Monthly Archives: November 2019

Hell’s Escape Route

Here is a superb short piece by Jacob Wright, on the silliness of relying on others’ near-death experiences to ‘verify’ the existence of Hell:


“Many times when “Eternal hell cuz Bible” starts unraveling as I explain the original language of scripture to people, they will then turn to “near death experiences” (NDE’s).

“Besides the fact that the only NDE’s that Christians have heard are ones that line up with their beliefs, and NDE’s across the world by no means line up with evangelical Christian belief, I also pointed out one glaring problem with the ones that seem like they do. The people that supposedly went to hell and came back to tell about it are just proof that you can get out of hell and it’s not irreversible. They went to hell and got out. He said, ‘Well yea, because a defibrillator works, and it got them out.’

“So there it is. A person is sentenced to eternal damnation for not choosing Jesus and is in hell and a defibrillator gets them out. Once a person is in hell, a defibrillator can save them from eternal damnation, and yet God can’t. That’s hilarious.

“Excuse me while I go ponder the excruciating stupidity that can only pass under religion”.

– Jacob M. Wright

From the Menu…

More bite-sized quotations for your upbuilding:


“Religion hates Grace because Grace puts ALL people on the SAME level”
– Cindy DeGroot

“The quickest route to a mediocre life is that of constantly concerning yourself with the opinions of others”.
– Jeff Turner

…and related: “what other people think of me is none of my business.”
– Anon

“Some are so busy desperately seeking their purpose, that their purpose is having a hard time catching them”.
– Jim Potts

“I don’t care how much you screw up. Where sin abounds (whatever your definition of sin) grace abounds all the more! God isn’t running out of patience, love, grace, faith etc. for you. God believes in you and loves you and there ain’t nothing you can do about that”.
– Phil Drysdale

[Said of a Pharisee troll who had got really annoyed with a group of us on Facebook and then disappeared like they always do] “It’s his pets I’m worried about. I do so hope he won’t kick his dog or his cat around the house because of his being in a radge with us…”
– Me

“You are the Crowley to my Aziraphale”
– Ellie

“There are some people who will always find the angry verses in the Bible to confirm their obsession with anger and exclusion”
– Steve Chalke

“To me, the very fact that we can trot out a verse that says one thing, then someone else can come along and counter that with a verse that says the exact opposite, shows me that, despite Evangelical claims to the contrary, the Bible does in fact contradict itself. So, for all those who believe that the Bible is infallible and does not contradict itself, you might want to think twice before contradicting one Scripture passage with another. Otherwise, Foot. Yourself. Shooting. You’re. The. In. Rearrange to find a well-known phrase or expression”.
– Me

“The Old Testament contains an awful lot of violent killing bracketed by “God told me to”. Then along comes Jesus and says, “Love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you”. How you deal with this apparent dichotomy goes to the heart of your theology of God”.
– Rob Grayson

“Christianity is an innocence trip, not a guilt trip”.
– Jeff Turner

“Always remain teachable. But let the Holy Spirit lead you as to who should be allowed to teach you”. – Derrick Day

“There seems to be a presumption amongst Fundamentalists that if someone else is happy or, worse, laughing, then there must be some kind of ‘sin’ involved somewhere along the line 😉 ”
– Me

“People who come pre-loaded with an argument rather than interest aren’t ready”
– Dave Carringer

“A Community of believers that actually takes Jesus seriously will never force a person to choose between being honest and being accepted”.
– Jeff Turner

“The Religious of Jesus’ day complained that He was a glutton and a drunkard. Sounds like He was enjoying life pretty much to the full, while at the same time preaching how much God loved people. To me, what they found offensive was that someone could take life so lightly while at the same time taking God so seriously. Religion can’t cope with that”.
– Me

“I’m arriving at a peaceful place that allows another to believe [a doctrine], and graciously not allow them to tell me I must”.
– Matt Merry

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Hell shall not perish…

“Except that that’s not what it says.

“Belief in Jesus is the core of being a Christian, not belief in Hell”.
-Me

“Let’s be clear. When the Bible speaks for example of the word of God that is quick and powerful (Heb 4:12) or the word of God that builds faith (Rom 10:17) it’s not speaking of the book. It is telling us of the word that God speaks to you. What He says to you can change your life in an instant”.
– Don Keathley

“If we think the Love of God must be balanced out by the Holiness of God, then we understand neither one”
– Jeff Doles


Yes, I realise that ‘From the Menu’ means the same as ‘À la carte’, the title I used for my last item of short and edible quotes 😉

To Answer Your Question…

As my regular readers will know, I often get involved in online discussions about things theological.

While often these discussions should really be in “air quotes” – so, “discussions”! – where people are simply trotting out their standard ideas, Scripture bombs and whatnot, and are not interested in answers, on one recent occasion things appeared to be different.

First off, the fellow in the discussion stated that REPENTANCE!! was required for ‘salvation’, and then asked his question (although actually it was four questions):

“Serious question gentlemen…
“Did humanity ever have a need to be saved? Did Jesus need to come to save us?
“If yes, what did we need to be saved from? And secondly, when did we actually move from unsaved to saved (time wise, when did it happen)?”

For some time now, I have been trying to express what ‘salvation’ is, and to get a bit more of a handle on it. So I thought, right then, here’s the perfect opportunity. My answer, then, was this:


To me, the problem with salvation depending on repentance* means that it is works-dependent. I don’t mean ‘works-dependent’ in the sense of ‘working for our salvation’ or ‘earning a place in heaven’ or ‘trying to be good’; it’s not that.

No, it’s this: if salvation is dependent on that kind of repentance, then what it means is that it boils down to just one single work: that of repentance. But it’s still a ‘work’; it’s something we do; it’s something we feel we can do whereas in reality we actually can’t.

Therefore, even if the only work we needed was that repentance, then it is still works – based.

This is why Grace, Faith, and all the other amazing things that God has done for us are gifts; indeed they have to be so.

This leads to the point of ‘salvation’ (sōzō or ‘wholeness’); what ‘repentance’ (in the sense of changing your mind) does is to allow us to see this. Salvation, or being ‘saved’, is that we get to live in the knowledge of what Jesus has done in showing God’s love for us. Knowing that God loves just the same us no matter what we do or don’t do. That’s the definition of ‘unconditional’. What we are saved from under this is an incorrect view of how God feels about us.

And once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. But for those who have not yet seen it, they can’t understand it, because if they did, they would have seen.

So my answer to the questions above – and I am trusting that they are not leading trap questions – then:

1) “Did humanity ever have a need to be saved?” We did need to be saved from our faulty perception of how God sees us. ‘I hid because I was afraid’. (Gen 3:10)

2) “Did Jesus need to come to save us?” Yes, Jesus did need to come to save us; Jesus came (amongst many many other reasons) to save us from that faulty perception. Over the millennia since Adam, humanity’s perception of the anger of God had grown to huge proportions and Jesus came (amongst many other reasons) to set that record straight.

3) “If yes, what did we need to be saved from?” Answer in (2) above

4) “And secondly, when did we actually move from unsaved to saved (time wise, when did it happen)?” is an interesting question because it depends on firstly believing that we had some sort of wrath or hell to be saved from, and having to ‘do’ something (i.e. ‘works’, even if ‘only’ repentance as explained above) in order to become saved at a particular point in time.

If it is true, however, that we simply needed to be saved from that faulty perception, then the problem lies with us, not with God, and so there isn’t a time at which ‘being saved’ actually happens with regard to that problem, which actually never existed.

(And that is, I believe, the ‘original sin’: it is that we have this faulty perception of God that He’s mad with us all the time and therefore we have to ‘do’ something about that. Even if it’s ‘only’ repentance. And let’s be honest, Evangelical theology, despite its proclamations of a ‘loving God’, actually does believe that God is in a radge with most people, for most of the time. Even many of the ‘saved’ are constantly obsessed with ‘sin’ and are paranoid in case they fall foul of that ‘wrath’; if they put one. toe. out of line, they think, then hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to Hell you go)**.

So, the point at which we were ‘saved’ is not so much the point at which God was suddenly not mad with us any more, but the point at which we realise the truth that He’s never been mad with us. Sure, the ‘Lamb [was] slain from the foundation of the world’ and this means to me that as far as we are concerned, God has never been mad at us. So yes, we have always been saved, but that also lies in tension with the need to realise the brilliance of the truth *now*, so that we can enjoy it in this life, and thereby be increasingly ‘made whole’ – sōzō – as the magnitude of what God has done for us is revealed to us in increasing measure. Wow!

*(I am using the term ‘repentance’ here in the Evangelical sense of turning away from ‘sin’ and turning towards God; that’s usually how it’s understood in Evangelical thinking)


So that’s the reply, in its raw and uncut form; the only changes I have made are to insert the Scripture reference for ‘I hid because I was afraid’. And the cartoon below 😉

At the very least, this small essay/answer expresses the state of my understanding at present. It passes the ‘Thomas Merton test’*** that “…“If the you of five years ago doesn’t consider the you of today a heretic, you are not growing spiritually”, because my thinking and ideas have evolved to this point over the last few years. Hopefully, you can glean a lot of encouragement from that, both from the essay and from the idea that growth implies a changing of ideas.

Anyway, it transpired that the chap asking the questions actually was just pushing his own ideas and trying to get people to agree just with his ideas. I mean, yeah, that’s fair enough in one way, but to make it look as if he’s willing to discuss things with an open mind was the trap. Usually, these traps are simply leading questions to set up the target for a broadside, and to be fair this wasn’t the case in this instance. But it wasn’t a discussion as such. As one respondend put it, “…you’re looking for YOUR answer based on your flawed premise. That’s a game, not a conversation”.

But it still made me think, showing that even in the most difficult online “discussion” (those air-quotes again!), we can still learn something. And that is in itself something to remember.

Peace and Grace to you 🙂


**There is a cartoon for ‘Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to Hell you go’:

 

***Apparently, it was not Thomas Merton that said this. But I like the quote, whoever it was that said it 😉

Not The Same Story

Here’s a great gem of wisdom from Jeff Turner:


“Any message that begins with an offended deity, and ends with its appeasement through sacrifice, stems from the same system and primitive thought process that moved the Aztecs to sacrifice their fellow humans, and Moloch worshippers to throw their children into the flames. No matter what you change the god’s name to, or how you reimagine the sacrificial process, it’s still just primitive, sacrificial religion.

“The Gospel is not this same story with different characters. It is, rather, the exposure of this story, and its god, as poison, and the revelation of an entirely new and revolutionary way of seeing oneself, humanity and God. The Gospel is not merely a retelling of the same old violent myth, but the revelation of God as a self-giving, others-centered Family, who so cherishes creation, that he will suffer within our mythology in order to rescue us from it.”

Hell’s Illusion – Part 6

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Hell's Illusion

Here is the final episode of Dr. Don Keathley’s groundbreaking series aimed at debunking the Evangelical Church’s doctrine of Hell as a post-death place of conscious, fiery torment for ever and ever. (The first part of the series is here, in case you missed it; I heartily recommend listening to these talks in sequence, as each one builds on the knowledge we gain from the previous talks).

The freedom you will gain from watching this series – freedom from fear, from condemnation, from sadness and despair – is immeasurable. Feel the weight lift off you! Feel the despair simply drain away! These are words of freedom 😀

Hell’s Illusion – Part 5

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Hell's Illusion

In this penultimate episode in his classic series teaching about the catastrophically erroneous doctrine of ‘Hell’ as taught by the Evangelical church, Dr. Don Keathley hammers another nail into the coffin of the Hell doctrine by discussing seven logical impossibilities that the doctrine has going for it. (The first part of the series is here, in case you missed it; I heartily recommend listening to these talks in sequence, as each one builds on the knowledge we gain from the previous talks).

Being a professional scientist, this logical approach argued from the Bible, which exposes the contradictions in the Bible that would have to be exploited were the Hell doctrine to be true, really appeals to me. This is my favourite episode so far in the series!

Take it away, Don:

Hell’s Illusion – Part 4

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Hell's Illusion

Continuing Don Keathley’s brilliant series debunking the myth of Hell as an everlasting conscious torture chamber overseen by God (why are we even having this conversation?!), here is Episode 4 in which Don explains the Church’s use of three further ‘pillars’ which prop up the doctrine: Hell-fire (Gehenna-fire), Destruction, and the concept of ‘free will’. The first part of the series is here, in case you missed it; I heartily recommend listening to these talks in sequence, as each one builds on the knowledge we gain from the previous talks.

Over to Don:

Hell’s Illusion – Part 3

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Hell's Illusion

I’m continuing today with the best series I have ever seen on the idea of debunking the long-standing, but completely wrong, doctrine of Hell – that is, eternal conscious torment after death.

In this talk, Dr. Don Keathley takes on the first ‘pillar’ of the Evangelical doctrine of Hell by explaining the misuse (probably deliberate) of the Greek  word ‘Aion’, (translated into English in the Bible as ‘Eternal/everlasting’), by the historical Church. Probably in order to keep people under their control, of course!

Ok, it’s a 50 minute talk but it would be 50 minutes well spent 😀 . I certainly never regretted watching it…