Hell (1/2) – is this logical?

This is my first, but definitely not last, article about the awesome HELL subject.

I was born, and lived – for the first 20-something years – in Poland, and remember very well folk believes held in this interesting country.
Why interesting? At the time more than 90% Poles declared to be Catholics while about 50% of them rejected some of Catholic major dogmas while that Church condemns anyone who even doubts in anything they teach.

 

Today unbelievers and lots of “Sunday Christians” either say the hell is on earth or that they aren’t sure they should believe in Hell as they can’t understand how loving God could create something like this. But the Catholics I knew back then were absolutely sure hell was real and whoever didn’t share their belief was treated as a weirdo.

 

Today the subject of hell sort of unifies Christian denominations. Hundreds of different churches may argue forever about various doctrines but almost with no exceptions – they all are absolutely sure hell is real.

 

But if we pay a closer attention to details of teachings about hell, questions like “how does hell look like” or “how not to get there after you die” – here, everyone has different ideas. Once I read a book by Martin of Cochem – “The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven” and there I found, with extreme detail, how exactly hell looked like… I found out that devils fry people in sulfur, at the same time calling them names and beating them to pulp… but that’s not it, the ideas of torturing are endless and very creative… how did the author find out such details, I don’t remember, but I remember even back in those times, when I was Catholic, I was shocked that this book and imprimatur (an official license by the Roman Catholic Church to print). Anyone with a little bit of common sense, after reading that book, would say that the story of Little Red Riding Hood would be more probable to be real.

 

But yes, there are huge differences between Christian denominations on details regarding hell, but some points are almost universally agreed upon – things like its eternal lasting or that separation from God and some kind of suffering, often in fire.

 

We all experienced burns… thinking our whole body could burn terrifies us, even if this burning lasted 5 minutes… or 10 seconds, as for me… But eternity? I feel like fainting from just one thought about it.

 

But this is the goal of religion! To scare us! Nothing makes us more eager to go to church (and donate money, by the way).
At the same time, Churches that make God the creator of hell, proclaim him to be the personification of the greatest love you could imagine. But how can a loving God torture people forever in such a way?

 

Religion is great in making up very “logic” stories. Here’s some of the most popular ones:

 

• God is eternal, so the punishment for rejecting Him must be too. One beautiful day someone made this statement, and that’s what it is – fiction, speculations. We won’t find a word about it in the Bible.
• Sin against infinite God requires infinite punishment. As in the previous example, this is nothing but speculations. Yes, a sentence may sound nice and you can find it in lots of religious books… but this doesn’t make it true.
• God doesn’t make anyone go to hell, people choose hell themselves. I’ve never met anyone who would like to be burned in fire for any reason. Pure nonsense.
• Though God is infinitely merciful, he is also infinitely just. Wait, what?

Merciful but…? Psychology says anything before BUT is erased by our brain. When we say BUT we mean something completely different that everything that was said before BUT. It’s like a husband tells his wife one day, “I love you BUT I also fell in love with someone else and I’m leaving.”

 

Is there a woman in the world who would care for the fact that her husband started this speech with, “I love you”?

 

If God is merciful… I expect mercy from him! He expects it from us, doesn’t he? He tells us to love our enemies, forgive 77 times…

 

Is he demanding that we behave better than him?

 

No! In Gospel of Matthew 5:43 Jesus tells us to do good to our enemies and says that this is what heavenly Father does, and by doing this we’ll be as perfect as he is.

 

What do you think would happen if, after I discover that my child stole some money from me, I would tie him up in our basement, keep him there and beat up for a few days?

 

I would go to jail and I would be ostracized by society. Our built-in conscious tells us that the way I punished my child would be way too harsh.

 

In case of hell we have something harsher beyond compare… something infinitely harsher…

 

Religion tries to convince us that people, born sinners – against their will of course – might go for eternity to hell because they rejected Gospel, even if they spent their whole life helping others?

 

And the Gospel they rejected probably had nothing to do with the one that Jesus preached, and it was told by people who, by their behavior, were a nasty contrast to everything they taught?

 

Lots of Christians also believe that you will go to hell not only for actual rejecting Gospel, also by passive not accepting it, for a reason like.. you’ve never been introduced with it. For example, when you’re a child who can’t understand language yet… what a nonsense!!!

Some orthodox Christians also claim that water baptism is necessary for salvation… Is God seriously sending babies to hell for something their parents did… or failed to do? Please let me know if you’ve ever heard of bigger stupidity! Plus… if it’s true, why not baptize babies right after their born? Why doesn’t Church tell people to do it right away after birth? Doesn’t Church want people to be saved?

 

It’s not hard to find tons of inconsistencies in religion.

 

Most of Christians however (including me, for many, many years) believe though the doctrine called “age of accountability”, which means that God won’t condemn you to hell if you’re too young to understand Gospel. But when, let’s say, a child is 10, hears about Gospel, gets to understand it but rejects it…

 

A day before – this child would have not been condemned.

 

Wouldn’t it then make sense to… murder children before they reach the age of accountability?

 

If we let them grow, we have a huge chance (yes, huge, most Christians believe the Bible teaches us that only few will be saved from hell) that our child – for the whole eternity – will be screaming in agony and cursing us off for not killing them early enough!

 

Too bad religion also teaches us that murdering anyone sends us to hell as well. So… the choice is yours. Will you kill your child and go to hell… or not kill your child and most probably let them land there?

Oh, religious logic…

 

What if you have more kids? 3, 4? Wouldn’t sacrificing your life make more sense then?

 

No?

 

How can you let them burn in hell?

 

Do you even love your children?

 

Ok, let’s stop here.

 

Logical thinking is the correct work of our brain. It’s given us by God but everyone knows that certain circumstances people, single or groups, well, even entire nations, can start believing something completely illogic. Shortly speaking – logic is great while it works. But it can fail.

 

We want to believe the Bible is logical, that it is consistent. The way someone can read it though… Houston, we have a problem.

 

In the second part of this article I am going to write about almost everything that religion teaches us as regards to biblical hell.

 

It’s not much, to be honest!

 

For now… just one fun fact!

 

Who is called “The Pagan’s Apostle”?

 

Who is the author if 2/3 of the New Testament books?

 

Of course, Paul.

 

Nowhere does Paul mention or provides us with any hint about hell! He never says one word about its place of unquenchable fire, eternal suffering where all non-Christians will go…

 

There’s more! Paul didn’t also even ask anyone to convince their families, friends to become Christians or else…

 

Did you ever think about it?

 

Remember, most of addressees of the Epistles had never seen even one Bible passage, they didn’t have pocket Bibles or Bible apps which can find all verses containing “hell” in one second, so you can’t believe explanation that they already knew about hell and Paul didn’t have to talk about it.

 

For example the Epistle to Romans is most probably the only piece of what we know today is the Bible that Romans have ever seen. Contrary to today, Christians were not encouraged to read the Old Testament back then.

 

While writing the Epistle, Paul had to include then all crucial things he wanted them to know and remember.

 

The mere fact he failed to mention hell would be a reason good enough for me to reject its existence.

 

But there are more reasons. Many more.