Actually it's about 50 miles west. And when a group of drunk fraternity boys arrived there to liberate the signs, we found they were securely arc welded on, LOL.
Posted on 10/03/2012 10:14:57 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The new documentary Hellbound? has reignited discussion about the perennial topic of hell as well as revealed some very bizarre perspectives.
Kevin Miller, the film’s director, who identifies as a Christian, stated in an interview that, regarding the traditional view of hell as a place of fiery torment, “I don’t see anything in the Bible that would lead me to believe that such a place exists.” Instead, according to Miller, when Jesus talked about hell, he was talking about the here and now.
Really? Jesus didn’t warn about a place of judgment to come? And Director Miller gets his denial of hell from the Bible? Perhaps he is reading into the Scriptures what he would like them to say? Warnings like this from Jesus, spoken with rhetorical urgency, are hard to dismiss: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:29)
Frank Schaeffer, son of the late and revered evangelical leader, philosopher Francis Schaeffer, appeared in the movie and is more aggressive in his dismissal of hell. He writes in his column in the Huffington Post, “People ‘defending’ God have completely screwed up America and our politics. And their version of ‘God’ f----d up the first half of my life too.”
He claims that, “Hell is irrelevant because of course there isn’t one. The movie is important though because it exposes a real question: how can we survive the God-nuts who take this stuff seriously? Hellbound? is our chance to get to know the enemies of what’s left of our crumbling ‘civilization.’”
So, those who believe in a place of future judgment are “the enemies of what’s left of our crumbling ‘civilization,’” by which he explicitly means America.
Schaeffer continues, “Talking about hell in and of itself is a waste of time because if there is a ‘God’ no one knows anything about him/her or it and they never will, let alone about what he/she or it will ‘do’ about the ‘lost.’ But there are people, lots of them, who think hell is real because it fits their kill-your-neighbor-if-he-looks-at-you-funny vision of ‘life.’”
Well, I just learned something new: If I believe that God will bring about justice in the world to come and settle wrongs at the time of resurrection, I believe this because it fits my “kill-my-neighbor-if-he-looks-at-my-funny vision of ‘life.’” Seriously?
But there’s more. For Schaeffer, America’s hawkish tendencies and aggressive foreign policy directly relate to our fundamentalist reading of the Bible: “Thank you St. John (or whomever) loon was the author of the ‘book’/acid-trip of Revelation, for giving us a deluded roadmap so that the Americans who can’t find France on a map can get their foreign ‘policy’ marching orders direct from a ‘prophet’ huddling in a cave alone with his odd brain 2000 years ago.”
Aside from the fact that it is sad to see someone like Frank Schaffer, who once held to evangelical Christian beliefs, then Greek Orthodox beliefs, turn into such a Bible mocker, it is more than a stretch – shall we call it a leap of incredulity? – to claim that America fought (or is fighting) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, because of a literal belief in hell and the Scriptures.
Interestingly, a study “appearing in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, found that criminal activity is lower in societies where people’s religious beliefs contain a strong punitive component than in places where religious beliefs are more benevolent. A country where many more people believe in heaven than in hell, for example, is likely to have a much higher crime rate than one where these beliefs are about equal. The finding surfaced from a comprehensive analysis of 26 years of data involving 143,197 people in 67 countries.”
According to Azim F. Shariff, professor of psychology and director of the Culture and Morality Lab at the University of Oregon, “The key finding is that, controlling for each other, a nation’s rate of belief in hell predicts lower crime rates, but the nation’s rate of belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates, and these are strong effects. . . . The finding is consistent with controlled research we’ve done in the lab, but here shows a powerful ‘real world’ effect on something that really affects people -- crime.”
Here in America, belief in hell remains prevalent, and a 2003 poll by George Barna indicated that 71% of the population “said that there is such a thing as Hell.” At the same time, “just one-half of 1% expect to go to Hell upon their death.” So, hell is real, but none of us are going there!
Putting aside our religious differences, perhaps the questions we need to ask ourselves are these: 1) Are there lasting consequences to our actions? 2) Will there be an ultimate judgment and final justice? 3) If so, how should we live today?
_____________________________
Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire, and his latest book is The Real Kosher Jesus.
Hell is the Detroit of the afterlife.
I ain’t hell bound (it’s two words, I think), I’m already there!
Actually it's about 50 miles west. And when a group of drunk fraternity boys arrived there to liberate the signs, we found they were securely arc welded on, LOL.
I knew, that, Dr Godwin or not, “Hitler” would come up.
Not Pol Pot, not Leon Trotsky, not Walter Ulbricht,
not Saint Patrice Lumuba, but the cliched monster Hitler.
Always Hitler! You’d think we worship him.
The argument for not doing just whatever you want and can get away with is that it is irrational. If you want to live the life proper to a human being then you don’t follow every whim and irrational goal that pops into your head or gives you momentary pleasure. You have to use reason to guide your actions and think long term. A rational person doesn’t need to be threatened with hell and damnation to do the right thing. Of course rationality is a choice and many do choose to be irrational. Religion in my opinion is one of the root causes of this because it preaches that man is evil by nature and his mind in not capable of a rational morality. The reason there is so much evil in the world is that people are not taught to think but to “feel” and no one can deny that subjectivism in all its forms is the ruling philosophy today.
Sorry, no.
You can talk to people who have done some of the worst atrocities in history and they will tell you that they thought they were doing “good”. Human rationality is subjective.
Walter Ulbricht
Theres a name we haven’t heard in a while. I thought those
glasses he wore made him look sinister x 2.
Retired comfortably in South America, if i remember correctly.
The parable of the ‘rich’ man, who became ‘rich’ with lying, cheating, and any and all other nefarious methodologies waits across the gulf from Lazarus in Abraham's bosom.
That was his successor the late Erich Honecker..
Ulbricht joke:
In 1939, a man is arrested in Berlin for shouting “Hitler is a fool”. He is sentenced to one year in prison. In 1949, the same man is arrested for shouting “Ulbricht is a fool”. He is sentenced to ten years. He says: “Under Hitler, I only got one year. It’s not fair.” The Stasi officer answers: “Well, you only got one year for insulting Ulbricht. The other nine are for talking about a state secret in public.”
Good one. Sorry about the misinformation. Ulbricht croaked much earlier.
An interesting take on things is found in the Jewish Kabbalah, and their take on the creation myth (in the good sense of the word.)
They believe that God created the universe to discover if there was anything “not God”. To do so, God contracted from a vast, empty space, into which He injected a single particle, which was to endlessly replicate itself, becoming the physical universe. Once completed, the universe would reflect the image of God like a mirror, so God could see if there was anything “not God”. Having done so, the universe would cease to exist and again become part of God.
But inherent in this idea is that the universe exists within this contraction, this “absence of God”, so adding this to what I posted before would make physical reality, the universe, Hell. But this Hell is still inside the spiritual realm of God, and God may reach inside it to touch man, and man may beckon God to do so.
If man does not, he is in Hell. And if man beckons God, and God responds, then only man’s physicality is trapped in Hell. His spirit and soul may transcend the limitations of the flesh.
Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.
This so short but deep thoughts.
no one ever throws the milkman or local grocer into that group either
My personal belief about hell, is that if you go to hell you get to be your own god.
In your little hell, you’re the god of your own kingdom. Whatever you knew on earth, are the limits of all the knowledge exists in your kingdom. Anything you found pleasure in on earth, are the limits of the possible pleasure that can exist in your kingdom. You also carry with you any thing that ever caused you pain.
Because you saw yourself as your own god, God gives you exactly what you want, the place where you can be your own god. Everyday is the same, everyday your pleasures are the same, everyday your pain is the same.
You can create a sunset in your kingdom, but there’s no one to turn to and say “what a beautiful sunset”. You may have a beautiful wife, but she herself has decided whether her heaven is with the God of all, or, if she has decided to be her own goddess, God grants her wish, she has her own little kingdom all on her own. Two “gods” can’t share a reality and still be gods, one would have to give in, and you can’t change a vote you already cast for all of the eternity. And sooner or later, being alone with yourself and the limitations of yourself, becomes Hell.
Hell was really never a punishment. It’s simply ask, and you shall receive. Once the person in “hell” recognizes that, there is a judgement, but it is they who judge themselves, now knowing that they have cut themselves off, and that this was an eternal decision, the same power that they had as a “god” to experience pleasure in their little kingdom, through conviction no longer produces pleasure, but pain... being a “god”, the power to create the kingdom you wish, through conviction of your own guilt, produces the hell you fear. And then, the flames begin.
If God judges, we really have nothing to fear, if we know we have our advocate in Jesus Christ. Rather, be fearful of becoming your own god, and being your own judge, because all the mercy and love that we know is what God gave us, and without God we will have no mercy on ourselves.
Just me, my humble O.
Hell is other people - Sartre.
RE: Hell is other people - Sartre.
In which case, the Christian heaven would be hell to Sartre.
“and some to shame [and] everlasting contempt.”
I read a book/article that said EVERYONE would be in the presence of God. It was very serious, and lots of verses, etc. He talked about how God is omnipresent, etc. But that those who do not believe, etc. would not like being in the presence of God. (See the Old Test. on looking at God and being destroyed, consumed or whatever).
With God’s energy being the everlasting fire, etc. Interesting take on it. If Hell for a Christian is separation from God, then Hell for a non-Christian would be having to spend eternity with God. And not being forgiven, having all of those old wounds, past sins, etc. exposed to yourself and gnawing at you every minute forever and ever. “everlasting shame and contempt”.
The descriptions of hell that I read, here and elsewhere, are always descriptions of life here in paradise, that only the luckiest among us have been able to avoid. Maybe it is they who write these descriptions, while others live them.
On the other hand heaven sounds, can’t avoid saying, dull and boring, and unspecific. What really happens there? What kind of hierarchy is there. If some human requests are granted and verifiable miracles happen on earth (as Catholics believe, and the Church experts verify or not), then how are decisions made up there what requests to grant what to reject, and what powers decide these things. I am interested in very practical details not some fairy tales.
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