Hell is a slander against God, and against the victims of evil
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The money-changers had it coming because, Jesus said, they had turned a house of prayer into a den of thieves. They were profiting from others’ poverty and ripping off the poor — just the sort of thing that we would expect Jesus would find infuriating. He was angry on behalf of the poor victims, and thus he was angry at the money-changers.
Christians have always wrestled with and wrestled around this story because the whole whip-of-cords business seems a bit out of character for Jesus. Whole libraries have been written trying to reconcile this story with the things Jesus says elsewhere about turning the other cheek (or attempting to dismiss one side or the other of this conundrum).
But note what doesn’t happen in this story.
Jesus does not pursue the money-changers out into the streets and start beating them until every drop of blood drawn by their usury is repaid by another drawn by his whip. He does not corner them and flay them bloody. He does not tirelessly thrash their gory, beaten bodies until nightfall, and then on and on until dawn, and then throughout the next day and the next and the next, until the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months and the months into years of ceaseless, pitiless torment throughout which he uses his gifts of healing to ensure that they never escape this endless torture through the welcome release of death.
That would have been horrifying. It would have been monstrous. It would have been an injustice far worse than the cruel injustices for which the money-changers deserved to be punished.
And for anyone even slightly familiar with the character of Jesus as revealed and recorded in the Gospels, such a thing would be not just unthinkable, but an ugly slander against the good character of a good man. For those of us who believe that Jesus is divine, it would be a blasphemous slander.
God is not Ramsay Bolton (and vice versa).
Such a thing would also be a vile slander of the money-changer’s victims and a hideous distortion of the justice they deserve. Those poor victims deserved protection from such exploitation and they deserved compensation for what was stolen from them. They deserved to see their dignity upheld by seeing an appropriate punishment meted out on their oppressors. But they do not deserve to see those oppressors tortured forever and ever, without end.
Nor would they want to see that. Suggesting that such endless torture is what the victims deserve is a perverse distortion of justice. Suggesting that such endless torture is what victims want is a a perverse distortion of them .
It’s both an insult to those victims and an impediment to their hopes for justice, because the slander that such disproportionate retribution is what victims want and what they mean by “justice” creates the fear that rationalizes the continuing denial of that justice. (“Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?”)
This is the problem with the folklore-turned-dogma of Hell. It blasphemes against God and it blasphemes against the victims of injustice with whom God identifies. It makes them both monstrous sadists — immortal, eternal versions of Ramsay Bolton.
Here again we have the paradox of pitchforks : Any creature capable of eternally tormenting another creature with a pitchfork lacks the authority to wield that pitchfork and rightfully belongs at the other end of it. To accuse God of wielding that pitchfork, or even of being capable of wielding it, is to accuse God of being infinitely unjust.
All of which is why I disagree — respectfully, but vehemently — with this quote from Fleming Rutledge that Richard Beck recently shared :
We must believe in hell because there is no other way to take seriously the nature and scale of evil in the world. We must believe in hell because there is no other way to do justice to the victims of darkness. We must believe in hell because, without it, Christian faith is sentimental and evasive, unable to stand up to reality in this world. Without an unflinching understanding of the radical nature of evil, Christian faith would be nothing but a suburban bedtime story.
This only works if we take the use of the English word “hell” here as a cipher, as a proxy code for some concept of ultimate, eschatological justice that is not itself wholly incompatible with everything we mean by and everything we yearn for when we speak of justice here and now. But this is not what the English word “hell” means. It refers, instead, to the folklore of eternal conscious torment we translate back into Greek and Hebrew texts.
And to say that this idea or ideology of “hell” is necessary “to take seriously the nature and scale of evil in the world” is wretched nonsense. To say that such an ideology of “hell” is necessary “to do justice to the victims of darkness” is an affront to those victims themselves, demonizing them into pitchfork-wielding monsters who thirst for eternal vengeance for their temporal suffering.
I think what Rutledge is saying is really a slightly more eloquent variation of the “OK, then, what about Hitler?” question that inevitably arises in any discussion of the folklore of Hell post-1945. That is, as I’ve said before, actually a good question . Or, more accurately, it’s two good questions confused into one:
The first question is something like, “Do you believe that there will be some kind of ultimate accountability for evil?”
My answer to that question is yes. I believe there will be. I can’t prove this, mind you, but I believe it. And this assertion — that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice — can be defended and supported by that Bible we evangelical Christian types put so much emphasis on. The same defense and support cannot be found for the sordidly detailed idea of a sulfurous netherworld to which all non-RTCs will be consigned for eternity.
The second question is trickier, something more like, “What, exactly, happens to someone like Hitler after he dies?”
That is, to borrow Barack Obama’s rough paraphrase of the Book of Job, a question above my pay grade. To ask that question is to ask, in the words of the play cited above, about the “undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns.” In other words, I don’t know. And anybody who says they do know shouldn’t be trusted.
“Justice, at its best,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote , “is love correcting everything that stands against love.” The ultimate, eschatological form of this correction is beyond my knowledge and likely beyond my imagining. But it will be corrected, and that correction cannot and will not be, itself, something that stands against love.
We certainly do need “to take seriously the nature and scale of evil in the world.” We are compelled to seek whatever justice we can for “the victims of darkness” here and now, in this world, and to long for a more perfect and more complete justice in the life of the world to come. But we do those victims no favors if we embrace a cruelly unjust idea as the model of justice either here or in the hereafter.
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This isn't rocket science. There are only two possibilities:
- If God is love, then there is no Hell.
- If there is a Hell then God is not good.
Take your pick.
The Bible alone shows that god is not good. After all, would a "good" god create evil, genocide whole populations with a flood, not intervene to undo or prevent evil, condemn people to a supposedly eternal hell, ect.?
Do you accept the Bible as Truth?
No. But many do and some even try to defend or justify such a god.
True.
But if you, yourself, do not consider ghe Bible to be Truth, then you may not use it as the definitive reference for describing God.
Why the hell not? That's where this particular god concept is described. You don't have to believe it is 'truth' to be aware of the story and the characters involved.
The fictional TV series The Sopranos is not 'truth', but it is the definitive reference for describing Tony Soprano. Nobody has to believe the story is 'truth' before they can talk about and/or judge his actions in the story.
I didn't say you may not refer to the Bible. I said you may not use it as the definitive reference for describing God.
There are lots of other references. The Bible is not definitive... unless you declare it to be.
Are you saying that Christians don't consider the Bible to be the definitive text regarding the god they worship?
It is sensible to assume that an irreligious person is not persuaded that the Bible is truth but rather words of ancient men pretending to speak for the grandest possible entity they could imagine.
That established, an irreligious person (indeed any person) can analyze the Bible as a product of ancient men and identify logical flaws in its story line.
But that is not true. The Bible is the definitive reference for describing the God of the Bible. Just as the Harry Potter series is the definitive reference for describing Lord Voldemort.
Some do; some don't. The difference is essential.
Of course.
DS did not restrict his Comment to "the God of the Bible".
Then again... you'd have to be careful to specify which of the several different Gods of the Bible you are discussing.
And for describing Native American gods... or Indian gods... or Japanese gods... et cetera... the Bible is probably not the best reference.
Agreed.
Given this seed discusses Christians and Jesus, the context defines the god(s) in question (Yahweh and Jesus).
Yes. Jesus and Yahweh (the Son and the Father).
Indeed, but why state the obvious?
Why not? If one is going to discuss the attributes of god, the bible is an appropriate reference.
See previous statement. The bible and god kind of go hand in hand.
Given how the article discusses Jesus, hell, and such, then it can be presumed the "god of the bible" is the deity in question here.
The bible specifically refers to the Abrahamistic god and Jesus. Not any other god/s.
It think that the quandary of God and Hell - the topic of the seed - is not specifically Christian.
But, yes... the seed speaks primarily to Christians, and therefore uses a Christian example, the scourging of the Temple.
To avoid its being forgotten.
I count at least three: the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, and the God of Jesus.
I'm not saying the Bible isn't a precious resource. Of course it is. I'm saying that it must be read with circumspection. There are at least three successive perceptions of God, described in the Bible, so the reader must be very careful.
They're all the same.
People will read it to fit whatever religious narrative they want.
God's attributes seem to change in various parts of the bible. But it's still the same god.
Such concepts are attributed more to the monotheistic religions.
So the "god of the bible" or Jesus is specific to Christians.
How does that work? How can God be both a rigid disciplinarian and infinitely good?
You just found one of the many logical contradictions in the bible. I suppose you can say god had a makeover?
Yup.
If we read the Bible as a work of literature, we find that there were several authors, with several agendas.
I said "three different Gods", but that's just shorthand for "three very different stages in an evolving perception of God". God doesn't change over time, but men's thoughts do...
The problem is, not everyone reads the bible as literature by ancient men with pens. Some take it as literal or as the work of God himself. Then theres the myriad of "interpretations" of that work either way. Go figure.
Yes. That's why we must be careful to be explicit about how we are using the Bible: inerrant, or not.
Clearly not everyone is. They'll use it and/or interpret it to suit their own beliefs, agendas, ect..
Sadly true.
Sure there's a hell, there's gotta be a Hell, because, babycakes, there is no get out of Hell free cards despite what you may have heard. In some faiths Christ died for the ORIGINIAL SIN of Adam and Eve, (before Christ god just threw you in hell no matter what kind of person you were) YOU still have to pay for YOUR own sins. The god I'd be willing to consider is big on truth, mercy, compassion and justice.
Anyway, you'd get judged right after death, some of the rest of you gotta wait for judgment day, but you are somewhere 'way far from here so there's no "looking down from Heaven" on your family, you have things to take care of now.
You stand before god, no lawyers, no jury, NO LIES, no selective memory, and justify the way you acted on Earth. God may produce witnesses, people you screwed over to get rich and/or any and all unkind acts and God will have a peek at any person living or dead who's lives you've "touched" and review your actions.
I imagine some you misquote the Bible at god, I'm sure that would go over big. Say a magic spell and see if god has to let you in. If you're lucky, you might make god smile. I don't want to tell you what god might do to you if he doesn't smile.
But that's all for YOUR benefit, god knows you better then you know yourself and this was to show YOU why you're going to HELL! But not the hell based on a poem and some stories "borrowed" from other peoples and religions, no eternal fire, and no brimstone, unless you threw somebody in a volcano. Hell would be to experience the wrongs you've done to others, including animals.
Say that in the 7th grade, you were one of the two people who held the class wimpy kid's arms so a bully could beat the living crap out of him. Your hell would be to have your personality and memories removed and experience that event as the victim. Not like a T.V. program, but with the body, mind and memories of the victim AS the victim. You'd get to feel it all and feel the following misery for a while after. That would pay for THAT sin, and you'd get to keep that memory and have your personality and memories restored as well, in time for your next sin big or small. You'd get to feel what it's like to be robbed, or turned away, or as a single mother with three kids evicted so the landlord can make more money, over charged someone, feel what it's like when people who COULD have easily helped you when you needed it, but didn't. You'll get what you gave out.
Some people will be "in hell" for longer then others because of the number or viciousness of their sins. There will be some that will need to be in hell a very long time but very few would be there forever. If you're truly evil, like using god's name to gull and control people, or start a war for your personal gain or something so major and evil god would just make you cease to exist, after you've been through hell. Told you, you got to pay for your sins. All of your sins, then you'd get to have witnesses, living or dead who testify to the honestly good and helpful things you've done in life and then you'd get to heaven.
There's the version of god, if there is one, I like. I likewise think my version of Hell is more (ROFL) "realistic" then most.
Now ask me another.
No jury, either. You must make the call. Do you belong with the good?
You have all of eternity for examining yourself.
The premise of the article is wrong. God did not chase the moneylenders and the sellers of animals out of the Temple on behalf of the poor. He did it because they were desecrating his Father's house. Nor is Hell a slander on God. Either the article is not actually referring to God as described by the Bible or the writer does not understand that God.
Wow, so god only cared about his "house," and not about the welfare of others. What a douche of a deity.