RE: Massive controversy between Christians right now: Is Hell eternal punishment?
August 14, 2011 at 10:55 pm
(August 14, 2011 at 7:55 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Let me get this straight. Rwanda is an expression of hell? So the people in Rwanda what..deserve to be there, to weed out the bitterness in their hearts? I call pious bullshit. Borderline bigoted pious bullshit, in fact. Why am I not living in hell on earth, and the Rwandans are. This line of reasoning sounds good at a glance, but it's worlds away from an actual explanation of anything. Are the machinations of the creator again relegated to the misdeeds of men? Is heaven or hell only apparent in situations better attributed to squabbles amongst men. Seriously, seriously weak. Smacks of desperation.
Whoah, I am not saying that Rwanda serves the literal purpose of hell. I meant that it is an example of people acting like hell. There was no purgative purpose in Rwanda, no one was being judged. It's like when people talk about something bad they say, "it was hell on earth." Rwanda is what happens when people lose all sense of humanity and treat other human beings like animals. Hell on earth is when the darkest parts of mankind come out. The darkness and evil is what has to be addressed in hell, so when I say hell on earth, I mean the kind of stuff that you would see in hell. I definitely don't mean the redemptive purposes thing. People in Rwanda have not been condemned, they didn't do anything wrong (well, the people that were killed certainly didn't). The heaven and hell language that is used in the book refers to whether people are discovering hope and goodness (heaven) or spiraling out of control with hate and misery (hell). Heaven and hell on earth are how we get glimpses of why we need something bigger in our lives. Once again, the concept does not refer to judgement of any kind. Also, I'm just trying to represent Rob Bell's arguments so I'm summarizing arguments that take up like, 40 pages. (It makes more sense in the book).
