that during his life review Howard Storm was being given incredible love by Jesus, who had saved him from hell, and at some point he asks to be put back into hell.  Howard is fully aware of how many problems he has caused in his lifetime, the emotional (and physical?) pain he has caused others.  He knows he is in the presence of holy beings who in contrast have chosen to love and treat others with respect, even others who do not deserve such love and respect (PUL anyone?).  Howard also knows that in this mode of existence he cannot hide anything.  Given all of this, despite the way Jesus has treated him, he asks Jesus to put him back.  In other words, he chooses hell because he knows that he is not worthy of heaven.
 Given the fact that God has such high respect for our choices and free will, I think this serves as an example of how someone could be totally loved by Jesus, who wants to save us all from our own terrible choices, and still ends up in hell.
 The second point I wanted to address is that I believe that the gates of heaven are always open.  I think, given the nature of free will on earth and the attitude of God towards people while they are alive, that salvation from their selfish nature can happen on the other side of the grave, although it is more difficult and unlikely that this may happen.  There are some oblique references to redemption beyond the grave.  For instance, it is said that Jesus traveled to hell for the three days between his death and resurrection to preach the gospel.  This sounds very much like a retrieval scenario to me.  Bruce's retreival work also supports this idea.  Lastly, I think logically it makes sense that God would not so radically change his view, from being totally loving and open to someone who wanted to change while alive, to being totally closed to someone who is now dead.  The scenario (of no chance of salvation beyond the grave) becomes even more ridiculous when its considered how children can die.  Additionally, an analogy can be made to abortion - it seems as ridiculous to say that God will not allow redemption beyond the grave because the person is now dead, as when someone argues that a fetus is a baby only once it is born.  Both examples show a radical change of attitude based on the location or state of the being (alive vs. dead).
 Lastly, I want to also point out that if there is not some sort of judgement, or review, or analysis of one's life at the end of things, then life for many people is a sick joke.  When we talk about crushing poverty, disease, capitalism's exploitation of the poor, environmental degredation, injustice... if there is no accounting for all of this, life is a sick joke.

According to Hell-Christianity (which you appear to be defending)
it is not murder, theft, or gouging out that little girl's eyeballs before
you porked her bloody sockets and fed her to your pet wolverine
piece by piece that's going to put you in "Hell." No sirree! In fact,
if you utter a certain magic spell ("the sinner's prayer") before you
check out, you get a free ride to "Heaven!"
The problem with the doctrine of "Hell" is, that it is a punishment for
a THOUGHT CRIME (unbelief/lack of "faith") and NOT for anything
we would regard as a serious breach of commonly accepted morality.
"God" is thusly made out to be like an oriental despot (as Bertrand
Russell liked to say.)
People in civilized societies, generally view punishment for "thought
crimes" to be cruel and unusual punishment, and generally barbaric.
And guess what? Hell-Christians prove them RIGHT every time they
try to defend the doctrine of "Hell." They come across sounding frankly evil. And you know what? They ARE evil. Just like the deity they envision, is evil.
For who but a fundamentally evil person (or deity) could contemplate having their pleasure "enhanced" by watching the "lost" writhing in eternal agony (as Augustine claimed the "saved" would do in Heaven?) That is SADISM, pratekya. And if SADISM is not EVIL...
THEN WHAT THE F**K IS?????????????????????????????????

Have a nice day,

B-man

B-man/Chumley -
   It seems like you are addressing three different points.
  1.  God is not interested in retribution or a setting of things right for actual crimes or sins, but only for 'thought crime'.  I would totally disagree, based on many references in the bible where Jesus often calls people to repentence for poor behavior.
  2.  One can utter a magical 'sinner's prayer' and its effectively a 'get out of jail free card (my Monopoly allusion)'.  I concede this is harder to explain away.  In other words, I'm saying its your strongest point.
  So how are people forgiven for things like raping and killing small children?  The key is that God was incarnated into a human form and died so that sins could be forgiven; in essence the sins committed were ultimately against both God and the victim.  God can forgive us our sins because the justice for our sins were taken out on Jesus.  And we are to forgive others (even those who rape and kill others) if the victimizers truly ask for forgiveness because we are given grace for our own sins.  For instance the mother of a raped and killed child hopefully will work through her grief and pain over years enough to forgive the person who has done this; assuming the victimizer truly learns what pain the mother has gone through and asks for forgiveness in a sincere way.  The mother hopefully will reach a level where she will see common humananity between the victimizer and herself, and through thinking of her own shortcomings will be able to relate to the victimizer's need for forgiveness just as she needs forgiveness for the things that she has done.  The mother can choose to not offer forgiveness to the victimizer, however she will not receive forgiveness for what she has done.  The victimizer will have to deal with the consequences of what he has done to the child and all of the child's loved ones.  Most victimizers will choose to flee from God in the afterlife; they would rather enter the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth then be in the presence of holy beings that contrast their own selfiss actions.
  In the bible, Jesus talks about repenting and believing.   That means turning away from problems of the past and starting anew.  Not just saying a formulaic prayer.  Secondly the way the bible talks about believing - and I'm no Greek scholar here - but the intention is more of an ongoing path of faithfulness and a changing of one's belief system that works it way out to a changing of one's outward actions as a result.  Lastly on this second point, there are instances that firmly stress the actions of a person over their belief system as a path to salvation.  The book of James says 'so you have faith?  Good - but even the demons believe - and shudder'.  In other words, it is not enough to believe in God.  The only parable that clearly deals with judgement is the sheep and the goats, and the only delineation between the sheep and the goats are based entirely on what they did or didn't do.  Belief, in our post-Christian culture, has lost its deeper meaning and to many these days just means a passive intellectual curiosity or possibility; not as much as something that one bases his or her whole life on.
  3.  'Thought crime' punishment is barbaric, as is the thought crime punishment of hell.
It is true that Jesus took the 10 commandments as well as other ethical laws and expanded them to include our thoughts and intentions.  In that way he actually deepened these ethical laws to get at intent.  In other words, its not ok to murder someone, but Jesus took it a step further and called murderous rage unacceptable and also a terrible state.  Remember, in the afterlife, all of our intentions will be incredibly clear, and there will be no hiding of underlying character as there is now in society.  Christians are guilty of this; maybe even more so then the average non Christian.  Jesus was looking for authentic followers, not just people who appeared to develop positive traits but who authentically worked at becoming sincerely good in action and intention.  As for hell being characterized as a thought crime; ususally the view in Christian circles is once again that our actions and words usually stem from our inner life / mentality / belief system.  So yes hell is an end result of one's thought life; but its also the result of one's actions and words.  And in fact the only parable that describes the judgement is based on actions that people have taken, not what they say openly.  Its a good story - I highly recommend it btw.

I have given reasons why the Christian view of hell is still justified.  Now I want you to justify something for me.  How would a girl who is raped and killed get justice in your view?  How would her mother get justice?  I think that honestly in your view (which I'm a little unclear about) there is no real justice in the universe.  If you are born with a congenital birth defect that makes you hideously ugly, and have a horrible, poor, hardscabble existence, full of suffering, there is no rhyme, reason or meaning behind it; it is just suffering with absolutely no point.  The suffering of all the poor people in the world who have had terrible lives just becomes a sick joke if there is no way to some how make an assessment and a resetting of the situation with some form of justice.  Your worldview, I think, is full of misery and suffering (if you allow yourself to see the terrible suffering of most of the world), with absolutely no light of hope of anything positive.  I can understand why someone would prefer anihilation in this worldview.  Or prove me wrong.

Jeff

My understanding is that eternal damnation is one of the great lies, as there is nothing about 'eternal' damnation in the original biblical texts, just hell for a period of time or 'aeon'. This was a deliberate mistranslation made around the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 AD where overseen by Roman Emperor Constantine, some key 'alterations' were made to the Bible. I'm just writing off hand without the reference in front of me but I read and hear about this point repeatedly from afterlife researchers, notably my countryman Victor Zammit.

I'm not saying that the Bible is all nonsense just that I think the Bible that exists now is very different from what it was intended to be.

Also just like life is not static neither is the afterlife and I truly believe that noone is punishing you in the afterlife. It is simply a matter of your vibrations/level of spirituality that will determine where you will go upon crossing over. I conceptualise god as being not a single entity that strikes you down when you something wrong but just the loving all encompassing form that we are all a part of, the infinite consciousness.

If a fire and brimstone hell existed at all it would surely ownly exist for those whose vibrations were low and they conceived of hell in that way because they firmly believed and expected hell to be like that. If people like Bruce are correct then it would simply be another BST, but you would be able to leave - just seek help!.

Regardless of the features of 'hell' or dark realms evidence suggests they do exist atleast because there are enough souls to create this 'reality' together. I firmly believe they are not forever but could be a long long time if information translated from NDE's, chanelling and mediumship is correct.

I do agree there should be some accountability otherwise its a sick joke. The guy who did the Virginia Tech Shooting the other day, from what I have read about murder suicides he will have to see things through the eyes of his victims and feel all the pain he's caused. This could feel like hundreds or thousands of years, which would seem like an eternity I guess but the key is it would end.
While I like the idea that I hear from some in New Age circles that we are not here to learn lessons but maybe just to experience, this argument is just a matter of perspective. Because afterall experience encompasses absolutely everything, so it would also include suffering and this would happen on earth and in dark realms. In fact some people believe that earth is a dark realm itself, I mean if you were starving to death or getting tortured in a prison camp each day then a 'dark realm' or a 'hell' couldn't be much worse could it?

Never Say Die

Hell, as that place of suffering and damnation, stems from a belief that becomes real through the energy we give it by our feelings of being anything less than holy or divine, directly related to guilt, shame, anger, pain, separation, sadness, blame, martyrdom, need for punishment, victimhood, fear. Ironically, the fear of being in what people believe to be hell may actually create that kind of hell, itself.

In the case of hell, the only way these energies can be nourished is by having more of the same energy filling it up, adding more fuel to the fire. In order to stay alive it seeks out its food in many ways. Finding a weakness, such as addiction or anger within a person to attach itself to is one way: Attaching to the little bit of belief in that individual it can use for its own survival.


This is a great paragraph about hell that I got from a wonderful site..

Is there a hell? Not really - but what comes close is a dimension (and all dimensions have infinite levels and blend, or overlap into other dimensions) of fear, pain, anger - where there are the GREATEST ILLUSIONS OF SEPARATION FROM THE SOURCE. This is a place that gathers those of like mindedness (as all dimensions are wont to do), and builds on itself and gains power to continue this swirling energy of pain, fear, separation, anger. It's a very hard place for one to move out of because one is limited in what they see and think - they forget the rest (like love) - and moving out often requires assistance..

As you can see hell is created by the subconscious mind.. Out of fear, guilt, self pity, anger, seperation, and feeling anything less than divine.. When really we all are God!

peacccccccce

Read up on Michael Newton's Journey of Souls, and Destiny of Souls.. In his study he found out there was no hell, devil, and demons..

dave_a_mbs wrote on Apr 21^st, 2007 at 5:51pm:

Alright, I see what you mean.. Thanks for the info..

peace