Hello S4J
This post made me chuckle! I have read many of your posts. I think you understand hell very well
When i was about 13 I went to see a movie about hell in a local church. I remember a “sinner” getting killed on a motorbike. Of course he went to hell. He was engulfed in flame, people crawling on him bitting, and worms crawling through his skin.
Even at that age I realized when I came out of that movie that it was nothing but a scare tactic. I went ahead with the program and got saved. I faked that, even cried a little.
After that I stayed home and watched Star trek on sunday morning. A much more productive day.
By the quotes in the bible that I posted above, that is the tradional Hell. Burning in fire and gnashing of teeth. It is repeated more than once.
Over the years it seems that the tradional hell is being replaced by sayings such as, “it’s not a nice place”, “a place that is not pleasant”, " a place void of god".
This is just an attempt to make the bible more “user friendly” to attract more converts, in my opinion.
les
I don’t understand. You’re saying that scary descriptions of hell are scare tactics, to draw people to church. And you’re also saying that non-scary descriptions of hell are tricks to draw people to church.
Anyway, going back to your impressive biblical quote mining. You posted 18 verses. Quite scary! But wait a moment… of those 18, five of them (Mat 5:29, Mat10:28, Mat 11:23, Mat 16:18, Mat 23:33) say nothing about hell at all, other than to mention it as a possible destination. Still, 13 scary descriptions of hell! Clearly, I stand corrected.
But hold on… five more of those quotes (Luk 16:23, Mat 8:12, Mat 22:13, Luk 13:28, Mat 25:30) don’t provide any description other than “wailing and gnashing of teeth”. In other words, people are unhappy there. As I have said all along.
Leaving eight scaaaaary passages. Not bad. Although Mar 9:43 and 9:47 really aren’t separate passages, are they? They’re separate sentences in one passage. Ditto for Mat 13:42 and 13:50. So, without even delving into the context of the passages you quoted, we’ve gone from 18 to 6.
Further, Matthew 18:9 and Mark 9:47 are the same exact passage, in different gospels. Hardly seems fair to count it twice.
James 3:6: “[the tongue] is set on fire by hell”. Look at the entire passage. This is referring to people’s speech. It doesn’t mean that teachers tongues are literally
on fire.
Matthew 13:40: “So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.” Doesn’t this metaphorical context strongly imply that the “furnace of fire” in verse 42
could be, you guessed it, a metaphor? Jesus was just talking about removal of weeds (by fire).
Out of your original 18, we are left with two verses (Mat 5:22, Mat 18:9) that mention hellfire, and one (Mat 24:51) that mentions “cutting asunder”. The last one is buried in a metaphor about slaves waiting for the master of the household… I’m really not sure what to make of it.
What do we conclude? A couple things. For one, your whopping list of 18 quotes was either dishonest or incompetent. If you had looked at the verses at all, you would have seen that most of them didn’t serve to reinforce your position, they just made your list longer, so as to appear impressive. Kind of like a kitty cat puffing itself up.
Second, what do the verses actually teach us about hell? Jesus refers to fire in a couple places that are not
obviously metaphorical. Does that mean that liberal theologians’ opinions are invalid? By no means. The only thing we can take away from these verses with confidence is that hell is undesirable. What a shock. Does this contradict current church teaching? By no means.
I guess I’m having trouble understanding
A and lkddav’s opinion that this teaching has been watered down, to attract more converts. It just isn’t clicking for me. Converts don’t go to hell. People who die in a state of mortal sin go to hell. What potential convert would say “Well, I would sign up if sinners’ souls were stranded in eternal limbo after death, but this business of fire… see ya!”
By the way, I have no specialized training in biblical interpretation, and my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt except inasmuch as they are hopefully in line with church teaching.
