Much of my writing focuses on Evangelical Christianity. Every so often, a well-meaning Christian will leave a comment that says, I am not like the Christians you write about.
Usually, the person belongs to a liberal or progressive Christian church. They are what I call kinder, gentler Christian.
My friend Zoe has more than a few times on this blog asked these kinder, gentler Christians…do you believe there is a hell and that people go there when they die?
Like a kid jacked up on Mountain Dew, the kinder, gentler Christian, runs, weaves, and bobs to avoid the question.
When pressed, with a low, barely audible voice, the kinder, gentler Christian says…yes.
And that is Zoe’s gotchya moment.
Disagree with the Evangelical’s fundamentalism and strident, uncompromising theological views all you want,but IF you believe there is a hell and people go there when they die, you are every bit as reprehensible as the Evangelical.
Dear Christian, if you believe there is a Hell then you believe:
- God created hell as a place to specifically punish people. (since God is the creator of all)
- God created a place to punish people with pain and suffering for all eternity. (fire, brimstone, worm dieth not)
- God created humans knowing most of them would be tortured by him in hell for eternity.
- Since no human body could withstand such torture,God fits every person in hell with a resurrected body suited for eternal torture.
- Since escape from hell comes only for those who believe in Jesus, those in hell are there because they believed the wrong things.
- Since most of the people in the world (past and present) were/are not Christian, this means that the majority of the people who have or will ever live on the earth will go to hell when they die.
Christians spend a lot of time preaching up the notion that God. Would you consider a person a loving person who tortured people and devised ways for their torture to last longer? Most of us would consider such a person a sociopath.
Personally, I don’t think most Christians really believe there is a hell. Preachers have to keep believing in hell or they will lose one heaven of a motivator for becoming a Christian.
Almost three years ago I wrote:
Life is short, hell is real……..or so they say.
Baptists are noted for being hellfire and brimstone preachers. In my Baptist preacher days I preached hundreds of sermons on hell. The altar was often lined with sinners fearing hell. I was a very, very good hell preacher.
Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was a hellfire and brimstone sermon.
People know that some day they will die. Most people fear what happens “after” death. It is the fear of the unknown that leads many people towards religion. Hellfire and brimstone preaching is good for the Church business. If people fear hell they are more likely to buy into the whole salvation/heaven scenario. You don’t want to go to hell do you? You don’t want to burn in the flames of hell forever do you?
Scare people right into heaven.
I have come to conclusion that most preachers really don’t believe in hell. Preach all they might about hell……….when it comes to putting their theology into practice they cower and refuse to proclaim their hell belief.
Let me tell you a story of a man named Bob who was raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist home. His parents were stern, devout, Christians.
At the age of 17 Bob attended a Revival meeting at the local Baptist Church. When the invitation was given Bob walked down the aisle, knelt at the altar, prayed the sinner’s prayer, and in that moment became a Christian.
A short time after this Bob had a falling out with his family and he moved out of his parent’s home. Bob never attended Church another day in his life apart from an occasional funeral or wedding.
Bob lived to be 83 years old.
From the time Bob was 17 until he died at age 83 Bob lived a life of sin and infamy.
Bob was a child abuser. Bob beat his wife. Bob was a drunk. No woman was safe from Bob’s leering eye and his groping hands.
Bob was a nasty, vulgar, kind of drunk.
Bob raped a woman while her 12 yr old son was home from school sick. He was never prosecuted because his victim was a mentally troubled family member.
Bob died recently.
Bob’s funeral was held at the local Baptist Church. His family attends the Church . The funeral was the first time that Bob had been to Church in over 60 years.
The preacher mentioned what an ornery man Bob was. And then the preacher spent the next 20 minutes preaching AT Bob’s friends. The funeral service was not about Bob at all, it was all about Jesus. Maybe that was better because it was probably hard to find much good to say about Bob.
Mercifully, the preacher brought his Jesus talk to a close with an invitation to trust Jesus as Savior.
Why? So they too could be in Heaven some day with Bob. The Bob, who at age 17 walked down the aisle, knelt at the altar, prayed the sinners prayer, and became a Christian.
Shocking?
Hardly.
I have attended dozens of funerals over the years. I have preached a good number of funeral sermons myself. In every case, the deceased was preached into heaven. No matter how the person lived, no matter what they did, heaven was their final destination.
Baptists are known for believing in what is commonly called “once saved, always saved.” While I no longer claim to be a professing Christian, I can’t get “unsaved”. Once saved, always saved. (also called eternal security, perseverance of the saints) God has me whether I want him or not.
So, according to the Baptist preacher Bob is safe in the arms of Jesus. Pity all the women he raped, abused and molested over the years. Pity all those he terrorized when he was drunk. The fire insurance Bob bought at age 17 covers everything he would ever do. He received immunity from prosecution for all his debauchery.
It matters not that he never attended Church the past 60 years. He never prayed. Never read the Bible. In fact he cursed God. He hated God. He lived as if there is no God.
But, at age 17…………………..well you get the gist of this by now.
It is time to honest preachers. Hell doesn’t really exist does it? For all your preaching about hellfire and brimstone when it comes to death everyone makes it in.
Anyone who EVER had a momentary religious experience is safe.
Preacher, if you object………….then why not tell the truth about Bob? If your God be true, if your Bible is true, then people like Bob are burning in hell. It seems you can quite easily tell of people going to heaven, why not the opposite?
BTW, the Bob in the story above? Real person.
Christians either need to own what the Bible says about hell or admit that the Bible is wrong on the subject.
I know some Christians have adopted annihilation as the “hell” for the unbeliever but, is this any better? (and personally I think such a view is untenable)
The only Christian form that satisfactorily deals with the notion of God torturing non-Christians for eternity is universalism. (and many Christians are embracing universalism because of their disgust with the classic Christian teaching on hell)
In closing…sounds like a sermon, eh?
Knowing what we now know about our world, about geology, where is hell?
And if hell is really all that Christians say it is, why aren’t Christians spending every waking moment evangelizing as many people as they can so they will not have to face such awful torment? (keep in mind most Christians never evangelize one person)
It has been so, so long since I darkened the door of any church that would emphasize eternal damnation. But I remember the fundamentalist doctrine that I learned was that Hell was not God’s choice, but man’s. Hell is separation from God–lost in your sins, facing the Perfect Artificer of all that is, Holy and Perfect, you will gladly prefer Hell. I think Bill Wald made a related point the other day when he said that the door to Hell opens from the inside. You and I both know this: there is ALWAYS a way to get God off the hook for any sorrow, pain or injustice in the universe. And here’s how: It is ALWAYS OUR fault. See that weed in your garden, Hey, that’s YOUR fault; tough labor, Hey, bear up, it’s all your fault! Death: that’s your fault; Hell, that’s just man’s godless choice for eternity, lost in sin. God is good and perfect, none of this is His idea of how to run the universe. That’s why He’s got a Plan C just for you! Accept it or perish in your own folly. Trying to make a rational argument against ANY part of Christianity? It’s like that old joke about the traveler who stops a farmer and asks, “How do I get to that city over there on the horizon?” And you know the answer: “I’m sorry son, you can’t get there from here.” This is why I find all of these celebrity “debates” so stupid, and I suspect why you hate “philosophy.” My guess is that what you hate is the sort of deductive sophism that the theologically-minded construct to appear to rationally defend a system that has no rational basis. Start with Anselm’s ontological argument, haha.
Of course what many Christians would say in response to your argument about Bob is that he was never truly saved to begin with, as the evidence of his salvation would be the holy spirit working within him to ensure he never committed those acts. One of my earliest memories is of a nightmare where i was chased by God and Jesus because I’d done something terribly wrong, and it was only decades later that I learned from my father that as a baby I was looked after by the kindly old Christian couple down the street, the same kindly old Christian couple that literally put the fear of god into me as a baby, and caused me to have nightmares. This no doubt led to me being saved when I was in my early twenties, as I was going through a particularly difficult period in my life. My salvation was real, I believed that shit, I truly did but a couple of years later, after I had come to the conclusion it was all a big con ( a result of actually reading the Bible, rather than being content to have people tell me what was in it, and witnessing the behaviour of my fellow Christians compared to non believers, they were no different at all, some good, some not so good)
I was visited my pastor who wanted to know why I no longer attended church, and I explained to him why I thought it was all a crock. He demanded to know if I’d ever been truly saved, I explained that my conversion was absolutely genuine, I honestly believed then but had lost my faith. He was insistent that my salvation was false, irrespective of anything I said, because that was the only way he could reconcile things.
You literally cannot argue against faith, it is by nature not based upon reason.
Exactly! As Peter Boghossian says, “Faith Based Belief Processes Are Unreliable”. Attempting to argue against faith using reason is generally a bit discouraging, but still worth the effort.
I came out of a Christian group that held that there were ‘carnal’ Christians who were saved, but not living life filled with the Holy Spirit. You had to come up with SOME explanation for all the people who walked away since there were an awful lot of them.
Nice posts Bruce. I hope your commenter Karen who expressed continuing Hell phobia is still reading. It is also good to remember that the “Hell” idea developed inter -testament in response to exposure to Persian and Greek concepts of same. And of course, that the writers of the gospels hide under anonymity, and that the church name designations of Mark, Matthew, et al are deceptions made for the sake of conferring legitimacy. It is upon such dishonest presentations that the gospel accounts rest.
Don’t let these liars for Jesus frighten you Karen!
Hi Bruce,
Hell as eternal punishment is surely a barbaric concept. Most Evangelicals accept it and even many nicer and kinder Liberal Christians. The problem for us Liberals is that the Jesus of the synoptic Gospels taught it. We love his teaching about peace and social justice but his teaching on hell is difficult to stomach.
As someone who is influenced by contemplation and meditation, I am finding the beautiful presence (real or imagined it does not matter to me) of a “God” of peace, tranquility, healing and harmony envigorating. This “experience” (which is individual and not scientifically replicable), for me, takes precedence over the bible which is an ancient book written by many different human authors and containing multiple views on almost very topic adressed.
So the fact that the Gospel authors picture Jesus as believing in Gehenna does mean that I think Gehenna is real. Jesus was a first century Jew of a theologically conservative type. who challenged the religious powers of his day . According to the authors of Matthew and Luke he was not omniscient, so how do we know that he got “Gehenna” right?
How can someone who is finite commit an infinite sin that requires an infinite punishment? Is this justice? Have those who believe in hell ever visited a burns unit lately? Does not compassion require us to relieve suffering and distress?
Any concept of God that sees God as vengeful and violent and one who distributes retributive justice rather than restorative justice is abominable. It is more abominable than some of the abominations referred to by the god of the OT.
Even some Evangelical theologians are having problems with hell (e.g. the author going under the name the Evangelical Universalist) but I do not expect Evangelicals to be moving too quickly in this direction, paticularly not the hoardes of internet Calvinistic Fundamentalists.
Shalom,
John Arthur
One of the things I am finding in today’s Evangelical church, as I watch from afar, is that they are more like self help centers today. The worship and preaching is designed to make the attendee feel good about themselves, and ignores the very topic of hell. I quit attending church several years ago. I decided that of God wants to condemn me to hell, then he is a worse parent that I ever could be.
Michael,
I think you are correct. It is no longer about truth or doctrine. It is all about making people “feel” better. Now, I am not against this necessarily. Some days I wish there was an atheist “feel good” center somewhere.
Great comments!