People are always coming up to me on the street or in a restaurant, and asking, "John, you have more theological knowledge in your little finger than Augustine Aquinas could fit under that whole weird hat he wore. Won't you please tell us whether or not hell is real?"
"It's not Augustine Aquinas," I gently if exasperatedly correct them. "It's Arminius of Abelard." Then I snag one of their onion rings.
But the point is that I do have an answer to the question of whether or not hell is real. And here it is:
Asking whether or not hell is real is like asking your teammates in a football huddle during a game whether or not they think it's possible, from your guys' current position on the field, to sink a three-point basket.
Wrong question.
Wrong game.
Missing the point.
Here's something I hate: conversations that ostensibly are about answering a question to which, in fact, there is no knowable answer. Getting stuck in a conversation like that transmogrifies my medulla oblongata into a crack-snorting hamster on a wheel. I instantly become a crazed prisoner surreptitiously searching for a hole in the fence he can slip through and run.
So, to state something so obvious I should be embarrassed to type it: No one has any idea -- none, zero, zilch, nada, void, total blank -- what happens to anyone after they die.
Could be heaven awaiting. Could be hell. Could be a Dairy Queen; could be a dentist's waiting room; could be a six-room ranch-style igloo; could be interplanetary pinochle tournament.
No. One. Knows. It's. Not. Knowable.
And if at this moment you're inclined to grab your Bible, stop yourself. It's not in there. You can pretend the Bible tells you what happens to people after they die, but you wouldn't be fooling even yourself. Paul enjoins us to give up childish things, and you can't get more childish than pretending the Bible is a magical window that lets you see beyond life. It isn't. It doesn't. You can't. Trying to use the Bible as proof of what happens after we die is like trying to use a telescope to row a canoe. Wrong instrument. Wrong purpose. Only results in you still haplessly floating about.
The only thing we know for sure about what happens to us after we die is that in this life we don't, can't, and won't have any idea what happens to us after we die.
I believe God made and sustains this world. So for me the All-Time Great Question is: Why not? Why can't we know what happens to us after we die?
Why did God set up this system, in this way? Why that colossal mystery?
What is God trying to tell us by so resolutely not telling us what happens to us after we die?
If while wandering around the inside of an art museum I come across a door that's solidly locked shut, what do I do? Well, if I'm emotionally immature, I might wrestle with the door's handle, or maybe fall to the floor and try to peer beneath it. I might throw a tantrum because I can't get into that locked room. I might squat beside the door, fold my arms, and determinedly try to imagine everything inside the room. There are all kinds of ways I might waste my time outside that door.
But if mature, I will simply assume that those in charge of the museum know what they're doing, and for whatever reason don't want people going in that room. And that would be good enough for me. So I would turn away from the door, forget about the room, and go back out into the museum, where all that wonderful art was waiting to enlighten and inspire me.
I think locking the door between this life and whatever is on its other side is God's way of telling us to get our butts back in the museum.
I think keeping the afterlife a complete mystery is God's way of telling us to pay maximum attention to the life we have on this side of the door. That the ever-fluid now of our life is where the action is. As clearly as he possibly can, I think he's telling us to with full and focused consciousness be in our lives. To love our lives. To believe in our lives. To trust that within every single moment of our lives is virtually everything that we could ever want to know.
When I wrote the founding document for ThruWay Christians, I made this its tenth tenet:
The question of whether or not hell is real is properly subsumed by the truth that a moment spent worrying if you'll be with God in the afterlife is an opportunity missed to be with God in this life.
Or, as we have it in the teen version of that same document:
If you're worried too much about the afterlife, you're not worried enough about this life. Living a life of love means not having to worry about hell.
I refuse to pretend to take seriously the question of whether or not hell is real. I think entertaining the question of what happens in the afterlife is an insult to God and all that he has given us in this life. When we need to know, we'll know.
John also blogs on JohnShore.com. He invites you to "like" his Facebook page.
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Clay Farris Naff: How in the World Did Colton Burpo Beat Me to Heaven?
Bishop Pierre Whalon: Many Mansions in Whose House?
The next question you have is also no. (Is heaven real?)
who decides what is unknowable???????
nothing is unknowable. it is our level of awareness that does not allow us to know what some deem unknowable. the journey of the soul is to awaken to that which was unknowable in our past. with understanding comes power. inner creative power comes without divine awareness; if power comes without divine awareness then problems arise. ie the hitler effect, etc.
come to understand the evolution of consciousness process which is a learning process then we can see that all is knowable with serial experiences that creates time and karma. now all is not knowable as a human. we are in the beginning phases of learning. much to come.
Go to www.insightsofgod.com for a plethora of these accounts.
ALSO, check out this link from a Siberian dig, where high-level sound equipment (which was being used to guide the diggers miles under the earth's surface) literally detected "the sounds of hell". DISCLAIMER... the video is disturbing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iPIXq_jGMQ
http://www.snopes.com/religion/wellhell.asp - "The Well to Hell"
we see what we expect to see. materialists and the religious and the political see what they expect to see and any information outside their cherished beliefs is filtered out of consciousness.
just like here in the physical world different experiences and perceptions for different folks.
as far as drilling down to hell. wow pure ignorance. hades exists but it is not eternal but self imposed. a mental thing. a lower dimension in the hereafter. hades can exist right here on earth. as can joy and bliss. ie depends on one's level of awareness of the underlying reality of phenomena.
now can one be a confirmed capitalist and a follower of jesus. I think not. they are opposites in their approach to compassion for others. it is interesting that the more one is an evangel christian; the less that person has understanding of the teachings of jesus.
http://www.truechristianityevangelism.org/hell.html
If any want to see hell scriptures in their Quran they may click this link and see some
http://www.truechristianityevangelism.org/koranhell.html
You are aware that in the Bible Jebus says the exact opposite. I dont get GnuChristians.
I find your take on the nature of the Afterlife in relationship to life in this world, to be refreshingly similar to the Buddha's take on the nature of God in relationship to human suffering.
He said that wondering about the nature of God in world defined by human suffering is like being shot by a poison arrow...and insisting that you have to know the name of the archer, his entire family history, the type of wood the bow was made from, and the conditions under which it was launched before you will take the arrow out and treat the wound.
The Buddha's point was the same as yours. Wrong questions. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong situation. There is no way that one can answer any of those questions simply by looking at the arrow protruding from one's chest. So just take the arrow out, and treat the wound.....by concentrating on how to live in a way that minimizes suffering for self-and-others in THIS world.
..and don't waste time on contemplating the unknowable.
1. Because expending time and energy trying to contemplate the unknowable may distract one from the matter of how to best live in THE ONE life that we know that we have...
2. Any insight that you get from having done so would simply be your own opinion on the matter. Since there will be no way to objectively confirm any of its validity.
3. Human nature is such that religious beliefs tend to be incorporated into people's sense of personal and group identity....as well as their perceptions of what is Absolute Right and Wrong and Absolute Good and Evil. So you lay the groundwork for sectarian strife and violence that needlessly complicates the matter of living in harmony with others.
So....unless one can find a way to apply such contemplation to the business of improving one's own experience of life here in this world AND improve how one treats all people that one comes into contact with during the business of daily living....
...I see no point in the pursuit.
Now, it can be done. But one must first understand the necessity of it being so.
I think you are confusing questions of God's and the afterlife's existence as questions pertaining to addressing human suffering. They aren't. They are intellectual questions. Moreover, we can know. We do know if there is an afterlife, what we know is there is no afterlife. Once the body including the brain dies, the mind also dies. If there is no immediate suffering to address and the answers are knowable, why not contemplate them?
1. The point that the Buddha was making was one of fundamental WISDOM...and of focus. The point of the Buddha's teachings is to help people to eliminate human suffering by teaching them the ways that their own mind works to misperceive and mis-relate to Reality in ways that promote and sustain suffering.
Contemplating the answers unknowable questions is like dog chewing on a bone. It may be satisfying to intellectual hunger...but it is a distraction from dealing with suffering. The value of contemplating such questions by the HEALTHY may be debatable. Contemplating such questions while one has a poison arrow sticking out of one's chest---and IN LIEU of dealing with the pressing matter of that wound----is insanity.
2. I'm not confusing anything. The parallel has nothing to do with any relationship between the afterlife, God, or suffering. I drew the parallel, because both the Buddha and blogger are communicating the same basic point of WISDOM.
FIRST THINGS FIRST. Concentrate your time and energy on those things that matter....and do not be distracted by things that do not advance that cause. Even worse don't be distracted by things that are fundamentally unknowable, and therefore irrelevant to those things that matter.
...and I am in NO position whatsoever to legitimately challenge your subjective belief that you have.
However, there is no way that you can OBJECTIVELY prove that you have been given such knowledge.
At least while you are still alive.