R
ralphinal
Guest
I think it was Father Groschel (sp) who said that in the end, people in hell want to be there.
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A
AnAtheist
Guest
Too bad, the appropiate threads has been closed down. But people who do not believe in the christian god, esp. atheists, do not reject that god. One cannot reject a non-existing thing. You did not reject Zeus as a personal god, did you? Makes no sense, neh?
With the message, that is something different of course. But what value has this message, if there is no real messenger?
Ergo, only after we accept his existence, e.g. by standing right in front of him, then and only then we can follow or reject him. And if he is really an omnibenevolent (and perhaps omni-otherwise) being and not the god, that is described in the bible, I don’t see a problem spending an eternity with him “living” in paradise.
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Heathen_Dawn
Guest
OK, so such a person deserves to be separated from God. But not tortured!
The issue here is torture. I cannot believe God is behind, or gives assent to, a system where myriads of people end up in a torture chamber with no hope of ever getting out.
E
eremos
Guest
I suggest reading CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce for a glimpse of what sin does to us and how it warps our view of ourselves in relation to God and others. He also gives an interesting description of hell.
You seem very concerned with what hell will do to us, but take a moment to think what sin does to us. Sin is just small hells lived out now in the present. We create the breach with God. Attached to that breach is pain and suffering. We see it everyday on the news and from people close to us. And even our own hearts tell us. Hell doesn’t seem that far off. Look at the torn body of Jesus hanging on the cross to understand the monstrosity of sin.
What you describe about worshipping nature just sounds to me like an avoidance of the Other. In all our actions, Another is involved. Nature is mute to our sins. I suppose that can be comforting in a way.
Me, I’d rather wrestle with the Living God.
We also have to trust in His infinite mercy which is incomprehensible to us.
You seem very concerned with what hell will do to us, but take a moment to think what sin does to us. Sin is just small hells lived out now in the present. We create the breach with God. Attached to that breach is pain and suffering. We see it everyday on the news and from people close to us. And even our own hearts tell us. Hell doesn’t seem that far off. Look at the torn body of Jesus hanging on the cross to understand the monstrosity of sin.
What you describe about worshipping nature just sounds to me like an avoidance of the Other. In all our actions, Another is involved. Nature is mute to our sins. I suppose that can be comforting in a way.
Me, I’d rather wrestle with the Living God.
We also have to trust in His infinite mercy which is incomprehensible to us.
C
Contarini
Guest
Heathen_Dawn,
Sorry I didn’t respond to this thread sooner (I’ve been trying to finish a chapter of my dissertation, which I finally did yesterday). Your point about hell is one that bothered me a lot at one time, because I grew up hearing a fairly literal interpretation of hell, and some of the fundamentalist sermons I heard really did seem to boil down to “if you don’t believe in Jesus God will roast you forever.” As you can see from this thread, many Christians (including very conservative ones) would not see the “torment” language as literal but would speak rather of hell being a separation from God. However, clearly such a separation would be torment, because as Christians we believe that we were all made for God and all the happiness we feel in this life derives, in some sense, from the presence of God.
I don’t know if you’ve read Sartre’s play No Exit. Sartre, of course, was an atheist, but I think he captured the essence of hell very well. For people incapable of real love to be in each other’s society for ever would be torment. How literally one imagines that depends of course on whether or not one believes that the final state of human beings will involve some kind of body. If it will, then even the physical language of torture is not so far off. Imagine a world of Hitlers–or at least of Hitlers and people who differed from Hitler only in that their evil was more petty and their personalities less dominating. Such a world would be one of torment. And I call your attention to the fact that traditionally the immediate source for the torments of hell is not God but the demons–that is to say, beings totally evil who get their pleasure out of tormenting those equally evil to themselves but less powerful.
So I think the real question is not “why would God condemn people to torment” but “are people capable of finally choosing evil and persisting in that choice?” All that the doctrine of hell involves is the idea that people may in fact make that choice. That naturally raises the question, “why does God permit this to happen,” but that is the same “problem of evil” and “problem of free will” that we have to deal with if we believe in God at all. The strongest evidence for hell (and the strongest argument against the existence of God) is the fact that someone like Hitler could exist. If a good creature of God could choose to become the monster we know as Hitler, then he could continue to choose to be Hitler for all eternity. And that would be hell, for himself and anyone who shared his world (whether in a physical or a purely moral/spiritual sense).
Two books that have really influenced me on this question are C.S. Lewis’s allegory The Great Divorce and Jerry Walls’s more philosophical Hell: The Logic of Damnation. (Lewis was, like myself, an Anglican; Walls is a Methodist.)
Yours truly,
Edwin
Sorry I didn’t respond to this thread sooner (I’ve been trying to finish a chapter of my dissertation, which I finally did yesterday). Your point about hell is one that bothered me a lot at one time, because I grew up hearing a fairly literal interpretation of hell, and some of the fundamentalist sermons I heard really did seem to boil down to “if you don’t believe in Jesus God will roast you forever.” As you can see from this thread, many Christians (including very conservative ones) would not see the “torment” language as literal but would speak rather of hell being a separation from God. However, clearly such a separation would be torment, because as Christians we believe that we were all made for God and all the happiness we feel in this life derives, in some sense, from the presence of God.
I don’t know if you’ve read Sartre’s play No Exit. Sartre, of course, was an atheist, but I think he captured the essence of hell very well. For people incapable of real love to be in each other’s society for ever would be torment. How literally one imagines that depends of course on whether or not one believes that the final state of human beings will involve some kind of body. If it will, then even the physical language of torture is not so far off. Imagine a world of Hitlers–or at least of Hitlers and people who differed from Hitler only in that their evil was more petty and their personalities less dominating. Such a world would be one of torment. And I call your attention to the fact that traditionally the immediate source for the torments of hell is not God but the demons–that is to say, beings totally evil who get their pleasure out of tormenting those equally evil to themselves but less powerful.
So I think the real question is not “why would God condemn people to torment” but “are people capable of finally choosing evil and persisting in that choice?” All that the doctrine of hell involves is the idea that people may in fact make that choice. That naturally raises the question, “why does God permit this to happen,” but that is the same “problem of evil” and “problem of free will” that we have to deal with if we believe in God at all. The strongest evidence for hell (and the strongest argument against the existence of God) is the fact that someone like Hitler could exist. If a good creature of God could choose to become the monster we know as Hitler, then he could continue to choose to be Hitler for all eternity. And that would be hell, for himself and anyone who shared his world (whether in a physical or a purely moral/spiritual sense).
Two books that have really influenced me on this question are C.S. Lewis’s allegory The Great Divorce and Jerry Walls’s more philosophical Hell: The Logic of Damnation. (Lewis was, like myself, an Anglican; Walls is a Methodist.)
Yours truly,
Edwin
C
Contarini
Guest
Finally, with regard to God and creation–I don’t know a lot about Orthodox Judaism, but a professor of mine in grad school (who is a Reformed rabbi) argued that all religions had been what he called (rather unfairly) “Calvinized.” By that he meant that in the modern world religion has been defined as a matter of doctrines and texts rather than rituals and customs and magic, whereas historically all of these were involved. He thought that in Judaism this had led to the exclusion of the mystical traditions which in the sixteenth century, say, would have been central to Jewish thought. So I wonder if the Orthodox Judaism you encountered wasn’t a rather desiccated modern version of what, say, Jehudah Halevi would have believed. But I don’t claim to be an expert on this. I know that for me there is no contradiction between God’s presence in nature and his presence in Scripture. I don’t see Scripture as “dry and dusty” at all. However, I often feel that my own life is way too “indoors” and I spend far too much time staring at a computer screen. (I used to live in the mountains of East Tennessee and raise goats!) I don’t think that’s particularly due to Christianity, but Christianity (like Judaism) certainly can be turned into a matter of reading the right books and subscribing to the right doctrines. Those are part of the tradition, but so is St. Francis preaching to birds and converting wolves, or Luther saying that a nightingale is the finest preacher there is.
Yours truly,
Edwin
Yours truly,
Edwin
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