steamer

What I despise most about Christianity is the idea that an all-loving being could have any part in the pointless suffering of anyone and that it produces people that could love this idea of god.

I have decided to offer up a new interpretation of hell. Perhaps any existent god’s will approve of my defense of their integrity. Perhaps the bible can be read in this light, although there are more problems with it than just the hell-doctrine.

Many Christians feel that god simply removes his presence from un-believers. This exercise is along those lines. As near as I can tell, I am completely removed from the presence of any god as we speak and am not suffering one bit because of it. However, in this interpretation, heaven is so much better than earth it is as if earth were a hell. You see, it’s not that hell is so bad; it’s that heaven is just so damn good! No one suffers eternally; they just don’t get the extra ice-cream or 72 virgins or what not. Hell might even be a better place than earth because heaven is just that cool.

This god can certainly choose to reward people he chooses to and he doesn’t cause unnecessary suffering. Christians can then be lovers of a god that cannot be called a torture-god, which will allow them to quit torturing words like love and justice and mercy so their torture-god can claim them.

Jesus still saves you from something, but it is not eternal torment, it is a metaphorical torment if you could compare ultimate coolness to bland uncoolness, but not needless and pointless suffering.

I do believe that I’d have to elevate my estimate of such a belief and believer far above those of the lovers of the torture-god which sadly encompasses most of those that call themselves Christians.

So, does it pass the biblical muster or are all Christians doomed to love some sort of torture-god?

Thomas II

"God" is actually TRUTH.
You might be removed from "images" of God, imaginations of God, but that might bring you closer to the ACTUAL TRUTH...
They might be more removed than you can imagine...

steamer

"God is truth" is as meaningless as saying "truck is fish".

maybemaybenot

Why can't Truth just be truth?

I think redefining and believing in the definition of hell, the moderate version, is just as dangerous as believing in the existance of the fire and brimstone version. It still allows for people to judge and catagorize each other and place them into heaven or hell. This is just an example, but I could say you are blashemous and a horrible person and going to hell for just trying to change the definition of gods word. Of course I don't believe that, but altering the definition will never take the human judgment out of it.

steamer

I don't agree. My version of hell doesn't require nearly the amount of twisting words like justice and mercy into unrecognizable versions of themselves. This alone allows for Christians to once again understand the nobility of the concepts. This kind of hell does not produce suicide bombers or anyone else willing to die while doing evil in gods name.

Yes, but it does not allow them to claim torture is a virtue and it frees them from the burden of loving a torture-god which is really an unloveable thing.

Yes, but if your belief required me to attend this hell, I would not think it such an evil thing that your god requires or that you love a god that requires it.

ManM

I had similar thoughts a few years ago, with a couple differences. I was pondering what sort of hell would be fair, and it occurred to me that all God needed to do was split people into groups. Imagine two islands: both paradises. If God were to put all the good folks on one island and all the bad folks on the other island, what would be the result? I decided that the island with all the bad folks on it would very quickly degrade to a place that sucks, even though it was just as much a paradise as the island with the good folks on it. Wouldn't that be a fair scenario? Also, what kind of criticism could the people on the bad island make of God if he gave them paradise?

Of course, there really isn't a binary split between good/bad, but the principle behind the hypothetical got me thinking that perhaps the next life will be what we make of it, just like this life is what we make of it.

Autonemesis

What makes you think the fire-and-brimstone types want to consider torture unvirtuous, and want to be free of the burden of loving their torture-god? If they reject your alternative vision of hell, where are we then? Exactly where we are. If I could magically make people think things other than what they think, I believe I could choose a much more dramatic alteration of beliefs than changing people to believe in a kinder-gentler hell.

steamer

My naive hope for a better world?

Yes, but we both know that many Christians accept that their dogma is nothing more than interpretation of the religious texts collected into the bible. This is why we have so many varying Christian sects, different interpretations. If the majority of Christians can still cling to these ancient text and improve their outlook, isn't that improvement still worth making? The texts aren't going to get any better. We must build for them better gods because they will not abandon these old gods.

I think we can argue by comparison that the alternate hell is a better interpretation of those dusty texts, any interpretation that produces a superior god must be the better interpretation and a truer reflection of that god.

Evoken

Sure. I think that the biblical texts admit a non-literal/naturalistic view of Hell. Some of the claims Paul makes can be read as refering to Hell as a state of our existence that is of "the flesh" and we must put it away in order to be born "of the spirit" as a new icorruptible creature.

Hell (and Satan) is not a big deal in the OT either (nor is original sin, it seems nobody in the OT knew about Adam and Eve), unless you read some of the claims in the NT into it, you just can't figure them out from the text itself.

The early gnostics didn't view Hell as something different than our existence but as a condition we can all fall into within Nature. Personally, I am trying to see how Catholicism works within a Natural Pantheism framework, I think that many of the core teachings are very pantheistic or can easily be held as such.


Valz

Agnostic Theist

and you have to be of the tribe of Israel, so a bad lineage could stuff you over