Show Notes

Not Necessarily the Good News

Marjorie Taylor Greene, political gadfly, professional bully, anti-semite, anti-Catholic, and tantrum throwing child, said this recently, when addressing the arrest of former president, and professional mountebank, Donald Trump:

"Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today," she said during an interview with Right Side Broadcasting in New York. "Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government."

Comparing that man to Jesus Christ, is blasphemy.

The More You Know

“I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

C.S. Lewis

Christianity is broad, ancient, and diverse faith. There are many beliefs about an afterlife, and they come from different sources, including Pagan religions. Where do we start? Where we always do.

What is your perception of hell? What is it based on?

Asking most people, they will tell you images from the book of Revelations, a metaphorical book where nearly everything is expressed in symbols. An evangelical Christian will tell you of a literal lake of fire, and burning torment, believing it wholeheartedly, and overlook a passage involving seven headed dragons rising from the sea, or locusts with human faces stinging men with their scorpion tales.

And the vision of Hell that involves fiery torment, where Satan sits on a throne, ruling an army of demons? No, that is nowhere in the Bible. It seems to be the creation of Heavy Metal musicians.

Here is something interesting. The vision of Hell in Christian eschatology is widely varied. The old testament has different beliefs on the afterlife, including a place called Sheol, a place beneath the earth we walk on, where the spirits of the dead:

“For Sheol cannot thank You, Death cannot praise You;Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness. Isaiah 38:18

“If I look for Sheol as my home,I make my bed in the darkness;If I call to the pit, ‘You are my father’;To the worm, ‘my mother and my sister’;Where now is my hope? And who regards my hope? “Will it go down with me to Sheol? Shall we together go down into the dust?” Job 17:13-16

“When a cloud vanishes, it is gone, So he who goes down to Sheol does not come up." Job 7:9

People, on death, become mere shadows, with not recall their former lives at all. Everyone goes there, and only exceptionally good and holy people are spared. Some texts indicate that all people go there. If you look these scriptures up in your Bible, you might find the word Hell put where Sheol should be. Hell is a pagan goddess, and a location. The location would be a place for souls would be punished, something similar to the later idea of Hell.

The devil was not a figure in Judaism in a way recognizable to Christians, until after the captivity in Babylonian 597 BC. Ideas from local religions informed the Jewish intellectuals who were kept in the King’s court. Babylonian cosmology was a frightening place, a demon haunted world where spirits had to be appeased through magic spells.

In the 2nd century BC Ptolemy II, ( son of Alexander of Macedon’s general ) was ruler of a hellenized state in Egypt. He was a great patron of arts and knowledge, and wanted a translation of the Laws and Religion of the Jews. He commissioned a translation that we now call the Septuagint; It means, “seventy-two,” and that is for the seventy-two scholars, 6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. They produced the translation that influenced the Bible we still use, and began a conversation between Greek and Jewish ideas, each influencing each other.

With these additional ideas came the notion of punishment for wickedness. The idea of Hades became accepted where instead of the emptiness of Sheol, we are treated to a place of torment

Jesus mentions Hell, (as a concept, since the word was not introduced until the fourth century in translations of scripture ) and he does, eleven times in the synoptic gospels, it is in contrast to the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom he is sent to earth to establish.

"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10: 28

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Mark 9: 42-48

The horrible end that Jesus describes is meant to shock a people out of a despondency, into action. He was showing that salvation was not a matter of taking sacrifices to temple, or following the dietary laws and rules, but a person taking it all very personal and serious.

“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels jto Abraham’s side.6 The rich man also died and was buried, and in kHades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus jat his side. And he called out, m‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for oI am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have qMoses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear qMoses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ ”

His other point is rally obvious; those who live in luxury, showing no compassion or sympathy, will be punished.

But is it eternal punishment? What will punishing people eternally, with no hope of salvation, achieve? Yes, there are some who deserve horrible things to happen in payment for their actions, particularly their actions against others. The police officer who kills a black man, kneeling on his neck, under his state granted authority, the clergy who uses religion as way to gain the trust of children before he abuses them, the young men who assaulted and beat to death a young man because he was gay. Those people deserve punishment. But is eternal punishment going to manage anything?

In the end, where do these ideas come from? These lurid pictures of monsters that torture the tormented. These ideas come from us. The hell described in scriptures is a range of things, from a twilight world where people wander, nameless, with no identity, or memory, to an actively burning torment. Having a range of choices, why has the idea of torment and monstrosities been so influential?

And this begs another question: Why do we need this horrible place, this collection of neuroses, to make us behave ourselves?

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