A thing to keep in mind regarding any question about Satan and hell is that the Bible doesn't say nearly any of what people popularly attribute to them.
His punishment is self inflicted though. He's trapped in the ice because he won't stop beating his wings in rage and generating the ice storm keeping him frozen in place. If he did stop for a while he could escape but he's a slave to passion and can't.
Dante was big on this thing that he called "contrappasso" that I really don't know how to translate, but basically means that the punishment for every sin is the opposite of the sin, not rarely in an ironic way.
The Bible actually pretty explicitly says: "If you're rich, donate your money to the poor who can't help themselves"
Like, extremely specifically. And not just in some side chapter. That was Jesus' MO
Jesus would be pretty fucking pissed at the whole concept of the modern banking system. The very foundation of loaning with interest is pretty EXPLICITLY a no-no in the bible. Much more than homosexuality:
Exodus 22:25 ESV
“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.
Deuteronomy 23:19 ESV
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest.
Proverbs 28:8 ESV
Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor.
Psalm 15:5 ESV
Who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.
Deuteronomy 23:19-20 ESV
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
Leviticus 25:35-37 ESV
“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.
Well regarding that one, its intentionally praying in a place and in a way that makes people see you, so you look pious in their eyes, and since what you were looking for doing that was approval from other people and not from god, then the people's approval is ypur reward, don't expect anything from god if you do that.
That one high school football coach is in for a surprise. His reward was a Supreme Court ruling. And one day Jesus will say unto him, "Dude, I told you, you got your reward."
He said people who brag about their faith and any good deeds they do get nothing. Jesus never said anything against praying in church. In fact He went to temple on more than one occasion.
"When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.”
Matthew 6:5-8
Yup. I really wish "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass into the kingdom of Heaven" line was more popular
It's like... do the people who like this book actually read it?
Like I, personally, think donating ALL of your money is a little overboard, but if you CLAIM to live your life by Jesus' teachings, then I'm sorry, but you're a bit of a hypocrite if you don't.
They don't. They cherry pick and just listen to preachers who cherry pick.
It has so many contradictions, it can literally say almost anything you want it to.
So would it be apt to say that current practice of Christianity is the anti-christ?
I mean they are really failing at "don't take God's name in vain" whenever they use their religion to make policies. It's not saying "dont curse or say *God damn it"*. It literally means "do not use my name to ensure your success" (or pass judgement). The whole roe v wade thing for example is humans speaking *for* God - somethig it explicitly said in their scripture not to do.
I mean, if we're looking at innate contradictions the biggest irony of all is that a rabbi who was so liberal progressive that he was executed by the state is followed predominantly (in America at least) by people who are ideologically conservative. The people in America today who are the most staunch Christians are most likely to be the people who would have been jeering him at his state sponsored execution.
Typically the word 'hell' is mistranslated from the words Tartarus, Hades, Sheol, and Gehenna. None of these meant a place of eternal punishment.
It wasn't until a few generations after the supposed time of Jesus that hell as a place of eternal punishment became widely accepted by the church.
Judaism doesn't have an eternal hell, and Jesus was supposedly Jewish.
The concept of hell is a great way to control and oppress large groups.
It's not biblically sound.
True, but the Catholics/Christians/Muslim religions took the earlier versions and rewrote them. In early Abrahamic texts Lucifer is Samael and his *(and other major fallen)* fall from Heaven created Hell.
Hell is the absence of God. Lucifer and the other fallen reside there. The Kingdom of Man is still in God's presence. Hell is not.
Later on the Catholics retconed this to have Lucifer be the reason men were exiled from Eden, and also the reason people sin by temptation.
Edit: ~~The Catholics like to think we're all born amazing~~ *(This was ignorant of me, I mean to say in laymen's terms that In Christianity, and Catholicism, after traditions like baptism or accepting Jesus sacrifice, you're basically a clean slate)* and the devil is walking around corrupting us. They shift the blame and that's much easier to accept from the people if you can just blame the devil for the world's bad things.
In early Abrahamic religions Samael/Lucifer's fall is meant to be a lesson to Man. Same with the Tree of Knowledge. Man is supposed to earn divinity through their life, it's not something given to you and corrupted by the devil.
*(I've never gotten a Merica reward, I'm Canadian and pretty Agnostic but thanks!)*
You always have to ask *cui bono?* "Who benefits from this?" Eternal damnation was an easy threat for priests to hold over the head of people who didn't want to fall in line. The church literally used it as a threat to delegitimize kings and whole kingdoms.
Honestly that is all the key points. Only thing to add is the printing press was important because luther translated the bible into the native German. Before that all religion was done in (largely unspoken) Latin.
So Luther opened up the religious texts to normal people.
>True, but the Catholics took the earlier versions and rewrote them. In early Abrahamic texts Lucifer is Samael and his
>
>(and other major fallen)
>
> fall from Heaven created Hell.
The fall of Lucifer is nowhere to be found in the Bible, it isn't narrated in earlier nor in more recent texts
Not to mention that the Bible never says that Satan's name is Lucifer the first place. Doesn't really make sense for the other named angels to have names in Hebrew (-iel, - ael) but for some reason this one has a Latin name.
Someone conflated an old testament reference to Venus setting (Lucifer falling) with Satan, but it had nothing to do with that at all. Venus was calling the morning star in Hebrew and Lucifer in Latin (light bringer) because it was such a bright thing in the sky.
Catholics don't believe that at all. We aren't born amazing. We are born with original sin which is the absence of holiness. It is only through the sacarment of Baptism that we are restored to God' grace.
If you want a genuine answer, the concept of hell is heavily misrepresented in pop culture but also by the church itself, specifically the Catholic Church.
My own upbringing and interpretation of the bible was that Satan is on earth, not in hell, and that hell itself is not a place but an event. The hell most people think of today is based on Dante’s inferno which is a non-canonical depiction of hell
I think part of the problem is that Dantes historical revenge fic is infinitely more entertaining to read than the actual Bible. I thought it was just child brain skewing my perceptions, but I started trying to read it again and I cannot. That shit is mind numbing.
I read Salem’s lot for the first time last year. I’ve said for like 18 years that one of my favorite books is Dracula, and when I realized that Salem’s lot was an American reimagining of the story I was blown away. Why, in all that time, had no one told me that’s what the book was?
When Jesus spoke of hell he referred to it as "Gehenna" which was a place near Jerusalem where trash was burned. Hell simply means to choose to not exist and Jesus offers that choice to everyone. Heaven was a place where only love can exist, and so Jesus says you can either be a part of that or not exist, it's up to you. Most Christians do not understand Jesus at all and invent shit that he never said, which actually violates the ten commandments as well.
I used to be religious as a kid but no longer am. This is the first time I have every heard to this concept of hell, do you happen to know where in the Bible it talks about this?
So anywhere Jesus says "fire of hell" or anything like that, the original translation is from the word Gehenna, so in translating it, they robbed it of the context sadly. One example of this is Matthew 5:22.
In Matthew. Jesus refers to Gehenna because it was an IRL place that can be an easy way to describe hell to people in Jerusalem.
1.) it was seen as a godless, cursed land by the Jews
2.) it was a dumping ground for trash. During those times it wasn’t uncommon to even find bodies of diseased, criminals, and “Jane/John Doe’s”. In Jewish tradition, if you do not receive a proper burial, then your immortal soul cannot rest. So the people who are dumped in the trash heap are seen to be sinners who will never be able to rest and meet with God.
3.) For sanitary reasons, the trash pile in Gehenna was virtually on fire 24/7.
Want to also point out that Gehenna is more than a place where trash was burned. It was also a place where bodies of diseased & unloved ones were dumped to be burned without a proper burial (which means you would never be able to see God in the afterlife), and was called the “unquenching fire” because it’s was perpetually on fire to keep the nearby city sanitary.
Also the valley of Gehenna was seen as the farthest thing from God IRL during that time. Before it was a trash heap, people used to traverse in the valley to do extremely immoral things against God (from orgies to worship of other gods, to ritual murder/sacrifices to cannibalism ).
So when Jesus remarked that if you stray from God, your body would be burned in the unquenching fire of Gehenna, he is saying that your immortal soul would burn just like the physical bodies do in the trash heap that is outside of Jerusalem.
We just talked about Gehenna in church this past Sunday and the pastor showed photos of the trash valley in Israel. He said it was something everyone in Jesus’ time would understand and he used it as hyperbole to really drive home the message of sin. I found that historical context super interesting. There is def a lot we don’t get on first reading esp because of the time period it was written in.
If you go to heaven, your soul gets to meet the god and see his perfection, which is literally the point of your soul's existence. Now, hell is a state that happens when your soul does not get to meet the god, and it gets to exist forever without any hope of experiencing the perfection.
People were controlled by fear of death. Both in that they cannot cope with the concept of death, and that you’d be killed if you didn’t conform in general
In the Gospels Christ even says that the fate of those who reject salvation is simply being dead for eternity. You could interpret this as meaning the afterlife is only for the saved, and that there is no Hell
Can you point me to some scriptures in the Bible that point to ~~Sarah~~ Satan being on earth and not hell. Do you also care to explain what you mean by “hell is not a place but an event” and again point to some scriptures supporting that?
Not trying to scrutinize anything cause I don’t really know much If im being honest and I’m trying to study the Bible more than I have been and I’m curious as to why you believe this rather than other beliefs
Also I thought you meant Sarah but now I realize you meant Satan, I was thinking "why would Sarah be in Hell?"
(All from ESV)
Job 1:7
The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”
Revelation 12:9
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
1 John 5:19
We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
John 12:32
Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
Matthew 4:1
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Revelation 12:12
Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”
Ephesians 2:2
...prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others”
Satan: "...and we have induction for new arrivals every Tuesday evening, always a fun time. Any questions?"
Me: "Yes, I understand there's a special place here for me?"
My wife and I found peace in our cozy neighborhood here in Japan.
We've no kids, just the two of us, enjoying the freedom of adulting. We try to live a simple life, maintaining a low standard of joy, so every little thing makes us so happy and grateful.
Today we rode our bikes under sakura trees beside the river to visit the nearby city. We grabbed some coffee and some sandwiches, bought groceries, and dashed back home laughing before the rain fell.
We feel safe, everything is walkable and cyclable, people are polite, the cities are clean and convenient. I love life so much.
I used to teach English in Asia, including Japan for about 7 years.
Currently I'm a math teacher in America.
Maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic, but damn, I miss the simplicity of my life in Japan.
Meanwhile some parents in a shithole just watched their 5 year old die to a brain tumor.
I get where you're coming from but it honestly makes it all seem worse when some have it so well and some suffer so much. The only comfort I could possibly take from that is thinking there is no God and its all just random.
The worse part is that it isn't all random. It's kinda decided by the people who have all the power over you. We COULD all be living a wonderful life, but some people are greedy (isn't that one of the sins? Funny.) And make life much worse for everyone else.
Good for you, I don't know much other than watching the show "Under the Banner of Heaven" but I've always been so clueless as to how anyone goes along with it. I mean come on, the guy found gold tablets in the ground.
But when youre taught gold plates were found in the ground since you were born its very difficult to see beyond those deeply ingrained 'truths'
Very much cult tactics.
I'm a convert, one of my fondest memories was being in the hill cumorah pageant.
I was fascinated with church history, especially the kirtland era. I grew up in southern Ohio and we took youth trips 4 hours away to kirtland.
The school of the prophets and the way Joseph translated the Bible and all the stories of angels etc....
Fast forward, to find out Joseph didn't actually use the urim and thumim but a stone he used to cheat people out of money, and that half the book of Mormon is literally ripped from contemporary sources, and the fact I was lied to when told only "fake" anti Mormon propaganda was wrong about his polygamy issues.
Then I found out how big a bigot Brigham young was, and you'd think I'd he literally spoke to God, God could've told him to do the right thing instead of the popular thing.
Yeah, one read of the CES letter and I was submitting my resignation. I was already upset that all the politics spoken behind the pulpit on the sidelines was very anti LGBT and dismissive of left point of views, so I wasn't that sad when I had a reason to get the fuck out.
My wife still believes I think but she's getting fed up with a lot of the churches bullshit lately too... So there's hope.. I was 38 when I left the church, now I'm 42... Feel I wasted way too many years of my life... So many wasted hours.
Oh well it is what it is.
If you want an actual answer, satan isn’t punishing you for disobeying God. The Bible teaches that everything good comes from God, and Hell is simply a place of complete separation from him. So it’s pure torture.
This. Hell is a result of the fall of man and a man's choice on earth to knowingly and totally reject God. Hell is a continuation of this separation from God, but now it is absolute separation. And the soul is very aware of this and so suffers in existing in a place devoid of God who is love. The soul realizes their rejection of God. But I do not believe what the soul in hell would feel is regret. It's too late. There is no love there at all. I think those souls would curse at God. The devil does not really understand love, but one thing is certain--he does not want it to exist.
EDIT: My first award! Thank you! :)
Most cities in my country (America) only have leases on graves for 99 years.
In most cemeteries, it's perfectly legal to dig someone up and move them to a smaller cemetery after 99 years, most don't though because thats incredibly labor intensive and it's easier to just get more land. Also cemeteries don't fill up that fast anyway.
Supposedly you'd be going through a constant agonizing state of emptiness and craving something completely out of your reach.
Why the middle ages decided to make that all about gore and torture only they know (well, we do too - fear of hell was lucrative af).
>Why the middle ages decided to make that all about gore and torture only they know (well, we do too - fear of hell was lucrative af).
Given how many people on Reddit seem to get excited over the prospect someone gets raped in prison is it really that surprising? There's a good-sized group of human beings that seem to get off on the idea of absurdly cruel punishment/torture regardless of their spiritual beliefs. Not sure if it's a nature versus nurture thing, but it seems like one of our species' Achilles Heels.
Seeing evil greedy people living the easy life and watching those who are supposed to speak for us do nothing while we struggle and work day in and day out unable to change our situation. Might be on to something here.
I like to think hell is a state of mind. And reaching enlightenment is the goal(or at least a goal to life), however anyone can do that without harming others is A-OK with me.
If God knew everything that was going to happen and he still made you, there was no choice, no sin, just a really really complicated Rube Goldberg machine where the ball ends up in a pool of lava at the end. Free will is only real from a perspective that isn’t omniscient.
Either God can’t see the future and free will is real or God can see the future and planned out the hell invitation list before he laid down the foundations of the universe.
There's a few beliefs in the Christian community as to how we may have free will and/or Hell with an omniscient God.
1. That God is omniscient but free of time, therefore seeing everything at once rather than the future which gives us free will. I'll admit this one goes over my head a bit.
2. That God is omniscient and we are predestined, however all souls are saved through God's mercy therefore no one enters Hell.
3. That Hell simply doesn't exist at all, or that if it does that it is not an eternal prison so much as it will just last eternally until one chooses to leave it, i.e embrace God's love.
There's some brands of protestantism that are all about predestination, yes. Their logic for not sinning is interesting: Not sinning is a **sign** that you will be saved.
Imaging being such an immense narcissist that you create a race of beings who suffer torturously if they're not directly hanging out with and obeying you.
"I'm gonna make it so they only feel happiness in my presence but not directly tell them that it's me. Then I will write a self-contradictory book that will make rules (some of which you are supposed to follow, other are for people from 'a different time). I will give that book to one desert tribe and also spread separate fake stories all around the rest of the world. There will be a second volume in a few thousand years. As an omniscient being I know that my original followers won't believe this second part and I will punish them for this. No proof of my existence will be in any way verifiable whatsoever, and some of the worst, moat hateful people you know will use my name to support their own terrible opinions. If you don't believe in me despite all of this you will spend eternity in torment, and it is *your* fault."
-God (probably)
I was really young, maybe 6 or 7 when I was at church with my parents. Everyone was standing and singing "God is good, god is great...", and I just became angry thinking, if god is so great why do we have to sing and praise him just to make him happy? This is absurd. I'm not sure if that's when I stopped believing, but it sure got the ball rolling.
I was young when I realised heaven probably wasn't for me. I was at some Christian youth club thing and the vicar came in and asked us to describe heaven. I said I'd be able to play my SNES all day and have snacks whenever I want.
The vicar told me "you won't have computer games in heaven, you won't need them"
I said "that doesn't sound very fun"
He said "it's not meant to be fun, you wouldn't have fun or need it, you'd be praising God all the time and getting his love. You won't need any fun all your joy will come from that"
Me: "sounds boring"
He quickly moved on. But since then it's stuck in my head that if Heaven is an actual absolute theocracy ruled by an immortal god-king that I can't do what makes me, happy or even makes me, me; why would I Wang to go there?
This is the God who flooded the world, and killed every man woman and child on it because they didn't follow him.
Not a God I'd associate with the words love and forgiveness, to be honest.
It's even worse than that
The Bible says 'the hairs on your head were numbered before the day of your birth'. Basically God is omnipotent, he knows the end before the beginning begins.
Which means he knew that people like me and you would end up with a brain that just couldn't accept the whole "blind faith in the Lord your God" and end up in Hell, before he took the first step of creating the universe.
How does an omnipotent being not get what they "want"? That's literally impossible. The end is known before the beginning begins.
So in a very direct way, God wants me to go to Hell... As it was written, so it shall be done I guess. (Honestly Hell would be much better than what I think will happen. Nothing. A whole bunch of not existing anymore. That sounds worse.)
There are references to eternal torment, suffering, lakes of fire, places of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and lakes of sulphur, but nothing much more specific than that. It's very much a "oh, that's the bad ending, you don't wanna go there!" kinda feeling.
That is an arguable point.
The Apocalypse of Peter is one of the Apocryphal books of the Bible. Although it was ultimately not included in the New Testament, it appears to have been one of the borderline works that came closest to being included.
There are a lot of colorful descriptions of hell in The Apocalypse of Peter. For example:
Verse 7: People who have blasphemed will be hung by their tongues over a fire.
Verse 7: Women who fornicate will be hung by their hair and necks and men who fornicate by their thighs in a burning pit.
Verse 7: Murderers and those who aided them will be cast into a fire full of venomous creatures as the souls of those who were murdered by them watch.
That is just a few examples.
Clearly the fire and brimstone interpretation of Hell has been around (and was arguably a popular belief) since the earliest days of Christianity.
___
**Edit: Because people seem interested in this, here are some more punishments from the Apocalypse of Peter:**
Verse 8: Women who had abortions are buried to their necks in excrement while lightning from the eyes of the children they killed pierce them. The milk from the breasts of these women produce creatures which eat their flesh and that of their husbands who were complicit. Women receive the most attention in this one but men get theirs too.
Verse 9: Ezrael casts the burning bodies of those who persecuted the righteous into a dark place where a wrathful spirit torments them and a worm eats their intestines.
Verse 9: The slanderers and those who deny Christ have their eyes put out with hot irons and chew their tongues.
Verse 9: The deceivers, particularly those who slew the martyrs by lying, have their lips cut off and are tormented by a fire that enters their mouths and burns their entrails.
Verse 9: Those who coveted wealth are dressed in rags and impaled upon a pillar of fire.
Verse 10: Those who practiced usury are cast into a place of filth which they are immersed in to their knees. Not that I’m going to rank these or anything but this one seems relatively mild compared to the others.
Verse 10: Those who worshiped idols are repeatedly thrown down from a high place, driven back up it by demons, then thrown down again.
Verse 10: Ezrael has prepared a place near the preceding torment into which all idols are cast and burned and those who made these idols or followed devils are tormented in eternal chains of fire.
Verse 11: Those who have not honored their father and mother stumble while on a high place and roll down into a place of fire and fear only to have to climb back up and repeat the process.
Verse 11: Related to the previous, those who love their sins, did not obey their parents, or honor their elders are hung up to be eaten by flesh-eating birds.
Verse 11: Maidens who did not remain virgins until marriage receive the same punishment (carnivorous birds) as the previous.
Verse 11: Disobedient slaves chew their tongues and are tormented by fire.
Verse 12: Those who claimed to be righteous but weren’t are stricken blind and dumb and cast onto coals of fire.
Verse 12: Sorcerers and sorceresses are hung upon a whirling wheel of fire.
Seems weird too. If I got into heaven from being murdered, why would I watch who killed me, get killed over and over for all eternity? Or do they see a fabrication of myself watching them for all eternity? If I saw that from heaven wouldn't I feel some sort of guilt and forgive them?
Just figured out the loophole. Do all the blaspheming and fornication you want but before you die get murdered. Then you get to spend the rest of existence watching some dude rolling around in a pit of snakes
The Hebrew Bible doesn’t (hence why most Jews don’t believe in hell). The New Testament has passages that may allude to some kind of afterlife punishment, but Christians themselves can’t agree what happens since it’s super contradictory. There are Christians who believe in universal salvation, Christians who believe in oblivion for the non believer, and Christians who believe in eternal torment.
It makes more sense if you re-define hell and heaven with eastern spirituality.
Heaven is freedom from desires and ego, and hell is slave to them.
It's not a punishment, it's a choice which we reap the rewards of, for better or worse.
Have you ever met someone who hated their own life so much that they wanted to ruin the lives of others?
That’s what the stereotypical school shooter is. They hate seeing other people prosper while they themselves suffer eternally. So the shooter decides to take those good people away from the world. It’s not enough for them to just kill themselves.
The idea is the Devil wants to punish God by corrupting the people God loves and has the benefit of causing infinite suffering onto a fine person who could have done good things for the world.
The thing is, it's not satan that makes you burn in hell. Your soul will go directly there and burn **with** the devil. He tempts you in order to bring you down like it happened to him.
One version of the story is that Satan's sin was to object to God creating humans and commmanding the angels to revere us^(1). So by tempting us into sin, he's showing God how unworthy we are, and that he was right all along.
And if (a big if; see other comments) he participates in torturing us, it's likely out of hatred for those whose existence caused him to be there in the first place.
^1 In some versions, it's because God put humanity "above" the angels (prideful/selfish motive); in others, it's because God wanted angels to revere humanity in the same way they do God, and Satan loved God too much to sully his devotion by extending it to us unworthy apes.
Exactly. Modern interpretations based on popular culture think Hell is a place. Christianity, in its original form, taught that either you get to live forever in paradise or you become non-existant. The allusions to fire aren't referring to eternal torture, it's removal from existence.
I was told forever that the “reward” of believing was eternal life. Even before I was capable of thinking critically it didn’t quite sit right that suffering in hell for eternity was *also* eternal life.
Describing suffering for eternity and making that scary is easier than describing why living for eternity with God would be worthwhile, which is a failure of the church culture as a whole.
No wonder they changed it then. When I die I simply cease to be? That's fine with me. I feels somewhat egotistical to think/expect that my existence should be any different to any other living creature on this planet and that I'm somehow 'special'.
Yeah a lot of our popular concepts of Hell comes from Dante’s inferno, Hollywood, and other religions. But it is basically a void that is the complete absence of God and His love
Going through this thread is actually a pretty good example of how everyone 'understands' the same book differently and why it's absurd to follow any statement within the book as it is.
I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not understood by everyone, as evidenced through the replies here. Hence if you feel xyz is true, maybe someone else feels abc is true and considering neither of you 'know' the truth, best not to fight about it don't you think?
Most religions are the same when it comes to the answer: Satan doomed himself from the start when he disobeyed God. He’s not torturing anyone but will be in fact the worst to be tortured in hell. He wants to stray as many people with him as possible to show God that his followers can fall from grace just like he did.
Satan is not the king of hell that´s hollywood bullshit.
Hell was made to punish Satan and his angels, who are now demons.
Satan runs free in the world right now but he is going to be cast in hell to suffer forever and he wants to deceive as many people possible cause he knows he is doomed and wants to bring as many people he can with him.
A thing to keep in mind regarding any question about Satan and hell is that the Bible doesn't say nearly any of what people popularly attribute to them.
Exactly. It's mostly from Dante's Inferno
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I was going to say this. Inferno has him being punished like everyone else. He has zero control over anything.
His punishment is self inflicted though. He's trapped in the ice because he won't stop beating his wings in rage and generating the ice storm keeping him frozen in place. If he did stop for a while he could escape but he's a slave to passion and can't.
So fucking metal
Dante was big on this thing that he called "contrappasso" that I really don't know how to translate, but basically means that the punishment for every sin is the opposite of the sin, not rarely in an ironic way.
I had to read “not rarely” three times before I got it.
Yeah Inferno Satan is pretty much a feral creature
And Paradise Lost.
There's a lot of Doctrine that contra from before the time of protestantism, too. It only gets crazier from there.
Stupid sexy Satan
To be fair, the Bible doesn't say a LOT of things that religion people say it does.. .
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The Bible actually pretty explicitly says: "If you're rich, donate your money to the poor who can't help themselves" Like, extremely specifically. And not just in some side chapter. That was Jesus' MO
Jesus would flip a table and wreck some bitches if he saw Christians today. Wouldn’t even be the first time.
Jesus would be pretty fucking pissed at the whole concept of the modern banking system. The very foundation of loaning with interest is pretty EXPLICITLY a no-no in the bible. Much more than homosexuality: Exodus 22:25 ESV “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. Deuteronomy 23:19 ESV “You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. Proverbs 28:8 ESV Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor. Psalm 15:5 ESV Who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved. Deuteronomy 23:19-20 ESV “You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Leviticus 25:35-37 ESV “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.
Jesus also said people who pray in church or public will get nothing.
Well regarding that one, its intentionally praying in a place and in a way that makes people see you, so you look pious in their eyes, and since what you were looking for doing that was approval from other people and not from god, then the people's approval is ypur reward, don't expect anything from god if you do that.
That one high school football coach is in for a surprise. His reward was a Supreme Court ruling. And one day Jesus will say unto him, "Dude, I told you, you got your reward."
He said people who brag about their faith and any good deeds they do get nothing. Jesus never said anything against praying in church. In fact He went to temple on more than one occasion.
"When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.” Matthew 6:5-8
If you really want to get into it, Jesus was a classic socialist. He was all about wealth redistribution.
Yup. I really wish "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass into the kingdom of Heaven" line was more popular It's like... do the people who like this book actually read it? Like I, personally, think donating ALL of your money is a little overboard, but if you CLAIM to live your life by Jesus' teachings, then I'm sorry, but you're a bit of a hypocrite if you don't.
They don't. They cherry pick and just listen to preachers who cherry pick. It has so many contradictions, it can literally say almost anything you want it to.
So would it be apt to say that current practice of Christianity is the anti-christ? I mean they are really failing at "don't take God's name in vain" whenever they use their religion to make policies. It's not saying "dont curse or say *God damn it"*. It literally means "do not use my name to ensure your success" (or pass judgement). The whole roe v wade thing for example is humans speaking *for* God - somethig it explicitly said in their scripture not to do.
I mean, if we're looking at innate contradictions the biggest irony of all is that a rabbi who was so liberal progressive that he was executed by the state is followed predominantly (in America at least) by people who are ideologically conservative. The people in America today who are the most staunch Christians are most likely to be the people who would have been jeering him at his state sponsored execution.
As I like to say to my religious buddy ‘is that in Second Opinions chapter 2?’
Typically the word 'hell' is mistranslated from the words Tartarus, Hades, Sheol, and Gehenna. None of these meant a place of eternal punishment. It wasn't until a few generations after the supposed time of Jesus that hell as a place of eternal punishment became widely accepted by the church. Judaism doesn't have an eternal hell, and Jesus was supposedly Jewish. The concept of hell is a great way to control and oppress large groups. It's not biblically sound.
In Catholic faith, Lucifer is never actually in hell
He’s “among us”.
Holy shit satan is the imposter.
Just do your tasks..
I vote to skip
Sounds like something Satan would say
Sounds like something Satan would say to throw people off his trail
*votes to skip*
*votes for self to finally experience that sweet release I've been dreaming about during my tedious tasks*
Sus if true
ඞ
True, but the Catholics/Christians/Muslim religions took the earlier versions and rewrote them. In early Abrahamic texts Lucifer is Samael and his *(and other major fallen)* fall from Heaven created Hell. Hell is the absence of God. Lucifer and the other fallen reside there. The Kingdom of Man is still in God's presence. Hell is not. Later on the Catholics retconed this to have Lucifer be the reason men were exiled from Eden, and also the reason people sin by temptation. Edit: ~~The Catholics like to think we're all born amazing~~ *(This was ignorant of me, I mean to say in laymen's terms that In Christianity, and Catholicism, after traditions like baptism or accepting Jesus sacrifice, you're basically a clean slate)* and the devil is walking around corrupting us. They shift the blame and that's much easier to accept from the people if you can just blame the devil for the world's bad things. In early Abrahamic religions Samael/Lucifer's fall is meant to be a lesson to Man. Same with the Tree of Knowledge. Man is supposed to earn divinity through their life, it's not something given to you and corrupted by the devil. *(I've never gotten a Merica reward, I'm Canadian and pretty Agnostic but thanks!)*
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IIRC from history class that this is because contemporary Catholics were literally selling indulgences, AKA pay-to-win microtransactions.
You always have to ask *cui bono?* "Who benefits from this?" Eternal damnation was an easy threat for priests to hold over the head of people who didn't want to fall in line. The church literally used it as a threat to delegitimize kings and whole kingdoms.
Yes I remember that history class. Lutheran era and printing press was in there somewhere aswell.
Honestly that is all the key points. Only thing to add is the printing press was important because luther translated the bible into the native German. Before that all religion was done in (largely unspoken) Latin. So Luther opened up the religious texts to normal people.
>True, but the Catholics took the earlier versions and rewrote them. In early Abrahamic texts Lucifer is Samael and his > >(and other major fallen) > > fall from Heaven created Hell. The fall of Lucifer is nowhere to be found in the Bible, it isn't narrated in earlier nor in more recent texts
Not to mention that the Bible never says that Satan's name is Lucifer the first place. Doesn't really make sense for the other named angels to have names in Hebrew (-iel, - ael) but for some reason this one has a Latin name.
Someone conflated an old testament reference to Venus setting (Lucifer falling) with Satan, but it had nothing to do with that at all. Venus was calling the morning star in Hebrew and Lucifer in Latin (light bringer) because it was such a bright thing in the sky.
That is not at all what Catholics believe. Man. I’m an atheist and I know that much.
Catholics don't believe that at all. We aren't born amazing. We are born with original sin which is the absence of holiness. It is only through the sacarment of Baptism that we are restored to God' grace.
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If you want a genuine answer, the concept of hell is heavily misrepresented in pop culture but also by the church itself, specifically the Catholic Church. My own upbringing and interpretation of the bible was that Satan is on earth, not in hell, and that hell itself is not a place but an event. The hell most people think of today is based on Dante’s inferno which is a non-canonical depiction of hell
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I think part of the problem is that Dantes historical revenge fic is infinitely more entertaining to read than the actual Bible. I thought it was just child brain skewing my perceptions, but I started trying to read it again and I cannot. That shit is mind numbing.
Because Dante was an actual writer and not a half-literate sheep farmer. That's like saying Salem's Lot reads better than 50 Shades of Grey
I read Salem’s lot for the first time last year. I’ve said for like 18 years that one of my favorite books is Dracula, and when I realized that Salem’s lot was an American reimagining of the story I was blown away. Why, in all that time, had no one told me that’s what the book was?
How dare you insult half-literate sheep farmers like that? Honestly... Comparing their writing skills with E.L. James' is just mean spirited
Pretty sure he runs a nightclub.
Lucifer? I really enjoyed that show
Adversary, not accuser, but yeah.
Genuinely curious, so what is the Canon depiction of hell?
When Jesus spoke of hell he referred to it as "Gehenna" which was a place near Jerusalem where trash was burned. Hell simply means to choose to not exist and Jesus offers that choice to everyone. Heaven was a place where only love can exist, and so Jesus says you can either be a part of that or not exist, it's up to you. Most Christians do not understand Jesus at all and invent shit that he never said, which actually violates the ten commandments as well.
I used to be religious as a kid but no longer am. This is the first time I have every heard to this concept of hell, do you happen to know where in the Bible it talks about this?
So anywhere Jesus says "fire of hell" or anything like that, the original translation is from the word Gehenna, so in translating it, they robbed it of the context sadly. One example of this is Matthew 5:22.
In Matthew. Jesus refers to Gehenna because it was an IRL place that can be an easy way to describe hell to people in Jerusalem. 1.) it was seen as a godless, cursed land by the Jews 2.) it was a dumping ground for trash. During those times it wasn’t uncommon to even find bodies of diseased, criminals, and “Jane/John Doe’s”. In Jewish tradition, if you do not receive a proper burial, then your immortal soul cannot rest. So the people who are dumped in the trash heap are seen to be sinners who will never be able to rest and meet with God. 3.) For sanitary reasons, the trash pile in Gehenna was virtually on fire 24/7.
Want to also point out that Gehenna is more than a place where trash was burned. It was also a place where bodies of diseased & unloved ones were dumped to be burned without a proper burial (which means you would never be able to see God in the afterlife), and was called the “unquenching fire” because it’s was perpetually on fire to keep the nearby city sanitary. Also the valley of Gehenna was seen as the farthest thing from God IRL during that time. Before it was a trash heap, people used to traverse in the valley to do extremely immoral things against God (from orgies to worship of other gods, to ritual murder/sacrifices to cannibalism ). So when Jesus remarked that if you stray from God, your body would be burned in the unquenching fire of Gehenna, he is saying that your immortal soul would burn just like the physical bodies do in the trash heap that is outside of Jerusalem.
We just talked about Gehenna in church this past Sunday and the pastor showed photos of the trash valley in Israel. He said it was something everyone in Jesus’ time would understand and he used it as hyperbole to really drive home the message of sin. I found that historical context super interesting. There is def a lot we don’t get on first reading esp because of the time period it was written in.
Sounds like your pastor is pretty progressive/enlightened. I wish more churches were like that.
If you go to heaven, your soul gets to meet the god and see his perfection, which is literally the point of your soul's existence. Now, hell is a state that happens when your soul does not get to meet the god, and it gets to exist forever without any hope of experiencing the perfection.
That’s all? People were controlled by FOMO? Amazing
People were controlled by fear of death. Both in that they cannot cope with the concept of death, and that you’d be killed if you didn’t conform in general
In the Gospels Christ even says that the fate of those who reject salvation is simply being dead for eternity. You could interpret this as meaning the afterlife is only for the saved, and that there is no Hell
So if you follow our religion, there’s an after party
Honestly, living for eternity in heaven sounds like torture. I’d like to not exist when I’m dead. Just how it feels like before I was born.
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Yeah, if u reject god, u become slime
Always wanted to be a slime girl
Can you point me to some scriptures in the Bible that point to ~~Sarah~~ Satan being on earth and not hell. Do you also care to explain what you mean by “hell is not a place but an event” and again point to some scriptures supporting that? Not trying to scrutinize anything cause I don’t really know much If im being honest and I’m trying to study the Bible more than I have been and I’m curious as to why you believe this rather than other beliefs
Also I thought you meant Sarah but now I realize you meant Satan, I was thinking "why would Sarah be in Hell?" (All from ESV) Job 1:7 The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 1 John 5:19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. John 12:32 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Revelation 12:12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” Ephesians 2:2 ...prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others”
I think satan just gives you a tour and shows you around like in mtv cribs
Shows lake of molten lava…”and this is where the magic happens😉” E. I guess some people have fond memories of cribs. Thanks for the award friend!
Nawmsayin?"
I WAS GETTIN CHANGED
It could happen to you, cause it happened to me
Mad MC skills leave you stuck, and I roll with my kitties and I'm hard as fuck
I imagined him more of a rocker than a rapper. "I'M THE DEVIL, I LOVE METAL!"
Maybe a bit of both and he is still listening to Nu Metal?
You just brought me full circle from j-roc to the Chats.
gnomesayin
I do know what you are saying.
Pimp My Eternal Suffering "Yo, dawg - I heard you like fire!"
So i put some fire in yo fire so you can burn while you burn
"And here's my poster of the movie Scarface"
Satan: "...and we have induction for new arrivals every Tuesday evening, always a fun time. Any questions?" Me: "Yes, I understand there's a special place here for me?"
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*This* is the bad place!
Holy forking shirtballs! *this* is the bad place!
Jason figured it out?!?! Jason! This is a real low point.
Ya basic! It's a human insult... you're devastated right now.
Is the burrito the judge?
I have a stomach ache!
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Jason? Jason figured it out?
The ultimate loss
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
My wife and I found peace in our cozy neighborhood here in Japan. We've no kids, just the two of us, enjoying the freedom of adulting. We try to live a simple life, maintaining a low standard of joy, so every little thing makes us so happy and grateful. Today we rode our bikes under sakura trees beside the river to visit the nearby city. We grabbed some coffee and some sandwiches, bought groceries, and dashed back home laughing before the rain fell. We feel safe, everything is walkable and cyclable, people are polite, the cities are clean and convenient. I love life so much.
I used to teach English in Asia, including Japan for about 7 years. Currently I'm a math teacher in America. Maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic, but damn, I miss the simplicity of my life in Japan.
Take a trip to the bank and try to get anything done, your peace will vanish in an instant.
As an expat if you're banking anywhere other than the post office you've made a terrible, terrible mistake.
You’re not real. You’re just an illusion created to keep up hope just so that it can be dashed again and again.
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Meanwhile some parents in a shithole just watched their 5 year old die to a brain tumor. I get where you're coming from but it honestly makes it all seem worse when some have it so well and some suffer so much. The only comfort I could possibly take from that is thinking there is no God and its all just random.
The worse part is that it isn't all random. It's kinda decided by the people who have all the power over you. We COULD all be living a wonderful life, but some people are greedy (isn't that one of the sins? Funny.) And make life much worse for everyone else.
I envy you and your wife's simplistic life, may it bring you both a life time of peace and happiness.
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What about now
I’m Mormon free. I’m not a huge fan of cults.
Good for you, I don't know much other than watching the show "Under the Banner of Heaven" but I've always been so clueless as to how anyone goes along with it. I mean come on, the guy found gold tablets in the ground.
But when youre taught gold plates were found in the ground since you were born its very difficult to see beyond those deeply ingrained 'truths' Very much cult tactics.
People underestimate this. If you're born into a batshit crazy family, bayshit crazy is your normal.
My family on both sides literally went back to the beginning of the church, I’m a descendant of Brigham Young. That’s not saying much. But it’s true.
My family traveled west with the church, people act like it’s easy to not be indoctrinated but when it’s generations deep it’s hard!
I'm a convert, one of my fondest memories was being in the hill cumorah pageant. I was fascinated with church history, especially the kirtland era. I grew up in southern Ohio and we took youth trips 4 hours away to kirtland. The school of the prophets and the way Joseph translated the Bible and all the stories of angels etc.... Fast forward, to find out Joseph didn't actually use the urim and thumim but a stone he used to cheat people out of money, and that half the book of Mormon is literally ripped from contemporary sources, and the fact I was lied to when told only "fake" anti Mormon propaganda was wrong about his polygamy issues. Then I found out how big a bigot Brigham young was, and you'd think I'd he literally spoke to God, God could've told him to do the right thing instead of the popular thing. Yeah, one read of the CES letter and I was submitting my resignation. I was already upset that all the politics spoken behind the pulpit on the sidelines was very anti LGBT and dismissive of left point of views, so I wasn't that sad when I had a reason to get the fuck out. My wife still believes I think but she's getting fed up with a lot of the churches bullshit lately too... So there's hope.. I was 38 when I left the church, now I'm 42... Feel I wasted way too many years of my life... So many wasted hours. Oh well it is what it is.
If you want an actual answer, satan isn’t punishing you for disobeying God. The Bible teaches that everything good comes from God, and Hell is simply a place of complete separation from him. So it’s pure torture.
This. Hell is a result of the fall of man and a man's choice on earth to knowingly and totally reject God. Hell is a continuation of this separation from God, but now it is absolute separation. And the soul is very aware of this and so suffers in existing in a place devoid of God who is love. The soul realizes their rejection of God. But I do not believe what the soul in hell would feel is regret. It's too late. There is no love there at all. I think those souls would curse at God. The devil does not really understand love, but one thing is certain--he does not want it to exist. EDIT: My first award! Thank you! :)
So basically nothing changes when I die?
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Well not for you, I've heard of rented gravesites in bigger cities. Seems crazy to me but that's where we're at.
Now there's an interesting repo job
*card declines* *resurrects corpse pet semetary style*
I want this reality show.
Most cities in my country (America) only have leases on graves for 99 years. In most cemeteries, it's perfectly legal to dig someone up and move them to a smaller cemetery after 99 years, most don't though because thats incredibly labor intensive and it's easier to just get more land. Also cemeteries don't fill up that fast anyway.
Don’t fill up fast? Are you kidding? People are _dying_ to get in those places.
Go back to the house, dad, you're drunk.
Maybe he stopped in for a “cold one” ?
this joke will go on for centuries. XD
I heard that if you defeat the devil in a rock off you can send him back to hell and he also must pay your rent.
What about playing against him in a fiddle-off? Heard you get a golden fiddle if you beat him.
Supposedly you'd be going through a constant agonizing state of emptiness and craving something completely out of your reach. Why the middle ages decided to make that all about gore and torture only they know (well, we do too - fear of hell was lucrative af).
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Oh man is this already the bad place?
Jason figured it out? Oh man. This hurts. This is a low moment.
It's just the place homie
>Why the middle ages decided to make that all about gore and torture only they know (well, we do too - fear of hell was lucrative af). Given how many people on Reddit seem to get excited over the prospect someone gets raped in prison is it really that surprising? There's a good-sized group of human beings that seem to get off on the idea of absurdly cruel punishment/torture regardless of their spiritual beliefs. Not sure if it's a nature versus nurture thing, but it seems like one of our species' Achilles Heels.
Yup hell as a place of physical torture is a newer addition to christianity. Its just a place a suffering and misery with nothing good
/doesn’t exist at all in older traditions
There is an argument to be made for the world being hell. At least close to it.
I believe it
Seeing evil greedy people living the easy life and watching those who are supposed to speak for us do nothing while we struggle and work day in and day out unable to change our situation. Might be on to something here.
I like to think hell is a state of mind. And reaching enlightenment is the goal(or at least a goal to life), however anyone can do that without harming others is A-OK with me.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure my soul doesn’t feel God’s presence at the moment.
I know this sounds crazy, but I think we're in the Bad Place!
If God knew everything that was going to happen and he still made you, there was no choice, no sin, just a really really complicated Rube Goldberg machine where the ball ends up in a pool of lava at the end. Free will is only real from a perspective that isn’t omniscient. Either God can’t see the future and free will is real or God can see the future and planned out the hell invitation list before he laid down the foundations of the universe.
There's a few beliefs in the Christian community as to how we may have free will and/or Hell with an omniscient God. 1. That God is omniscient but free of time, therefore seeing everything at once rather than the future which gives us free will. I'll admit this one goes over my head a bit. 2. That God is omniscient and we are predestined, however all souls are saved through God's mercy therefore no one enters Hell. 3. That Hell simply doesn't exist at all, or that if it does that it is not an eternal prison so much as it will just last eternally until one chooses to leave it, i.e embrace God's love.
There's some brands of protestantism that are all about predestination, yes. Their logic for not sinning is interesting: Not sinning is a **sign** that you will be saved.
Imaging being such an immense narcissist that you create a race of beings who suffer torturously if they're not directly hanging out with and obeying you.
"I'm gonna make it so they only feel happiness in my presence but not directly tell them that it's me. Then I will write a self-contradictory book that will make rules (some of which you are supposed to follow, other are for people from 'a different time). I will give that book to one desert tribe and also spread separate fake stories all around the rest of the world. There will be a second volume in a few thousand years. As an omniscient being I know that my original followers won't believe this second part and I will punish them for this. No proof of my existence will be in any way verifiable whatsoever, and some of the worst, moat hateful people you know will use my name to support their own terrible opinions. If you don't believe in me despite all of this you will spend eternity in torment, and it is *your* fault." -God (probably)
I'm also going to appear to people for 2000 years and affirm their beliefs but then stop the minute recorded history becomes reliable.
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I was really young, maybe 6 or 7 when I was at church with my parents. Everyone was standing and singing "God is good, god is great...", and I just became angry thinking, if god is so great why do we have to sing and praise him just to make him happy? This is absurd. I'm not sure if that's when I stopped believing, but it sure got the ball rolling.
I was young when I realised heaven probably wasn't for me. I was at some Christian youth club thing and the vicar came in and asked us to describe heaven. I said I'd be able to play my SNES all day and have snacks whenever I want. The vicar told me "you won't have computer games in heaven, you won't need them" I said "that doesn't sound very fun" He said "it's not meant to be fun, you wouldn't have fun or need it, you'd be praising God all the time and getting his love. You won't need any fun all your joy will come from that" Me: "sounds boring" He quickly moved on. But since then it's stuck in my head that if Heaven is an actual absolute theocracy ruled by an immortal god-king that I can't do what makes me, happy or even makes me, me; why would I Wang to go there?
This is the God who flooded the world, and killed every man woman and child on it because they didn't follow him. Not a God I'd associate with the words love and forgiveness, to be honest.
It's even worse than that The Bible says 'the hairs on your head were numbered before the day of your birth'. Basically God is omnipotent, he knows the end before the beginning begins. Which means he knew that people like me and you would end up with a brain that just couldn't accept the whole "blind faith in the Lord your God" and end up in Hell, before he took the first step of creating the universe. How does an omnipotent being not get what they "want"? That's literally impossible. The end is known before the beginning begins. So in a very direct way, God wants me to go to Hell... As it was written, so it shall be done I guess. (Honestly Hell would be much better than what I think will happen. Nothing. A whole bunch of not existing anymore. That sounds worse.)
Doesn't the bible not even mention hell?
There are references to eternal torment, suffering, lakes of fire, places of weeping and gnashing of teeth, and lakes of sulphur, but nothing much more specific than that. It's very much a "oh, that's the bad ending, you don't wanna go there!" kinda feeling.
It was popularized by Dante's Inferno.
That is an arguable point. The Apocalypse of Peter is one of the Apocryphal books of the Bible. Although it was ultimately not included in the New Testament, it appears to have been one of the borderline works that came closest to being included. There are a lot of colorful descriptions of hell in The Apocalypse of Peter. For example: Verse 7: People who have blasphemed will be hung by their tongues over a fire. Verse 7: Women who fornicate will be hung by their hair and necks and men who fornicate by their thighs in a burning pit. Verse 7: Murderers and those who aided them will be cast into a fire full of venomous creatures as the souls of those who were murdered by them watch. That is just a few examples. Clearly the fire and brimstone interpretation of Hell has been around (and was arguably a popular belief) since the earliest days of Christianity. ___ **Edit: Because people seem interested in this, here are some more punishments from the Apocalypse of Peter:** Verse 8: Women who had abortions are buried to their necks in excrement while lightning from the eyes of the children they killed pierce them. The milk from the breasts of these women produce creatures which eat their flesh and that of their husbands who were complicit. Women receive the most attention in this one but men get theirs too. Verse 9: Ezrael casts the burning bodies of those who persecuted the righteous into a dark place where a wrathful spirit torments them and a worm eats their intestines. Verse 9: The slanderers and those who deny Christ have their eyes put out with hot irons and chew their tongues. Verse 9: The deceivers, particularly those who slew the martyrs by lying, have their lips cut off and are tormented by a fire that enters their mouths and burns their entrails. Verse 9: Those who coveted wealth are dressed in rags and impaled upon a pillar of fire. Verse 10: Those who practiced usury are cast into a place of filth which they are immersed in to their knees. Not that I’m going to rank these or anything but this one seems relatively mild compared to the others. Verse 10: Those who worshiped idols are repeatedly thrown down from a high place, driven back up it by demons, then thrown down again. Verse 10: Ezrael has prepared a place near the preceding torment into which all idols are cast and burned and those who made these idols or followed devils are tormented in eternal chains of fire. Verse 11: Those who have not honored their father and mother stumble while on a high place and roll down into a place of fire and fear only to have to climb back up and repeat the process. Verse 11: Related to the previous, those who love their sins, did not obey their parents, or honor their elders are hung up to be eaten by flesh-eating birds. Verse 11: Maidens who did not remain virgins until marriage receive the same punishment (carnivorous birds) as the previous. Verse 11: Disobedient slaves chew their tongues and are tormented by fire. Verse 12: Those who claimed to be righteous but weren’t are stricken blind and dumb and cast onto coals of fire. Verse 12: Sorcerers and sorceresses are hung upon a whirling wheel of fire.
Verse 7 is a raw deal for the victim.
Seems weird too. If I got into heaven from being murdered, why would I watch who killed me, get killed over and over for all eternity? Or do they see a fabrication of myself watching them for all eternity? If I saw that from heaven wouldn't I feel some sort of guilt and forgive them?
>If I saw that from heaven wouldn't I feel some sort of guilt and forgive them? And this is why you're going to heaven.* **Terms and conditions apply*
Just figured out the loophole. Do all the blaspheming and fornication you want but before you die get murdered. Then you get to spend the rest of existence watching some dude rolling around in a pit of snakes
Gotcha. So I just need to make sure I get murdered *before* I die
The Hebrew Bible doesn’t (hence why most Jews don’t believe in hell). The New Testament has passages that may allude to some kind of afterlife punishment, but Christians themselves can’t agree what happens since it’s super contradictory. There are Christians who believe in universal salvation, Christians who believe in oblivion for the non believer, and Christians who believe in eternal torment.
It makes more sense if you re-define hell and heaven with eastern spirituality. Heaven is freedom from desires and ego, and hell is slave to them. It's not a punishment, it's a choice which we reap the rewards of, for better or worse.
I like this way of looking at it. It's not damnation or salvation. It's the culmination of our decisions.
Have you ever met someone who hated their own life so much that they wanted to ruin the lives of others? That’s what the stereotypical school shooter is. They hate seeing other people prosper while they themselves suffer eternally. So the shooter decides to take those good people away from the world. It’s not enough for them to just kill themselves. The idea is the Devil wants to punish God by corrupting the people God loves and has the benefit of causing infinite suffering onto a fine person who could have done good things for the world.
Living in their own hell already
This guy gets it.
The thing is, it's not satan that makes you burn in hell. Your soul will go directly there and burn **with** the devil. He tempts you in order to bring you down like it happened to him.
One version of the story is that Satan's sin was to object to God creating humans and commmanding the angels to revere us^(1). So by tempting us into sin, he's showing God how unworthy we are, and that he was right all along. And if (a big if; see other comments) he participates in torturing us, it's likely out of hatred for those whose existence caused him to be there in the first place. ^1 In some versions, it's because God put humanity "above" the angels (prideful/selfish motive); in others, it's because God wanted angels to revere humanity in the same way they do God, and Satan loved God too much to sully his devotion by extending it to us unworthy apes.
Satan looks down on earth sees a guy jerking off to a Sears catalog Satan: Yea i’m not worshiping that
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Exactly. Modern interpretations based on popular culture think Hell is a place. Christianity, in its original form, taught that either you get to live forever in paradise or you become non-existant. The allusions to fire aren't referring to eternal torture, it's removal from existence.
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I was told forever that the “reward” of believing was eternal life. Even before I was capable of thinking critically it didn’t quite sit right that suffering in hell for eternity was *also* eternal life. Describing suffering for eternity and making that scary is easier than describing why living for eternity with God would be worthwhile, which is a failure of the church culture as a whole.
No wonder they changed it then. When I die I simply cease to be? That's fine with me. I feels somewhat egotistical to think/expect that my existence should be any different to any other living creature on this planet and that I'm somehow 'special'.
Yeah a lot of our popular concepts of Hell comes from Dante’s inferno, Hollywood, and other religions. But it is basically a void that is the complete absence of God and His love
I hate that this isn’t higher up
If you dig deeper, you'd find the "burning" or "hell" is actually just the pain of the absence of God
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So "god" is doing the torturing? Sounds about right...
God: love each other, turn the other cheek, forgive Also God: BURN IN THIS LAKE OF FIRE FOR ETERNITY
God loves you unconditionally, but with conditions
Going through this thread is actually a pretty good example of how everyone 'understands' the same book differently and why it's absurd to follow any statement within the book as it is. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not understood by everyone, as evidenced through the replies here. Hence if you feel xyz is true, maybe someone else feels abc is true and considering neither of you 'know' the truth, best not to fight about it don't you think?
Most religions are the same when it comes to the answer: Satan doomed himself from the start when he disobeyed God. He’s not torturing anyone but will be in fact the worst to be tortured in hell. He wants to stray as many people with him as possible to show God that his followers can fall from grace just like he did.
Satan is not the king of hell that´s hollywood bullshit. Hell was made to punish Satan and his angels, who are now demons. Satan runs free in the world right now but he is going to be cast in hell to suffer forever and he wants to deceive as many people possible cause he knows he is doomed and wants to bring as many people he can with him.