Heaven and hell are here... Have you felt the soul crushing pain of losing a loved one?... Have you fallen in love with someone so much it hurts only to have to let them go forever? Have you had a family member move overseas? Have you lost function of a body part due to sickness? Had your kids reject you? The list goes on and on... Surely we've all felt the reality of hell or the consequence of sin/karma? For every action there is an opposing and equal reaction... that is the nature of the universe.
Q. You know what I notice from the list in the last paragraph?
A. Separation
When we're separated from those we love.. sometimes forever... it's hell! Someone we love is taken from us due to death or whatever.. and we're forced to live separated from them. Hell is separation and, Oh yeah.. hell exists here and now ladies and gentlemen and it sucks and it hurts... it hurts like hell.
Many heathen religions and 'blah' had their legends and folklores of subterranean punishment scapes brought on by angry gods... and many used the O.T. Sheol references to frame the idea around, but heck, even Moses never mentioned such an idea of eternal recompense. By the time Jesus started roaming the planet these hellish concepts were in full flight... but they didn't come from the Old Testament!! Yah, Ian is right.. Jesus borrowed them from the uninspired heathens. The Pagans et. al. held Hades to be a place of eternal torment after death... this was their idea!!
Many heathen religions and 'blah' had their legends and folklores of subterranean punishment scapes brought on by angry gods... and many used the O.T. Sheol references to frame the idea around, but heck, even Moses never mentioned such an idea of eternal recompense. By the time Jesus started roaming the planet these hellish concepts were in full flight... but they didn't come from the Old Testament!! Yah, Ian is right.. Jesus borrowed them from the uninspired heathens. The Pagans et. al. held Hades to be a place of eternal torment after death... this was their idea!!
Then came the whacky Christians who loved to muddy their own waters with doses of heathen ideas. Artists and poets alike revelled in the romanticised images of the writhing damned (yes these are my own words - lol). The idea caught on like wildfire (pun fully intended) and many christians have been vexed and confused ever since.
Hell, what a stupid stupid concept. If it's true and we get sent there... well, at least we'll have our memories of better times to remember, unless they get wiped, but what would be the good of that? There'd be nothing to feel sorry and tormented over. And what the fuck would punishment be good for if nothing was to be learnt from it? So no one dies... eveyone gets eternal life... it just happens to be better for some than others. For most Christians in their point of view, even good ol' Steve Irwin will be tormented for years for wasting so much time looking after the environment rather than reading the word and preaching the good news.
Yes, he loves you so so so so much.. more than one could love a son. Heh, but they say there's a time coming soon when he'll judge his children (and what? cast them into death?). Heck, I know many mortal parents who have real unconditional love for their children, so much that they'd be merciful even if rejected by them. Your God should be so loving.
The Hell believers say... "the tme comes when you find that the time of mercy that is available to you has passed", but the Bible says... "his mercy never comes to an end. They are new every morning." Lamentations 3:22
Confusing isn't it! Come on, does the Lord's mercy end or not?
God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god. -Robert Ingersoll
An idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me because, when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called "God," as totally mad. I mean, guys, compare that "God" with the worst monsters you can think of -- Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-masochistic fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously. Such a deranged Mind could not create a mud hut, much less the exquisitely mathematical universe around us. - Robert Anton Wilson
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