Something triggered me a couple of months ago, something that brought back suppressed memories. I didn’t have the easiest start to adulthood or Christianity (I became a Christian at 17 after a number of years of hedonistic behaviour), 16-22 was rough, it was a lost child that became a Christian via a traumatic event that was so awful I’m amazed it didn’t give me PSTD, followed by involvement with Christians who were nice but over the years become more extreme and more controlling, until I had to leave. It was part of this time that I flashed to. The pain, the fear, came flooding back, still so raw. Some good has come out to this, I have been remembering why I became a Christian, I realised that I have been a lukewarm Christian (such as in described in the beginning on Revelations), that I wasn’t doing enough to help the less fortunate. I did give me a possibly needed kick up the butt, which I believe is a very God thing to do, I have heard many stories of people going through events that converted them, they were exactly what they needed at that exact moment for them to get their lives back on track.
Since this episode however I have also been struggling with questions and doubts, primarily around hell. I think I had pushed it down, it was easy to do, my church, no church I have ever attended has ever preached about hell, I wasn’t reading the Bible at the time (I am now) and it’s an unpleasant thought so it’s nice to push the idea down. Now it’s at the forefront of my mind, I’m worrying all the time about if I’ll end up there, if I’ll be a goat not a sheep, but worse, I’m worrying about my children ending up there. I am the reason they are here, I brought them into the world, I knew hell exists and that it’s a threat yet I conveniently blocked it out because I so badly wanted one of these beautiful little creatures of my own, these beautiful creatures who love their parents unconditionally, and I feel like church encouraged this, they encourage people pairing up, encourage babies and families, they never talk about what could happen to these children if you fail to raise them right, or if you do but they still don’t believe. I now wonder if I should have gotten a puppy instead, I would have gotten the unconditional loyalty and love without the guilt. The guilt of what I’ve risked exposing my children to weighs on me like an anvil around my neck. But it’s also affecting how I feel about God. I know God is loving and merciful, so how could He throw humans into eternal torture? I’ve been Googling it, trying to find answers, there are many Christians justifying it, “that’s the price of sin’, as if they didn’t find it worrying or excessive, then there are those that don’t believe in it, because they can’t, they can’t reconcile this idea of hell that a loving, merciful God would cast us into, so they don’t, they believe that being thrown into that fire will destroy us, our souls will be dead, we will just stop existing, Heaven will be eternal but Hell will be the extinguishing of human spirits, just eternal for Satan and his beast and angels. I like the idea of this, it sounds fair, the problem is it’s not Biblical.
I know God is good and doesn’t want us to go to hell, I know Satan is evil and does want us to go to hell, but it was God who created hell. When I think of Satan I think he deserves it, but I don’t think that of humans, not any human.
God commandments to humanity is: Love God, Love your fellow human – including, be generous, turn the other cheek and rest every 7 days. There’s nothing cruel about this, these are good ideals to live by, I believe even the most anti Christian atheist must agree with this. These ideals were introduced via Judaism and Christianity during a time when humans were being sacrifice on altars and colosseums, even new born babies were being thrown in the fire. Humans obviously aren’t good at knowing what is good, even less so at consistently doing what is good. Christianity undeniably changed the world, it didn’t make it perfect, mostly due to churches and leaders twisting it to suit their goals, but it ended human sacrifice and violent behaviour, from Rome to the Nordics, to Indigenous America. God commands are good, they’ve transformed countries were they’ve been introduced for the better, and if they’d been practiced exactly as written we’d live in a utopia. We have nuns, monks and other Christians to thank for our schools, hospitals, orphanages and homeless shelters, Christianity has made the west a better place, better than it was before, and those practices which made it not good for some, the racism and sexism, were practiced in spite of Christianities ideals, not because of them. God is good, I therefore don’t understand why He would expect humans to suffer for an eternity because they have failed, but I also do know that humans need a terrible fate to keep them in line, in every country there are laws and prison, there would be widespread theft and violence if they did not exist, and some of the most idyllic countries to live in have the most draconian laws and vile prisons. Without the idea of hell Christians wouldn’t practice Christianity strictly, they would lie, commit adultery and sexual immorality; even with the threat of hell many do these things, and worse: racism, misogyny, colonialism, war.
I don’t know why God plans to put sinners in such as horrible place for all eternity, I still hope that in the end He will choose to be merciful and simply end all existence of those who died in their sins. But I do know this, God is good and loving, and humans need something terrible to fear to keep them from being terrible to each other.