Most of the time, when believers think of hell, it’s about them trying NOT to go to hell. But what about the ones they hate? Do they want them in heaven, too?
The popular notion of hell in the Abrahamic religions states that every sinner, especially those who “deserve it,” will suffer in fire and brimstone for all eternity. Those in hell will never be saved and never redeemed. While you are one with God in heaven or chilling in paradise or whatever happens when you are “saved”, some will never experience what you are experiencing.
I know everyone hates a particular person. Very few people have no one to hate. It could be a certain politician, terrorist, pedophile, or abusive parent. It could be anyone; you hate them not because you disagree with them (though that’s part of it), but because of what they did and how wicked they were while they were alive.
Do you wish for them to be alive once more and spend that life suffering in HELL without dying, and with no way to be saved?
Do you want that certain corrupt politician you hate joining you in heaven?
Do you want those terrorists to get the reward that was promised to them by their brainwashers, that they will experience eternal happiness for committing crimes against humanity?
Do you want to see your abusive parents in paradise?
if what you’re getting at is that hell is for the Hated Other, then I agree that’s the basic idea and thinking of those who believe in eternal perdition.
In all my years in Christian fundamentalism, I never heard more than performative regret for people being “lost” or the so-called “burden for souls”. Maybe there were people you loved and cared about and wanted to spend it in heaven with them. You would try to “save” those, as well as people you thought could be added to the in-group; but for those who, as you say, “deserved it”, it was schadenfreude time, baby. It was vindication for you, and your rightness. They chose it, they had it coming because they “refused” to repent and obey. They were your enemies, or enemies of the faith. Or you didn’t know them, but believed that god judged them rightly.
Whether a believer would actually admit to this – I doubt that in most cases they would, or at least they’d try to soften it so it sounded more sympathetic to them. But that was the attitude I consistently observed from the inside.
I can honestly say that I don’t wish an eternity of hell on anyone . . . not even Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or Stalin.
I don’t even think that Hitler embodied infinite evil, so an infinity of payback for a finite amount of evil actually seems evil, spiteful, and vindictive in and of itself, and I can’t imagine a true God possessing these qualities.
Of course if there is no God, then there is probably no hell anyway.
And besides . . . should the German populace that put Hitler in power, or the common people who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust be punished for eternity?
These points are a part of why I don’t believe in hell and/or eternal damnation.
From what I understand, hell as a place of eternal punishment seems to have started in the Middle Ages, as there doesn’t seem to be much Biblical precedent for it . . . although I may be wrong.
There seems to have been a cottage industry of “pardoners” who–for a reasonable fee–would “intercede” with God on your behalf and make sure that your sins were forgiven.
These predatory charlatans had a vested interest in eternal hellfire, as did the church officials that got kickbacks from these assholes.
One of the better developments of modern jurisprudence, is the concept that retribution should be accompanied by rehabilitation where possible. It’s interesting to note that the more hardcore fundamentalist the religion, the more it rejects this concept.
Indeed, never more obvious than in the death penalty. One could ask the simplest question here, as I have done in the past, “what is it you think the criminal justice system should be trying to achieve?” If the answer is a reduction in crime, then the US model for example has failed utterly, indeed it seems to be deliberately producing an exponentially increasing criminal populace, and seems to eschew ideas like rehabilitation and reducing recidivism, in favour of ideas like revenge.
Christians are annoying when it comes to their belief.
I had to listen this lady and this man at work go on like a broken record, while in the waiting room, listen to gospel music and they discussed “god” and “god this, and god that” and the lady was saying “lord knows that I’m still a work in progress” and she went on and on about her imaginary friend. She sounded like a fucking nut.
I have been so far removed from Christianity that whenever I hear people talk about it, my first go to thoughts towards those people are “mental illness”.
I have known people who worked with the incarcerated who honestly had the best interests of those folks in mind. Unfortunately, they usually left without making it a permanent career.
That being said, what some considered as those best interests, imo, was faulty at best.
Additionally, far too many who spent a longer time working in the field (although many did not start out that way) became ruthless dealers of punishment and cruelty.
The Stanford Prisoner Experiment is a classic demonstration of how it works.
I don’t have a dog in the ethereal Hell…I lived in Columbia, South Carolina for 6 years…so I saw the real thing…
I wish I understood how those who justify their religion as peace, love and understanding can harbor so much acrimony.
CyberLN brought up the prison system. Having been contracted to the WI DOC as a network analyst, I can say, from my experience, there is nothing but a nudge and a wink regarding rehabilitation in the system It’s punitive and designed that way intentionally.
Religion promises all of these enlightening opportunities, but in practice, it can come across as a clinic on recriminations and repressive tribalism.
Sort of sad when the prison system comes across as more aligned with their stated mission than religion.
Back to the OP’s original question. Do I want people I hate to go to Hell? No, I think a year at any DMV office would suffice…
I believe in hell. But I recognize it’s a hard thing to believe. And I love this question.
I was asked on a first date once, years ago, “Do you actually believe in hell, and that hell is a place, and that there is a physical fire there?” It made for a really wonderful conversation.
Yes, but modern Christian concepts of hell owe more to Dante and Milton than to the Bible. Several different words were translated “hell” in the KJV and it removed a lot of nuance. By the time that translation was commissioned, there were already a lot of popular preconceptions about hell, what it’s like, where it is, what happens to people there, etc. Likely encouraged by the clergy of the day.
For example one word translated hell was Gehenna, a place-name outside Jerusalem, basically a garbage dump where stuff was burned. THAT is where “the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched” thanks to the endless supply of refuse from the city. The idea was to suggest that the life of a transgressor was worthless garbage that contributed nothing to humanity and those works (not necessarily the indivudal) were fit only to be cast out and burned. It wasn’t eternal perdition, it wasn’t putative, it was just a waste. The NT does not make the connection that Christians for past several centuries have made. Those implications were superimposed, without justification IMO. It’s a little bit like the current US regime claiming that all immigrants are terrorists and should therefore have no civil rights at all.
The ancient Jewish concept of the afterlife was more like the Greek underworld – they called it Sheol and it was in the center of the earth, but both the righteous and the wicked went there. In the telling of Jesus it was divided into two compartments by a great gulf. The righteous were in “Abraham’s bosom” and the wicked on the other side experiencing terrible thirst and begging for mercy.
Oddly, as I understand it, modern mainstream (particularly, Reform) Judaism has evolved away from belief in a more explicit place of torment like that, while Christianity has evolved toward it. I think this is because much of Christianity has leaned into a more authoritarian, putative concept of how transgressors should be handled, rather than toward reform / restoration / rehabilitation / mercy. Much like the US penal system which is more about inflicting punishment than returning people to society as good actors – almost a “pre-hell” if you will.
No doubt that literature and art have affected the way hell is imagined. But Christians have always understood hell to be a place of eternal punishment, and a place of where the damned are tormented by a fire.
I had read the word “Gehenna” the Bible - which is a termed used by Christ to refer to hell - but I never paid attention to what the name was taken from. Cool
I don’t think that describes Christianity well at all.
Though “Christianity” has become an umbrella term used to refer to many opposing beliefs and practices - and precisely on this business of “rehabilitation” there is a deep disagreement between Catholics and Lutherans. For the Catholic, the grace of God really heals the human heart, in its depths. For the Lutheran, justification is a akin to a veil for the incorrigible corruption of man.
In any case, I don’t think there is any opposition between belief in rehabilitation and belief in an eternal hell.
I don’t find eternal Hell to be a reasonable doctrine.
First, almost every Christian sect claims that everyone else is destined for Hell for a lack of belief (and yes, I recognize that there are a very few exceptions).
So, out of the 30,000 sects of Christianity, which do I choose? I could become piously Christian tomorrow and go to Hell anyway if I pick the wrong sect.
Second, eternal torment for a lack of belief doesn’t accomplish anything except revenge over a leagalistic point, and I assume that the Creator of the Universe would be above this.
Third, a religious belief based on fear of punishment doesn’t seem very sincere, and I think that God would know this.
Which Christianity? Pick the one that is credible. Easier said than done. But I find these criteria helpful: (1) has members of manifest holiness and fruitfulness, (2) teaches a rationally sound doctrine - and especially has one that is true in its understanding of human nature, and respects human nature, (3) doesn’t change it’s teachings based on fashions, and is therefore probably hugely unpopular most of the time, and at times for opposite reasons, (4) has a concept of faith that isn’t one of blind, subjective belief.
Unbelief is punished as a failure to love, and a failure to orient one’s life toward the end for which one is destined. Hell is anything but a legalistic punishment. It’s rather the inherent consequence of failing to orient one’s life well, in our last and final choice.
This doesn’t make the belief credible, rationally consistent arguments are the bare minimum, it is rationally consistent to claim that if a unicorn existed as human’s imagine them, they’d have a horn and 4 legs. This argument neither evidences its claims about unicorns, or the existence of unicorns.
Then they’re all out, as it started as a schism from an older religion that itself became fashionable.
Then define it for us, and explain how it evidences any deity?
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Are you talking about indulgences?