Hell and the Play Nice Christian

[emilynghiem]

It seems I'm meeting more and more Christians who are disavowing their devotion to eternal torment by their "loving" god.

Of recent I took to calling them the Play Nice Christians (a close relative of the Convenient Christian).

At any rate, one of these luke-warm half-assed mindless brother-in-christ types imparted upon me that Hell was not necessarily a bad place at all, and that their god, in his infinite wisdom, was able to customize each eternal punishment for each of the 85 billion souls he's sent there (give or take 10 billion).

Yep, hell for the average non-believer like myself won't actually be all that bad. True, we won't get to sing songs about Jesus, dance naked for the angry wizard himself, or tour the cosmos in high angelic fashion, but apparently god may allow us to hang out with our friends and have a smoke now and again.

So what of it christians? Is your fellow brother-in-christ correct? Is your god going to have a version of hell that's more like a cosmic slap on the wrist???




It amazes me what length the sheep will go to in order to circumvent the rules of that angry Hebrew god. Just sayin.

Hi Cinjin
After going through my own purgatory process of sorts, and meeting others both Christian and atheist who have been through purging and cleansing and recovery,
I would say that hell refers to either the suffering caused directly by unforgiven conflicts that escalate or refers to the process of working out all that karma.

The lake of fire mentions burning up the devil, beast and false prophet which is the opposite/negative forces of the trinity.

the trinity basically represents unity in spirit by love of truth, love of justice, and love of peace for all humanity.

the negative flip side is division over
* fear of the unknown
* fear of change or control by outside opposing influences or authority
* fear of conflict or confrontation
which cause ill will and unforgiveness to divide and conquer humanity

so all that fear and cause of bad karma or sin can be worked off, and that is what all this hell and purgatory symbolizes.

of course i was told I am going to hell for teaching it that way,
so don't listen to me. keep listening to all the wonderful Christians
who think it is enough just to tell people X is bad and leads to hell,
and Y is good is leads to heaven and who don't try to explain the process.

frankly I think the Buddhists have more of sense of the spiritual
process of dealing with karma, and the Christians are better at
praying to remove the negative influences that otherwise keep you stuck in it.

the two ought to work together, and the people who have discovered how
to use both seem to be quite satisfied and balanced, and at peace with both.