The Nature of Hell

[wax]

BWM- There are others who do not believe for one single moment that a loving father would condemn any of his children to an eternity of pain and suffering for anything they could do in life. They believe that the only humans who will suffer after death are those that distance themselves from God

maybe someone wants to start a thread on the above?

Wax- You got it sister! But you asked for it! :)

It is perhaps the most important question a human can ask.

What is Hell?

There is no doubt that since at least 500AD or so Christian society has had a fairly clear idea of what punishment awaits anyone who does not follow Christian directives.
Fire... pain... a burning eternity of fear and misery with absolutely no end, and no chance of repeal, no parole, no hope...

But then we have the quandary.

If God created me and loved me enough to send his own son to die for my sins, then how could he allow such a thing?
Can a loving father knowingly allow his child to suffer for an extended period, much less an eternity.

There is absolutely no doubt that a loving father can punish... in fact it is his duty to do just that... but when some Christian speak of Hell they are talking about something far more than punishment.

Jesus himself speaks of punishment, but he also speaks of being "distanced" from God.

So what do we think here?

[bookwormom]

touchy subject,

I used to believe in hell and pray for the poor souls in purgatory. (actually I went to a catholic girls school and the priest told me once during confession that others are tempted in sexual matters but I seem to have a problem with faith). I did not realize that I asked unpopular questions.

Scenario one:
so here I am on planet Earth. I do not recall having asked to be born here,but maybe I did. Who is responsible that I am here in the first place? It is a rough place, evil all around, the school of hard knocks of the Universe. I need all the help I can get. so just maybe God is rooting for me when I dust myself off after falling again, yeah, way to go girl, keep at it. at the end, when all is said and done and the chips are cashed in I am full of dirt, learned a few lessons maybe, but all in all, failed many times and the dark side would have dibs on me, no ifs about it, that is how it is on this place. (for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is Life eternal) But my father would not let that happen to me and my big brother died instead and paid up for me, I get to live ( hey, I am a survivor).

scenario two:
here I am on planet Earth. God created me, (with an immortal soul that can never die) and placed me here, gave me a set of rules to follow, it is foregone that nobody can follow them and remain free from sin. all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. If I do not qualify to go to heaven, the other alternative is to spend eternity in hell and be tormented by some kind of fire for ever. since I can not escape that fate on my own God sent his son to die for me (why he has to die is not really clear) and if I believe that, I will not have to go to hell, but get to go to heaven and live in a great mansion and walk on streets of Gold.

Scenario three

lets pretend I am God, and I am all powerful and can do anything and I create everything.So I can not think of anything better to do than to create people, stupid and weak, on this planet, where they are tempted by evil on every side for the very few, short years that they are here (for the days of men are like grass...) and for good measure I make them immortal so they will be stuck for ever, and if they succumb to evil and fail to follow all the rules exactly that I have posted, they get sent for ever and ever and billions upon billions of years to an ever burning place of torment that is called hell in the English language. Since I am all powerful that invention goes to my credit, too. But I do have a son, and to make me less mad at you and so you can come to heaven my son goes and becomes human and lets himself be killed and that makes you right with me and you won't have to go to hell after all. (I really do not want to hurt anybody's feelings, my own parents and whole big family are in this believe system, every church service the body and blood of Christ is offered to God as a sacrifice in the form of bread and wine).

Scenario four:
God has a plan for me, and for that it is important that I spend some time on this planet, as there are some important lessons that I can only learn here, in my quest to become perfect as my father is and to overcome evil. It is a place of great evil and a real suicide mission to come here, the ruler of this planet requires that I die, finito, if I fail, as the wages of sin is death. I will never make it on my own. But my older brother volunteers, and our Father agrees to let him go, take the risk, take on the dark Lord and die a terrible death, faithful to the end. He is the big winner, overcomes death and frees us from the bondage to Satan and death.
after it is all over, there will be some left that just are absolutely evil. Since God in his wisdom did not make humans immortal they will die, in a big fire called Gehenna.
That is what is called the second death and that is permanent.
I think those are the scenarios that I personally have been aquainted with. Of course there are more, Muslims believe in hell and heaven, actually more than one. Actually if I remember right, there it is important that your good deeds outweigh your evil doings, as you have to cross a bridge, narrow like the blade of a knife, and if you lean too much on the evil side you fall off and into the hell below.

from my own point of reasoning, the believe in an ever burning hell is maligning God's character, no less. But who am I. And what do we know.
On things like that we depend on revealed information. I have searched, long and hard, since the topic is important to me, and as usual, it was a long time ago and I will have to look up stuff again. Off hand right now I can say that in the old testament when someone died there was nothing about going to heaven or to hell, nope, he "went to sleep with his fathers." is the way it is put. A couple of times resurrection from the dead is mentioned, once in the book of Job.
There is not a single promise of heaven in the old testament, nothing that says that the righteous shall go to heaven or the like. it explains many times though, over and over again, that "evildoers" will be destroyed by fire and that there will be nothing left of them but ashes. there are many opportunities indeed where it could be pointed out that they will go to hell forever, but no, it says things like, they will be burnt like the fat of lambs and will consume away in smoke and that is the end of them. In Psalm 37 I believe, but others that I can not remember offhand now just as well. In the last book of the old testament it says they will become ashes, that the fire will not leave them root nor branch. Of all places, in the new testament, which is supposed to be all about love, we are supposed to find proof for "hell". we don't, but it can be presented that way. There is an "everburning" unquenchable fire, that, when all is said and done, means that it can not be put out, it burns until there is no more fuel. What is left are ashes.
actually there are three hells in the bible. Gehenna, which is like a big trash fire at the end; hades, the grave or place where the dead rest; and tartaros, a place for evil spirits which has nothing to do with us.
(I do know the story of Lazarus and the rich man.)

[wax]

Good post.

Ok... here it goes... All Christians prepare to rant like a banshee because I am about to present my current view!
I am human and as such you are welcome to claim superior knowledge gained from higher authority.
I may or may not concede such a claim.

Scenerio five:

God was a busy guy long before man came along.
He had wonderous things to design... decisions to be made.
His interest appears to have been to design a self correcting system.
Not an easy thing to do but he did it quite well.

When his design was set he initiated a "big bang" and the experiment was started.

A long time later one of the phases of his experiment allowed man to exist.
It wasn't an accident by any means.
I suspect that God was pleased the first time chemicals combined to form DNA, but he knew where that DNA was leading.
And that causes a big problem for us, his creation, because we don't know where it is leading exactly.

He created man because man is uniquely placed in his larger creation. He may have created angelic creatures to assist him (and perhaps for companionship) but his goal in creating man was to see how we would cope with the larger system made.

A child who creates a castle has choices to make as well.
He can be satisfied with a model or he can use it and observe it: a castle by itself might be very pretty but it can get boring after awhile.
Eventually the child places the castle under stress.
He wants to know how it would stand up to an attack.
He has nothing against his creation... in fact he is likely rooting for it... but a castle is designed to defend itself and unless tested in that design it fails to meet its purpose.

And therein lies man's problem, "What is our purpose?"

Somehow, man got the idea that God not only created him but was watching closely with great interest.
The Bible is quite clear that God actually spoke to man and interceded on his behalf long ago.
If we accept the tale of Moses (and we should) then there is a very important message there about our creator.
He is a personal God, he is observing his creation and judging it concerning whether it is fulfilling its goal within the larger creation experiment.

There are two known points in which the creation concerning us as humans are known to have undergone a slight but very important alteration (more if you consider regional religions other than Judea-Christianity but we will stick with just us for now).

[wax]

The Bible states that God destroyed his creation with a flood; a false claim in a way as he preserved Noah and his sons and didn't simply wipe the slate clean and start again.
So it would be better to think of it as altering his experiment.

He then sent Jesus much later to alter things again.
Why?
What was the nature of that alteration?

We can guess at such things but it is really just practicing the skills our creator endowed us with.
We must assume that everything we know could be wrong.

Jesus gave us a much different approach concerning God.
He was not an entity to be used for vengeance against those other human creations who might abuse us, he was not a force to be feared.
Instead he was a loving father who was quite proud of his creation in man.

Maybe... just maybe... the Jews had misinterprited events a bit... maybe.

But why did Jesus "have to die"?
Because all men die, and in concentrating on his death we might be missing the entire point.
Jesus was pretty clear that dying in this world is not the end, in fact it is nothing better or worse than being born.
It was an event.
It should carry no more terror than any other moment of pain in life.

And then the "great mystery".

Every aspect of every good experiment is "judged" when the experiment is over.
But if a child creates a general to attack his castle he does not condemn the general for doing what it was created to do.
The general (Satan, Lucifer... and perhaps such terrible men as Hitler and Jim Jones) was created to test the experiment and as long as it fulfills the purpose of its creation a method is served.
So what is really being tested, what is really being judged?
The individual componants of the castle of course!
Jesus spoke of himself as a cornerstone, as a foundation.
I might be compared to a pin in a gate.
I was designed to hold the gate secure perhaps.
So I will be judged according to my design.
Did I hold or did I snap?
More importantly, did I fall out and avoid the stress placed upon me?
A pin that snaps is not held responsible for snapping, "I held out as long as I could. I tried my best."
But a pin that falls out causes a very real problem because it simply fails to do its job.

Jesus was clear that we will be judged seperately, individually, and that makes sense.

And if so then the question becomes not how our creator will judge us as much as how we can accept that judgment.

In being judged our sins will be "burned away".
Emotional pain of viewing our own mistakes can be dexcribed very well as "burning".
But it is important to understand that each of us have our own scale upon which we will be judged.
I suspect that I will "burn" the most not for the times I obviously stumbled... because I recovered from those tests just as I was designed to do.
I suspect that my own personal pain of observation will be the times I didn't even realize what I was doing.
The times I failed to comfort my sister, not realizing that she needed it. The times I spoke out of pride and wounded another without even taking notice.

The only question is; will I be able to accept the moments that I failed in my design?

I think so.

But some will not, and they will hide because of that failure.
I suspect that I will stand next to Jesus at some form of gate calling them to return, but some will simply distance themselves because forgiveness is often a personal issue.

So where does that leave us in scenerio five?
A loving creator that accepts his creation for doing what it was designed to do.
He will have all of the answers that I have questions for.
And I will take great joy in understanding just as he takes great joy in explaining.
There is a "Hell" to be sure, but it will be self imposed.

[wax]

Now whenever I state my views on Heaven and Hell some Christian gets angry and declares me a "fool" or worse.
They have a vested interest in being "special creations" and in condemning all others to an eternity of misery.

The biggest hurdle of course is that I appear to negate morality (I don't but they interprit it automatically).

I could choose to violate morality in any number of ways and I would be forced to judge myself for doing so.
Unfortunately I have done it many times while being tested.
I could attempt to destroy faith in another, but I know that would be wrong now so I would certainly face judgment for it after human death.
I could curse my brother or sister, I could concentrate on the sliver in their eye and overlook the plank in my own.
I could throw the first stone and in doing so declare myself better than any other of God's children.

I have no problem "hating" because I know I can explain that hatred if only by my own ignorance.
My creator does not expect me to love the creation sent to destroy me... Jesus has asked me to try and I do... but I have only so many sides of my face to turn.

Not too long ago there was a man who walked into an Amish community and raped... then murdered little girls.
The Amish cried... then they publicly forgave him and comforted his wife at his graveside.
I thank God as often as I can that I have never been tested in such a way... because I fear my own limitations.

I can not magine that such a man could ever accept his own sins concerning that act.
But I don't know to be sure.
The good news is that "All things hidden shall be revealed" so I don't need to know right now.
I will someday, and clarity will provide.

I suspect that everyone reading this will some day experience a wonderous shock when the truth becomes known.
I will enter my own judgment with great expectations and an open mind.

[calliel]

I thought "hell" was the translation of the word for the garbage dump in Jewish cities and used as a example of how unhappy people would be living in a dirty stinking place compared to where others were living. Endless burning would be endless internal pain of knowing that things could have been different. I believe Hell won't be a literal fire and burning but more the shame and agony of knowing they could have done better and didn't. Knowing they were stuck where they are while others continue to grow and experience joy. I believe a person will do that to themselves rather than God putting them somewhere for forcing them out. God lives by rules too and if he were to break them, he would not be God. He isn't "putting" us anywhere. We are choosing where we will be fit to live. An evil person really won't want to live around good people any more than good people want to live around evil.

[bookwormom]

good point calliel. Except I do not agree that something like that has to be permanent. If you are responsible to live in (spiritual) squalor like that, you are responsible and capable to change your mind and get out of the situation, like the son who squandered his inheritance, then went home to his father, realizing that the way he went about it led to no good. (important lesson to be learned)

[bookwormom]

quote by wax:
He is a personal God, he is observing his creation and judging it concerning whether it is fulfilling its goal within the larger creation experiment.

so why do you think this is an experiment?

and what does it have to do with hell?
We have several people at the church where I worship that have an urgent sense of mission to save souls from going to hell. the pastor is all for it and sends a barb in my direction once in a while. but not much in the way of evidence. I would like to see a reason why this doctrine is so popular and there is even resentment if you do not subscribe to it. Naively I supposed everybody would rejoice at the thought there is no such place or thing.

[ShadowWolf]

The whole Idea of hell and endless punishment came about because of mistranslation of Greek text, and as a brainstorm to control the masses...The early Christian Church founding fathers didn't teach about it. And neither did Christ (endless punishment)

[kaijafon]

Jer 7:31 And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, a thing that I had not commanded and that had not come up into my heart.’

take care
kellie

edited: to fix whatever that was mixed in with the words....?

[Rick]

ugh Molech :P :P

sacrificing babies, what could be more deserving of punishment?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molech

[333]

Peace,

The destruction of innocence for certain would incur the wrath of human beings, our literature and cinema are rife with such parameters to justify the onslaught that follows from a bereaved and infuriated parent that exacts the vengeance upon the usurpers that destroyed their beloved child. It is human for sure to feel such rage and to act upon it, and we support it and justify it. It is human nature i believe.
Does this however denote that it is the nature of "god" as well, ergo a hell for the humans that have destroyed innocence in such ways.?
It would be contradictory of the western definition of "god" as that is not all benevolent or merciful.

I agree that hell is here on earth and individually our own personal creation by distancing ourselves from that which is good and "god" like.

333

[Rick]

Hey 333,

Wie gehts?

The Bible doesn't teach that God is all benevolent to the exclusion of all else. Look at John 1:14 where Jesus/God is described as being "full of grace and truth".

First go-round Jesus was here as the suffering servant; next time will be the conquering hero that the Jewish people were looking for in the Messiah.

See ya. I'm off to the Boy Scout camp in the morning....a nice relaxing week with my sons (and 50 of their closest freinds :o :o :o )

[wax]

Rick- sacrificing babies, what could be more deserving of punishment?

Wax- Brings up an interesting question doesn't it?

What if...

What if you believed that lafe is a punishment and dying is a reward?
Christianity certainly has a componant that considers death as "going to a better place".

So... somehow... a theology is formed in which some children are "rewarded" with an early death and thus avoid the suffering of this world and are sent on an express-train to paradise?

Would that explain seemingly biological perversions such as you point out and the evidence we see in cultures like the Incans, Aztecs and others?

One of the things that has always troubled me with Abraham is that when he was ordered to kill his son he presumably did not believe in an afterlife.

[333]

Peace,

Hell is the absence of love and compassion.
Hell is life out of balance.
Hell is self created by humanimals who refuse to accept responsibility for their thoughts and deeds.

Perhaps wax is on the mark when he states that maybe life is the punishment or the inability to be in the presence of the All Mighty that only death or ascension can rectify.

333

[Rancher]

Why is it that in the hundreds of thousands of years of human history, "Hell" has only been recognized, and mainly by Christians and related religions for about 2000 years?
Is there any "Hell" for those who do not believe in it?

[333]

Peace,

If thought IS creative, then the answer to your query would be no.

If one were to have no knowledge of the concept that is "hell" would their "experience" lead them to develop a concept of hell?

To know LOVE (heaven) , must you know HATE (hell) as well?

333