Hell and the Play Nice Christian

[ether-ore]

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.

I would admit that many Christians are indeed disavowing God. For a lot of thinking people, what their particular religion teaches doesn't make a lot of sense in light of some of the things that modern science offers.

I hope I won't get into trouble for suggesting this, but I find that sometimes all of Christianity gets lumped together as if we all believed exactly the same things. It seems it should be obvious that that could not be the case. How many thousands of denominations are there?

If I may: Mormons have no concept of hell as do most of the rest of Christianity. Allow me to outline the LDS understanding of the here after.

Mormons believe that when we die, we all go to one of two places to await judgment day. The determination as to which of these two places one goes can be looked upon as an arraignment. The places are either paradise or spirit prison. It is like in paradise, one is freed to go about on their own recognizance. In spirit prison, one is bound over for trial. Spirit prison can be looked on as a kind of hell mostly because those that go there aren't exactly happy.

On the day of judgment, the behaviors and actions toward others are considered and the individual is then assigned either punishment or reward. There are three possible kingdoms. The highest of these is for those who have kept the commandments of God and have made the necessary covenants and have received the necessary ordinances for that kingdom.

The other two kingdoms together can be considered a hell, because according to LDS understanding, hell is defined as eternal separation from God. Prior to anyone assigned to either of these two places, and depending on the severity of the crimes committed while in mortality, a penalty of suffering must be paid. But LDS do not believe this suffering to be of eternal duration. Once the penalty has been paid, the individual goes to the appropriate kingdom where he will dwell with as much peace and happiness as he was wiling to accept as indicated by his choices in mortality.