What picture of hell makes the most sense to you? This is an interesting article by a Melbourne philosophy student.
5 comments:
Anonymous
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Hell is other people, Dr Reppert; I imagine, then, that hell is a different sort of place for each person condemned to experience it. I imagine Richard Dawkins will spend his time in hell with demons performing as KJV-only "I didn't come from no monkeys" fundies...
Perhaps a way to think about "hell" is that it's a place where people perpetually refuse to get help for their spiritual sicknesses. Life, in the present age, offers a foretaste of the life to come in two ways:
1) In the increasing spiritual "health" of individuals....who may taste more of the pains of illness and lack of well being in this life (i.e. our "cross"). However, they will develop a greater dependency and trust in God, through the humiliations and sufferings of this present life, as our illnesses kindle a longing to be free from the ravages of sin (i.e. qua the source of sickness) inside and outside ourselves. This is not to be understood as necessarily applying to those who self-identify with the Faith....nor ought we to think that such benefits are withheld from those who do not profess any "faith". I remember one of the early Church Fathers.....St. John Chrysostom maybe.....who said hell would be populated by many who wore priestly vestments!!
2) An increase in spiritual "sickness" that many refuse to seek treatment for. This leads to greater "pleasures" and "enticements" of the world, material well being and prosperity, and increasing apathy towards Christian spirituality. However, these are symptoms of severe spiritual pathology in which it seems, to the spiritually ailing, that God is apathetic to our sinfulness....or that, experientially, God isn't really "real". And so we live as though we were abandoned by God, bereft of the blessings of discipline and dire warnings from heaven qua the Great Physicians diagnosis, surgery and recovery plan (Hebrews 12:3-13).
Therefore, in the final consummation of the Kingdom of God there will be those who are raised, restored and growing in greater "health" forever and ever. These are the "saved", who patiently endured the harshness of the present age and, by faith, have "overcome the world" (Hebrews 11, 1 John 5:1-5). Likewise, there will be those who are ever spiraling downward in spiritual degeneration, whose body and soul are ever increasing in eternal pathological disruptions, physical and mental corruption and perfect incorrigibility....which leaves God little choice but to quarantine.
Why HELL at all? Why not a place like earth. It's tough enough living life and learning enough to get by and stay sane and healthy and have some friends.
If God's a good teacher and we live forever, then God and time would be the best teachers in the end.
So why HELL at all?
And why is God connected with "revenge" and "jealousy" and "fierce anger" in the Bible?
5 comments:
Hell is other people, Dr Reppert; I imagine, then, that hell is a different sort of place for each person condemned to experience it. I imagine Richard Dawkins will spend his time in hell with demons performing as KJV-only "I didn't come from no monkeys" fundies...
Hell is being made to watch reruns of The Brady Bunch for all eternity.
I wonder if it is getting what you always wanted in life - apart from God - but, as in life, there is no satisfaction. Forever!
Perhaps a way to think about "hell" is that it's a place where people perpetually refuse to get help for their spiritual sicknesses. Life, in the present age, offers a foretaste of the life to come in two ways:
1) In the increasing spiritual "health" of individuals....who may taste more of the pains of illness and lack of well being in this life (i.e. our "cross"). However, they will develop a greater dependency and trust in God, through the humiliations and sufferings of this present life, as our illnesses kindle a longing to be free from the ravages of sin (i.e. qua the source of sickness) inside and outside ourselves. This is not to be understood as necessarily applying to those who self-identify with the Faith....nor ought we to think that such benefits are withheld from those who do not profess any "faith". I remember one of the early Church Fathers.....St. John Chrysostom maybe.....who said hell would be populated by many who wore priestly vestments!!
2) An increase in spiritual "sickness" that many refuse to seek treatment for. This leads to greater "pleasures" and "enticements" of the world, material well being and prosperity, and increasing apathy towards Christian spirituality. However, these are symptoms of severe spiritual pathology in which it seems, to the spiritually ailing, that God is apathetic to our sinfulness....or that, experientially, God isn't really "real". And so we live as though we were abandoned by God, bereft of the blessings of discipline and dire warnings from heaven qua the Great Physicians diagnosis, surgery and recovery plan (Hebrews 12:3-13).
Therefore, in the final consummation of the Kingdom of God there will be those who are raised, restored and growing in greater "health" forever and ever. These are the "saved", who patiently endured the harshness of the present age and, by faith, have "overcome the world" (Hebrews 11, 1 John 5:1-5). Likewise, there will be those who are ever spiraling downward in spiritual degeneration, whose body and soul are ever increasing in eternal pathological disruptions, physical and mental corruption and perfect incorrigibility....which leaves God little choice but to quarantine.
Why HELL at all? Why not a place like earth. It's tough enough living life and learning enough to get by and stay sane and healthy and have some friends.
If God's a good teacher and we live forever, then God and time would be the best teachers in the end.
So why HELL at all?
And why is God connected with "revenge" and "jealousy" and "fierce anger" in the Bible?
And why does he like smoked ram and goat so much?
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