Eternal Hellstrings - Divine or Human Revenge?

Hell is a topic that many believers are excited about, but also worrying about. Linked to it is one of the most controversial and controversial doctrines of the Christian faith. The argument is not even about the certainty that corruption and wickedness are judged. Most Christians agree that God will judge evil. The battle over hell is all about how it will look, what temperatures will prevail there, and how long it will be exposed to it. The debate is about understanding and communicating divine justice - and people like to transfer their definition of time and space to eternity.

But the Bible does not say that God needs our stained vision to translate it into his perfect image of eternity. While the Bible says surprisingly little about what it will be like in hell, it is rarely judged with a cool head when it comes to concrete facts in this regard. When theories are discussed, for example, with regard to the intensity of suffering in hell - how hot it will be there and how long the suffering will last - many of them become hypertensive and tension fills the room.

Some Christians hold the view that what is true faith turns out to be hell. Some show themselves uncompromising, as far as their greatest possible terror is concerned. Any deviant perspective is dismissed as liberalistic, progressive, anti-faith, and tempting, and, unlike a belief that persistently clings to sinners who are given over to the hands of a wrathful god, rather attributed to stupid humans. In some circles of faith one sees in the conviction that hell causes untold torments, a veritable test of true Christianity.

There are Christians who believe in the divine judgment, but are not so dogmatic as to the details. I belong to it. I believe in the divine judgment in which hell stands for eternal divine distance; As far as the details are concerned, however, I am anything but dogmatic. And I believe that the alleged necessity of eternal torments as a justified act of satisfying an angry God stands in stark contradiction to the loving God, as revealed in the Bible.

I am skeptical about an image of hell that is defined by compensatory justice - the belief that God inflicts suffering on sinners because they deserve it no differently. And I simply reject the idea that God's anger can be appeased by slowly roasting people (or at least their souls) on a spit. Righteousness exercising retribution is not part of God's image as I know it. I firmly believe, however, that the testimony of the Bible teaches that God will judge evil; Furthermore, I am convinced that he will not cause eternal torment to people by inflicting on them never-ending physical, mental and emotional punishments.

Do we defend our own personal idea of ​​hell?

Biblical passages about hell can undoubtedly be and will be interpreted in many ways. These contradictory interpretations go back to the theological and spiritual baggage of Bible verses - according to the motto: I see it that way and you see it differently. Our carry-on luggage can help us to make sound theological conclusions, or we can force ourselves down and lead us far from the truth.

The viewpoint of hell that ultimately represents Bible exegetes, pastors, and teachers of the Scriptures is, so it seems, without sacrifices those from which they personally emanate from the beginning and which they seek to prove later in the Bible.

So while we should honestly consult the Bible's own testimony, when it comes to hell, it is important to realize that it is often used merely to validate preconceived beliefs. Albert Einstein warned that we should seek to know what is real and not what we want to know.

Many Christians who call themselves conservative believe that the authority of the Bible is at stake even in this fight for and about hell. In her opinion, only a literally understood hell of eternal torment coincides with the biblical precept. The picture of hell they champion is the one they have been taught. It is the hellish picture they may need to maintain the status quo of their religious world view. Some are so convinced of the accuracy and necessity of their religious image of hell that they simply do not want to accept any evidence or logical objection that challenges their point of view.

The hellish picture of eternal torment represents the great, threatening tail for many groups of beliefs. It is the instrument of discipline with which they threaten their sheep and guide them in the direction they deem appropriate. While hell, as seen by extremely biased believers, may be a compelling disciplining tool to keep the sheep on track, it is unlikely to bring people closer to God. After all, those who join these groups because they do not want to fall by the wayside are not attracted to this kind of religious training camp because of God's unparalleled, all-embracing love.

At the other extreme, there are Christians who believe that God's judgment on evil is tantamount to a quick microwave treatment - quickly, effectively and relatively painlessly. You see the energy and heat released by nuclear fusion metaphorically for the painless cremation with which God will, without question, punish evil. These Christians, sometimes referred to as advocates of annihilation, appear to God as the gracious Dr. Introducing Kevorkian (an American doctor who assisted 130 patients in suicide) who gave a lethal injection (resulting in painless death) to sinners committed to hellish death.

Although I do not believe in a hell of eternal torment, I do not join the advocates of annihilation. Both perspectives do not go into all biblical evidence and, in my opinion, do not fully do justice to our Heavenly Father, who is above all characterized by love.

Hell, as I see it, is synonymous with eternal distance from God, but I believe that our corporeality, our limitations, in terms of logic and language, do not allow us to pinpoint the implications of God's judgment. I can not conclude that God's judgment will be marked by the idea of ​​retribution or the pain and suffering that the corrupted inflicted upon others in the course of their lives; because I do not have sufficient biblical evidence to support such a theory. Above all, however, the nature of God counteracts the hauntings of eternal torment.

Speculation: How will it be in hell?

Literally, hell marked by eternal torment is a place of immense suffering, dominated by heat, fire, and smoke. This view assumes that our sense of fire and destruction, which are subject to human standards, are one to one equated with the eternal torments.

But is hell really a place? Does it already exist or will it be fueled at a later date? Dante Alighieri postulated that hell was a huge inward-turned cone whose tip pierced the center of the earth. Although such scriptures attributed hell to several earthly locations, it is also referred to non-earthly.

One of the arguments obeying the laws of logic about heaven and hell is that the literal existence of one implies that of the other. Many Christians have solved this logical problem by equating heaven with eternal closeness to God, while they ascribe eternal distance from God to hell. But the literal proponents of the image of hell are not at all pleased with the views they describe as evasions. They insist that such statements are nothing more than watered down theological wishy-washy. But how can hell be a verifiably present, geographically localizable, fixed place (be it in the past and present including eternity or as an inferno, the coals of retribution still have to be made to glow), in which the physical pains of eternal torments in hell are not -body souls are to be endured?

Some proponents of faith in the letter hypothesize that God will provide those unworthy of heaven upon arrival in hell with special suits fully equipped with pain receptors. This notion - the grace of forgiveness that God forgives forgiveness - will actually put the souls given to hell in a suit that will make them suffer everlasting pains - is brought forward by otherwise rational people who seem to be overpowered by their righteous piety. According to some of these faithful followers, it is necessary to appease God's wrath; therefore, the souls given to hell will be given a suit of God appropriate to them, and not one that derives from the sadistic arsenal of the instruments of torture made by Satan.

Eternal torture - a satisfaction for God or rather for us?

If such a picture of hell, shaped by eternal torments, can be shocking when confronted with the God of love, we, as people of such a doctrinal doctrine, can certainly also gain something. From a purely human point of view, we are not taken with the idea that someone can do something bad without being held accountable. We want to make sure that the just punishment of God does not let anyone go unpunished. Some say that it is important to soothe God's wrath, but this forensic sense of justice is actually a human-based innovation that only serves our human understanding of fairness. However, we should not be soothed in the same way as we are, in the belief that God wants to transfer our concept of fair play to God.

Do you remember as a small child spared no effort to point out to your parents an imminent misstep of their siblings? They were reluctant to watch your siblings get away with anything, especially if you were already punished for the same transgression. It was about meeting your sense of compensatory justice. Perhaps you know the story of the believer who lay awake at night because, convinced that somewhere someone escaped unpunished, he could not sleep.

Eternal hellish torments can comfort us because they are in tune with the human desire for justice and fair play. The Bible, however, teaches us that God acts obedient in the lives of men through His grace and not the human-imposed definitions of fair play. And the Scriptures also make it very clear that we humans do not always recognize the greatness of God's wonderful grace. Between, I'll see that you get what you deserve and God will make sure you get what you deserve is a fine line. We have our notions of justice, often based on the Old Testament principle of an eye for an eye , Tooth for tooth, but there are just our ideas.

No matter how devotedly we may follow a theologian or a systematic theology that postulates the appeasement of God's anger, the truth remains that it is up to God alone how he deals with adversaries (his and ours). Paul reminds us: Do not avenge yourselves, my friends, but give room to the wrath of God; for it is written: 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord' (Rom. 12,19).

Many of the hair-raising, creepy, and blood-curdlingly detailed depictions of hell that I have heard and read about come from religious sources and forums that explicitly use the same language in other contexts than inappropriate and barbaric, as it would condemn the human desire for bloodshed and Violence speaks the word. But the passionate desire for God's just punishment is so great that in the absence of dedicated biblical foundations, a human-driven judiciary gains the upper hand. Religious lynch mobs, who insist that the eternal torments of hell they propagate, serve God, cavort in large circles of Christianity (see John 16,2).

It is a religious cult to insist that those who do not meet the standard of faith here on earth have to atone forever for their failure. Hell, according to many Christians, will be reserved for the unsaved now and in the future. Not saved? Who Exactly Are the Unsaved? In many faith circles, the unsaved are those who move outside their specific faith boundaries. Some of these groups, as well as some of their teachers, admit that among those saved (from the eternal torments of divine wrath) there may be some who do not belong to their organization. One can assume, however, that practically all religions that propagate an image of hell shaped by eternal torment take the view that eternal salvation is most safely achieved if one moves within their confessional boundaries.

I reject a stubborn, hard-hearted viewpoint that pays homage to a god of wrath who condemns those outside the strictly defined boundaries of faith. A dogmatic dogmatism that insists on eternal damnation can only be regarded as a means of justifying the sense of human justice. Thus, believing that God is like us, we can faithfully serve as travel agents who offer a journey without return to eternal torment - assigning them their rightful place in hell, in violation of our religious traditions and teachings ,

Does Grace annihilate the eternal Hellfire?

One of the most important and at the same time Gospel-based objections to the most horrible of all conceivable hellish images of eternal torment, we find in the message of the Good News. Legitimate faith describes free-ride tickets from hell that are awarded to people based on their work. However, a predominant occupation with the hell inevitably leads to people being too self-absorbed. Of course, we can strive to lead our lives so that we do not go to hell by trying to live according to arbitrary bid and ban lists. We do not necessarily miss out on the fact that others may not try as hard as we do - and so, to help us sleep well at night, we volunteer to help God and give others a place in a hell marked by eternal torments to reserve.
 
In his work The Great Divorce (German: The Great Divorce or Between Heaven and Hell), CS Lewis takes us on a bus tour of ghosts who set off from Hell to Heaven in the hope of a permanent right to stay.

They encounter the dwellers of the sky, whom Lewis calls the redeemed forever. A great spirit is astonished to find here in heaven a man of whom he knows that he has been accused on earth of murder and executed.

The Spirit asks: What I would like to know is what you have to do as a damned murderer here in heaven, while I had to go the other way and spend all those years in a place that is more like a pigsty.

The One who is saved forever tries to explain that both the person he murdered and himself saw himself reconciled to Heavenly Father before the throne of God.

But the mind simply can not accept this explanation. It contradicts his sense of justice. The injustice of knowing that he is eternally saved in heaven, while he himself is condemned to remain in hell, literally overcomes him.

So he screams at the one who is redeemed forever and asks him for his rights: I just want my rights ... I have the same rights as you, are not you?

This is exactly where Lewis wants to lead us. He makes the forever redeemed answer: What was due to me I did not get, otherwise I would not be here. And you won't get what you deserve either. You get something far better (The Great Divorce, CS Lewis, Harper Collins, San Francisco, pp. 26, 28).

The testimony of the Bible - is it to be understood literally or metaphorically?

The advocates of an image of hell that could not be worse and more permanent must refer to the literal interpretation of all Bible passages relating to hell. In the 1st4. In his work The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri imagined hell as a place of horror and unimaginable torment. Dante's hell was a place of sadistic torture where the wicked were doomed to wriggle in never-ending pain and boil in blood as their screams faded into eternity.

Some of the early church fathers believed that the redeemed in heaven could bear witness in real time to the tortures of the damned. Following the same style, contemporary authors and teachers theorize today that the Almighty is present in hell to be virtually personally aware that his judgment of God is actually being enforced. Indeed, some followers of the Christian faith actually teach that those who are in heaven will by no means grieve to know family members and other beloved people in hell, but that their eternal bliss, knowing that they are above God's righteousness, even more aggravated, and their concern for the men once loved on earth, who now endure eternal torments, will seem comparatively meaningless.

When literal faith in the Bible (paired with a distorted sense of justice) gets dangerously underway, absurd thoughts quickly gain the upper hand. I cannot imagine how those who come to his heavenly kingdom by God's grace can indulge in the torture of others - let alone their loved ones! Rather, I believe in a God who never stops loving us. I also believe that there are many illustrative descriptions and metaphors used in the Bible that - given by God - should be understood by people in his sense. And God did not inspire the use of metaphors and poetic words in the hope that by taking them literally we would distort their meaning.

by Greg Albrecht


pdfEternal Hellstrings - Divine or Human Revenge?