"With unending, unimaginable, and unbearable torture, fire, and pain, for Evangelicals, hell is the holy solution God creates for those who don't respond properly to His unfailing love. With this nearly singular focus on matters of eternity, conservative Evangelicals have been quick to first ensure their place in heaven, and then meticulously define those who will be sent to hell. Additionally, as they run their fingers through the Bible, they have been sure to carve out what they believe are the God-sanctioned requirements that must be met for one to truly have 'saving' faith. From Calvinism to Arminianism, there are many different stances among conservative Evangelicals in regards to what 'true' salvation involves. Yet, congruent in all of it is their focus on who's in and who's out. Inconvenienced and frustrated by what they see as a filthy, sinful, God-hating world, most conservative Evangelicals can't wait to get into their heaven. For them, it's a place absent of all their enemies, disagreers, problems, and cares filled only with people who believe, act, and look like themselves..... This is their heaven, devoid of diversity, disagreers, doubters, and the people who believe, act, and sin differently than they. It's a walled-off place accessible only to the spiritually elite who have ascended to a certain set of beliefs and behaviors. Rewards and privileges are granted to the most faithful, and worship is joyfully extended to the god who sends, even from among their own, the unbelievers and rebellious to burn in hell."
Chris Kratzer
So according to Evangelical Christianity, after you die there are two possibilities (and
only two -- in their view, you can't just cease to exist even if you want to). Either you go to a place where you are burned and horribly tortured and exist in unendurable agony forever, or you go to a place full of the same smug, judgmental, self-righteous assholes and bullies who spent their lives trying to make
this world as miserable as possible for everybody else. And in either case, you can never escape, not even by dying (you're already dead, remember). It goes on and on, never-ending.
Screw that, I'm
staying here.
And they say we atheists have a hopeless and depressing view of reality!
15 Comments:
I had never heard of Arminianism. Upon looking it up I found one of its points was "Total Depravity" I like that part. Wickedness .. sounds like fun.
Hey, and I thought Arminianism was a religion based on having your arm swallowed by a guy named Ian.....
Think about it - we are all going to hell by definition. Evangelicals sin just as much as everyone else. They just keep it secret from the rest of us. They lie, divorce, lust, horde, judge, masturbate, have sex for fun, wear blended fabric, kill, steal, swear etc. They just won't own up to it which makes them hypocrites.
LOL! I'm that person who's been raised as a young kid to believe in heaven, and that it's hopefully where I'll end up once I'm gone. There have been times that I've sort of wished that I can come back reincarnated as someone else or a lion too.(lol) Hope your day is going well and sending lots of hugs your way. RO
Terrorists in life AND death.
I don't know what comes after life and so I'm not gonna worry about it right now. If there's something, cool, if not, oh well.
I've lost count of the number of times I've said that I already spent an eternity with Christians and have no interest in doing it again.
With all the different categories and rules of different sects, I'm pretty sure none of them are worshiping the same deity anyway. I kind of wish there were an afterlife that I could observe so I could snicker at the confusion that's bound to ensue.
My husband always questions why Christians pray to be cured of whatever horrible disease they're afflicted with. "Shouldn't they WANT to die? Right now? Today? They get their own mansion!!"
What i find amazing is the presupposition that each persons "consciousness" continues to exist after death so that one is aware, in human terms, of the pain or pleasure of the mythical afterlife.
So in essence the afterlife is nothing more than a form of immortality where one carry's their memories, ideas etc forever.
Hard to buy.
Or maybe we all get transported to our own little planets ( ala mormons) to rule over forever. Hey one delusion is as good as another.
I had a big LOL at the cartoon. I'm going to pass it around for sure.
And I have to find out about Arminianism. Never heard of it.
Interesting and thought provoking post you have here. I have never heard of Arminianism before reading about it here. Thanks to you, I learned something new today.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend!
It’s just this never ending cycle of sin/glory what makes me slightly nauseous.
The dichotomy of a simplistic religion is so over the top that they have to make sweeping affirmations to seem rational. Can you imagine that any being will actually recognize they’re in heaven or hell after any nothin of consciousness has been wiped by death?
It makes no sense. Yet they insist.
XoXo
I'm never bothered by what other people believe until they start bothering me with it :)
And I would never align myself with a God that rules with a heavy hand and defines love by shame, guilt and punishment. Sounds like abuse.
Lady M: True, but they believe God will forgive them as long as they're "saved" and hate gay people enough.
RO: Thanks. Most common ideas about reincarnation don't include continuation of memory, though, and I would argue that if the reborn entity doesn't remember being me, it isn't me.
Debra: It's certainly an effective way to terrify people.
Mary: Might as well not -- there's nothing we can do about it. Pretending to believe in order to get into Heaven wouldn't fool God -- and who knows which god you need to appeal to, anyway?
Ami: I've often thought that. They don't behave the way people who truly believed in a wonderful afterlife would behave. Only a few people act as if they really believe in Heaven -- the 9/11 hijackers, for example.
Anon: I want my own planet. With no weather or earthquakes. Or fundamentalists.
Mike: I've had a few of those conversations and I know just how the woman in that cartoon feels.
Dellgirl: Thanks! Always glad if I can inspire some curiosity.
Sixpence: They believe consciousness can continue without any physical substrate (such as the brain) to generate it. This is rather like believing a computer program can keep running after you destroy the computer it's running on, but these ideas date back to a time when nobody knew anything.
Martha: It is abuse. It's exactly like the psychological manipulation of an abusive boyfriend, if you think about it.
In a way, it’d be fun, if there was a heaven in their afterlife views, and watch them all go insane after about 10,000 years to where it had all become a terrifying monotony.
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