Over the years I have been increasingly troubled by the doctrine of Hell. As my love for God and my neighbor increased, the horror at the thought of many of those I love suffering eternal punishment increased with it. In other words, this was not a crisis of faith, it was the result of my faith. The more I experienced God's grace in my life and grew to share Jesus' heart for the lost, the more I was troubled by Hell.
Now what makes this even more complicated is the fact that most of the statements about Hell found in the Bible are said by Jesus. The one who is leading me to question Hell, seems to be the very one who teaches it. Similarly, Jesus is known for preaching love of enemies and nonviolence, yet many of his teachings use very violent imagery. Again, how can we understand these apparent contradictions? How can we think of Jesus as compassionate and loving when he says such harsh things?
Consider the parable of the unmerciful servant (Mt 18:21-35). Jesus tells the story of a king who forgives his servant a huge debt, but then when he hears that this same servant has refused to forgive a very small debt, the king becomes enraged. Jesus tells us that the king "handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed" and he concludes, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart."
Are we to conclude from this that if we don't forgive others that God will torture us in hell forever? It is crucial here to look at the context: Jesus tells this parable in response to a question from Peter where he asked Jesus "how many times must I forgive, seven times?" Jesus answers "no, seventy-seven times" (v. 21-22). So if we read this like an accountant we would need to conclude that we should forgive 77 times, but God does not do this. Reading like an accountant, we would conclude that God does not even forgive seven times like Peter suggests, or two times for that matter -- you just get one chance and that's it. God here appears at first infinitely merciful, forgiving a huge debt, and then suddenly flips and wants to torture us forever.
Does God suffer from some form of borderline personality disorder where he is at first loving and forgiving, and then suddenly becomes brutal and merciless? Are we more merciful than God? No and no! Parable are analogies, and as everyone knows if any analogy is pressed too far it becomes absurd (as demonstrated here). The broad point Jesus is making here is that it would be really horrible if we were forgiven a great debt, but then turned around and were merciless to others. We should treat others with the same grace that we need, and which God has richly shown us.
This is an interpretation that fits with the overall point of this pericope. To read it literally would mean that the point Jesus was making to Peter was completely undermined by the parable he told to illustrate it -- be merciful as your Heavenly Father is... who is not merciful at all. Clearly, that cannot be what Jesus was trying to convey! To understand Jesus we need to listen tin the context of his larger point, which here is about radical unconditional grace.
Now, let's take this a step further: In the above parable Jesus compares God to a king who -- in the way dictators do -- flies into a rage and orders torture for an ungrateful servant. Yet if we keep reading in Matthew, we see that a couple chapters later, Jesus questions the entire idea of comparing God to a king:
"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them... Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave -- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:25-28).In other words, Jesus models the way of God, not as one who "lords it over others" but as the servant Lord. Following Jesus means rejecting the way of domination, the way of kings.
To the extent that you have embraced that idea, you will have a problem with the above parable of the king. You'll read "God is like an angry king" and think "No, Jesus teaches us that God is not at all like a king, God is like a suffering servant," and you would be absolutely right. In each of these parables, Jesus is turning our thinking upside down. In the first parable, Jesus replaces escalation of violence with the escalation of mercy. In the second he is similarly dismantling our understanding of greatness, and redefining how we see God. God is the servant. Power is about lifting people up, not pushing them down.
In doing this, Jesus not only dismantles our traditional concepts of what justice and power are about, at the same time, he also dismantles his own parables. Once we have embraced Jesus' understanding of servant lordship, we cannot accept the crude comparison of God to a volatile dictator. So when reading these parables as disciples of Jesus, we need to keep in mind that each one is beginning with the assumptions of the crowds. He begins there, with their familiar ideas of kings and slaves and torture and then introduces a radical new idea into the mix which flips one of those ideas on its head. The more we embrace these ideas of Jesus' "upside-down kingdom," the more we will have trouble with the worldly assumptions that these very parables are situated in. That's not because we are disagreeing with Jesus here, but because we have fully embraced his new way of thinking. So the more we follow Jesus, the more we'll question the worldly values the parables are set in.
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If "love wins", then what does God do when we don't forgive our brothers and sisters from our heart? It just seems to me that Derek's position of moral universalism undermines the parable itself.
Derek also says, "Parable are analogies, and as everyone knows if any analogy is pressed too far it becomes absurd." I agree, more or less. Here's the thing I don't get though. Derek takes this first parable and tries to make it work with Jesus' words about the Son of Man coming as a suffering servant. Jesus is referring to himself. Is Derek saying that this verse also means that the Father is a suffering servant? The Father didn't die on the cross, Jesus did. Yes, they are both God, but the Father is a separate person from the Son in the Trinity. It sounds to me like he's making a curious hermeneutical error, possibly adopting a modalistic view of the Trinity. In which case, he'd need to defend that interpretation.
There is a much simpler answer to that, than a both loving and hateful anthropomorphic power to be in charge.
The original Greek word here in Mt 18:34 is βασανιστής (basanistes) which literally means "torturer." It is the noun form of the verb βασανίζω [basanizo] "to torture." Louw Nida (one of the major scholarly Greek lexicons) writes that it refers to "a person serving as a guard in a prison, whose function was to torture prisoners as a phase of judicial examination," but then continues to say,
"It is difficult to know in the case of Mt 18:34 if βασανιστής is to be understood in the specific sense of ‘torturer’ or only in terms of ‘prison guard.’ The use of βασανιστής in Mt 18:34 may simply be an instance of literary hyperbole. As such it may be possible to translate the expression in Mt 18:34 as ‘his master was very angry and handed him over to prison guards to torture him until he should pay back the whole amount.’"
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God and his son, Jesus are of like mind and hate the thought of burning anybody even the worst of humans. To be given a sentence of everlasting death without the option of being resurrected by God is a worst sentence that burning in hell for all eternity. At least you are still alive while burning in hell forever. So, if people cannot even live past 100 years old, how long do they get to live in hell?
Evidence that God and Jesus has nothing to do with burning anyone: Jeremiah 32:35:
"Furthermore, they (pagan nations that did not believe in God) built the high places of Ba´al that are in the valley of the son of Hin´nom, in order to make their sons and their daughters pass through [the fire] to Mo´lech, a thing that I (God) did not command them, neither did it come up into my heart to do this detestable thing, for the purpose of making Judah sin.’
How many children were taught to fear hell today? Tens, hundreds of thousands?
2) Ref: "Jesus are of like mind and hate the thought of burning anybody". Although I agree with you that God and Jesus hate the thought of anyone burning in hell, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist as referenced in the words of Jesus. Please explain Matthew 5:21-22 and Jesus' parable about Lazarus, the beggar, and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31).
I see you've been struggling with some of the Biblical teachings. You identified the problem of hell; infinite suffering for finite evil, and often infinite suffering for failure to obey, or failure to be born into the right culture, or failure to take the word of one of many competing religions that have no greater evidence than one another.
Then you make the move of dismissing hell, and saying it is rather a metaphor. You did so with a few passages, not trying to deal with the actual passages about hell:
15:6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
God is, after all, loving, and hell just fades away.
This is a bit of intellectual gymnastics. In an effort to preserve your deeply-held religious beliefs, you've rationalized away a central doctrine. This is how Christianity was taught for millenia. It's in the scriptures. It's in the writings of the early church fathers, all the major literature.
If you really have come to terms with the ideal of hell, I suggest you re-visit it. There is no satisfactory explanation that excuses God and Jesus. There are, however, two explanations that will logically suffice: these books were written by men, and no such place as Hell exists, or second, that the doctrine of Christianity has quite wicked and immoral aspects to it.
Here I am simply following basic principles of biblical interpretation: considering genre (a parable), reading a passage in context (explaining to Peter why we should forgive more than seven times), and focusing on authorial intent (teaching that we should show great mercy as God has shown us great mercy). This is an interpretation that fits with the overall point Jesus is making in this pericope. To read it literalistically would mean that Jesus decided to undermine the point he was making to Peter with his own parable. That would be silly.
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You seem in contrast to be proposing a black and white either/or alternative: either it is evil or it is a lie. You are disturbed by my arguments that are not this simplistic and call them "rationalizations" and mental "gymnastics." But understanding a book that was written in another language, time, culture, and worldview is complex. So as much as it might be nice if were as simplistic as you seem to want it to be, understanding how the Bible might speak to us today in our own context requires some sophistication and complexity (not to mention a bit of humility).
What I find the most troubling however is not only this black and white approach, but moreso how you seem to want to shut down any kind of questioning and struggle inside of faith. In your view one apparently either blindly obeys, or abandons their faith all together. I would say in contrast that a rich an vibrant faith is one that can allow for questioning, and allow for nuance.
I think either applying a literal interpretation, or discarding the texts as ignorant (in a non-pejorative sense) politicized hearsay plagiarized from other older religions are two legitimate approaches. Your approach, a middle-ground called biblical interpretation, is what I don't view as legitimate.
As you say, you "understand the violent imagery... in the context of his teaching on nonviolence." You say the passage is about mercy. While we can't say what the actual authors meant, I doubt that 1) their writing reflect Jesus's opinions given the chronology, 2) they are particularly wise thinkers, given some of their other teachings.
The reading does fit with *your* conception of what you understand (or prefer) Jesus's message to be. But how can you reconcile mercy with hell? I submit that it's not doable. You must eliminate hell from your ontology; it's a choice, and the burden is on you to show why only the kind and moral passages apply.
Interpretation works for poetry - to some extent - but to then infer the nature of the divine from contradictory accounts written by 1st and 2nd century humans...
This seems to be the core issue. Can the practice you call interpretation be applied to pre-scientific literature and deliver valid results?
The story of the Jews begins with God handing Moses the 10 Commandments and continues with Moses wielding super-natural powers against his 'nation's' adversaries. So it came as quite a shock to the Hebrews, when, around 600-BCE,their people were conquered by Mesopotamia. They had no explanation for this and could not explain subsequent further subjugations. So the Jews invented the notion of angels and demons. This concept evolved until the point where a full fledged hell was alleged to exist. However, most Jews of the year zero were not especially interested in this area of theology. But the Jesus sect was. It was more then an interest and bordered on an obsession.
Now, here's the part some people may really object to: Jesus was not planned to be the high priest at all. He was the king, who, while technically outranking the high priest, even in religious matters, was not expecting to become a priestly figure. That was intended to be John the Baptist's position, until John had his head removed. At that point, Mr. Jesus took on dual roles of king and high priest. And he taught his followers what he had learned, albeit with some modifications. He really did not invent the religion later known as Christianity. He merely re-fitted it for better results then John had.
Ref: "10 Commandments and continues". Should we ignore the supernatural 10 plagues upon Egypt and the crossing of Red Sea that happened before the 10 commandments?
Ref: "quite a shock". The prophets were not shocked. Those that listened to the prophets were not shocked.
Ref: "had no explanation for this". Are you saying that the prophets had no explanation for why the Northern and Southern kingdom lost to Assyria and Babylon?
Ref: "600 BCE...So the Jews invented the notion of angels and demons". The story of Job mentions Satan and the host of angels. Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden by angels who also guarded the Tree of Life. Abraham was visited by angels before Sodom's destruction. Elisha asked for his servant's eyes to open and see the vast army of angels surrounding them. All of these events happened before Assyria and Babylon.
Ref: obsession. How many times is hell mentioned in the NT? How many times is love mentioned in the NT?
Ref: "Jesus was not planned to be the high priest at all". Are you saying that God (who is omniscient) missed this point? How do you know of the original plan (did God personally tell you)?
The story of the HEBREWS starts with Abraham. The story of the JEWS begins with Moses and the 10-Cs.
Suggest you read: "The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic" by D.S. Russell.
"The first and greatest of all Jewish apocalyptic writings, the book of Daniel was occasioned by the by the oppression of the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-163 BC)."
I think you are nitpicking against my statements.
And for that reason I will not take your remarks too seriously. Never mind who told me what. Perhaps I have an ancestor who was there and I have managed to extract some inherent memory. You have a better source? Fine then, believe as you please. Here's another one you are bound to LOVE:
The original Jesus prophecy was that he was going to be killed and resurrect 3 days later, only, he was supposed to STAY AROUND and finish God's renovation of mankind. When that failed to materialize, his Jewish followers began to lose interest. But the Gentiles could still be counted on to accept a good story, especially if believing required little if any sacrifice on their own part. Hence, pork is sanctified and circumcision, which went back to Abraham became optional.
But I have to agree, if you leave off the part about torture, then the boss/god comes off pretty well. Wouldn't we all come off better on paper if our stories were edited to purge the things that reflect badly on us. Couldn't anything be made better that way. If everyone saw things that way, then certain non-forgiving debt collectors might have been spared torture.