Again, you couldn’t be more incorrect.

Point out where I’ve “imposed” my point of view? I wasn’t aware that conversation is imposition.

But I perfectly understand how someone can hold views of heaven and hell. I once held views of both. Then of just heaven when I became reconciled to the fact that a loving Logos could not be both loving and expect its loved creation to make an eternal decision through the lens of a mortal mind, so a form of universalism had to be the answer in such a narrative. And now to the point where I think a form of a universal afterlife *could* be a possibility, but it’s an unknown, absolutely unprovable quantity and does not matter in the scheme of life here and now, so it’s not worth my worry.

But what I do dismiss is those who say that they believe in Hell, don’t spend their every waking energy trying to help people avoid it, and then claim to be good people. You cannot actually believe in Hell in the popular Westernized Christian sense and not do everything you can to help people avoid that place. If Hell is a thing as terrible as many Western Christians claim it is, the person who fails to devote their entire being to helping others avoid it either does not actually believe in it because if they did they’d be compelled to devote their entire short, mortal life in service of helping others avoid eternal torment; or they do believe in it, don’t truly care if others go there & don’t work in sufficient service of others, and thereby prove that they themselves deserve that punishment. That’s not imposing a belief, but is a simple pointing out of a fatal flaw in the belief structure of those who claim to believe Hell is a real thing.

Because this is all nothing more than claims and belief anyway. None of it can be proven, no religion or god, and it’s all part of the millennia-old human conversation about what it is to have a meaningful, purposeful life of richness and fulfillment. The moment we stop doing that in sole defense of one belief system, religion, or creed is the moment we’ve lost the plot and we’ve lost sight of what is meaningful.

Like Oprah's "new Jesus" Rob Bell teaches the Bible filtered through his own feelings and beliefs. As a result, many of his messages are filled with his truth not the what is written in the Bible or taught by Jesus. The Bible, in it's most simplest form, is a message about sin (wrong doing) and our need for redemption. Like Adam and Eve, we love to follow our own desires and do what we want. Either in weakness or disobedience we reject God's instructions and as a result face dire consequences (Romans 6:23). Because God loves us he sent his son to atone for our wrong doing so that we may avoid eternal separation from a just God (hell). Jesus was clear that he alone can reconcile us to God (John 14.6) and that no one can come to the father (and receive forgiveness and salvation) except through him.

Ephesians 2:5 says we are saved by faith not by works so that no one can boast so I find it concerning that you feel comfortable judging others efforts as worthy of a trip to heaven or hell. How much time must someone spend spreading the gospel to be deemed a "good person" and worthy of heaven? How do you reconcile the idea of earning a place in heaven when the Bible says that "None is righteous, no, not one." (Romans 3:10)? What made you comfortable to take God's seat on the thrown and judge a mans heart? (Proverbs 21:2).

Rob Bell, and many others, cannot reconcile how a loving God allows people to go to hell and yet rather than urge people to accept Christ now he spreads the message the death is not your last chance to turn away from your sin and embrace Christ. Jesus, and the Bible, are very clear that a day of judgement is coming (Matthew 7:21-23) so what is gained by putting off the decision? If sin leads to death, why would Rob Bell not want you to surrender your life to God immediately and live the abundant life now? If there was another way to salvation then why would God allow his only son to be brutally tortured and horribly killed?
Furthermore, the Bible discusses people who so narrowly escaped the flames of hell that their clothing smelled like smoke (1 Corinthians 3:15). What could possibly be gained by delaying your decision to follow Christ and turn from you sin?

Men like Rob Bell spread their version of "Christianity." They promote a God who just wants to give you a hug and make you feel good. The problem with that is that God cares more about your holiness than your happiness. We are given the challenge to "go and sin no more" (John 8:11) and to "Be holy, for I am holy." (1 Peter 1:16). How can you possibly "walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8) when you're too busy to "acknowledge him in all your ways" (Psalm 3:6) because "love wins"? The God of the Bible is very clear that he is just and any sin or wrong doing must be atoned for. Without the acceptance of Jesus sacrifice you have no atonement for your wrong doing and you will reap the consequence of your actions.

You really wrote that with no sense or irony. How is one christian's observation based on a few people he believes to be atheist more 'conclusive' than these objective studies?

But I've never said my observations are conclusive, I've repeatedly stated they are my personal observations. I just don't think a study of 1,600 people in the U.S is anymore conclusive than my observations from traveling around the world and living in 5 different countries.People living in the U.S don't necessarily have the same experiences as people living in the remote and poor areas of the Philippines or Thailand.

And before you ask for a scientific study to prove that, I'll add that that is also a personal observation and personal opinion.

Sure, that's one interpretation. But it's just that, an interpretation. It's one that makes a claim that it has found "the" truth, a specific path and way to an eternal event, somehow left for mortal minds to figure out through a code hidden in ancient documents thousands of years ago. You don't have to go very far reading respected figures like Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Nouwen, Borg, Heschel, Teresa of Avilia, Simone Weil, etc. to recognize that there's more than one way of looking at the text, its history, its meaning, its interpretations, the overall message it's speaking that goes beyond "sin". For that matter, the creation/fall account in Genesis is purely mythopoetic with its 2 conflicting accounts of "creation," existing alongside the overall arc of the story as humans being co-creators in an ongoing journey of creation, despair, renewal, and redemption.

To arrive at the conclusions you have (and that I used to believe myself) takes a whole heck of a lot of picking, choosing, and ignoring the arc of the story. That kind of scriptural tit for tat can go on all day long; it's gone on for centuries and it's boring. It's meaningless, because it does nothing more than establish clubs and boundaries of who's in, who's out, dismissing the overwhelming majority of human history who doesn't fit neatly into certain little boundaries. That's a form of religious knowledge that lacks true transformative power and lacks the ability to provide purpose and meaning to most people's lives. But if it works for you, so be it. Just don't try to claim it as some unassailable, provable truth, because it's not.

I'm not judging anyone's efforts, merely was pointing out that your statement that you believe in hell is a lie. You don't really believe in hell. I'm saying that if you truly believed in hell you would recognize the fleeting time you have here and disregard everything on this earth except trying to help people find the "truth" you say you believe in, especially if the path is as narrow as you've alluded to. Why wouldn't you, a supposedly good person, disregard everything here on this earth in service of helping people find the way and find salvation? If hell is real and you know it, wouldn't it be monstrous to sit back while people are going there while you know a way to help them avoid it? I mean, you've already found the truth -- as you believe it -- and did so without having to earn anything. Why wouldn't you spread that message from the rooftops far and wide, showing people the free gift? Unless you don't really believe that hell exists...and, let's face it, pretty much the only people that do are the sandwich-board toting street preachers with megaphones standing on college campuses during registration week.

One of the more insightful takes I've seen on the religious wars of the late medieval period was that to understand them you have to appreciate that at the time, most people fervently believed that if you believed the wrong doctrine you would end up in hell. Let's face it, no one, even most religious people put a whole lot of stock in that these days.

So this is your subjective opinion on relative truth?

You may find this interesting. Jordon Peterson has some thoughtful discussions about God, atheism and religion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfvVu7__vy0

I only made it about 5 minutes, he talks a lot without saying anything. Mostly just seemingly saying we can't talk about that because what you and I mean might be different, well define what you mean and lets talk.

I had the same reaction. To be honest, most conversations I have with people about religion tend to be as fruitless. The religious person often quotes scriptures as if they are the truth, and uses that 'truth' as the basis for their arguments, which, as such, become circular. (Similar to Persues above.)

I don't think you're being genuine with regard to my comments. I only brought up the Bible when MidwestRoadie stated something to the effect of Rob Bell being treated like a heretic. I pointed out how how Rob Bell's new beliefs/teachings are in contradiction to the Bible and that's why he was tossed out of the church he created.

While I believe the Bible is the truth it's not effective in discussions of morality or origin with someone else who doesn't believe the same thing.

Speaking of being circular: What (Stephen) Hawking says in his book The Grand Design is the universe exists because it needed to exist, and because it needed to exist, it therefore created itself. His conclusion merely restates his premise, which means his argument is circular. Nonsense is nonsense, even when spoken by a famous scientist (John Lennox).

Fair enough. I guess I misunderstood some of your "Rob Bell" post as your opinion, not reasons 'the church' disagreed with him.

Well, to be fair, they are strictly his opinion and that of the church that disagrees with Bell. Perseus states that Bell's beliefs are "in contradiction" with Biblical text, but what that actually means is that they're contradictory to a specific interpretation of Biblical text, namely that of the conservative arm of the modern Western church, which happens to be the most loudly vocal both in its theology and its politics. This is where these conversations can be frustrating -- someone with a rigid, absolutist belief system, like Perseus, claims that the Bible absolutely, definitively says one very specific thing, end of question, end of story, end of conversation, and there's no other way of looking at the lens of the text because doing so is a threat so some unprovable belief that they label as truth, an assault on their tradition; they believe that the tex has many absolutes.

Then there are those of us like me who find these ancient texts as full of guiding and metaphorical, but not absolute, truths that call us into conversation about what it is to live life well, with meaning, and go through the journey of what it is to be human, a journey continually filled with birth, brokenness, redemption, death, and spiraling back through that throughout our lives. To be told that vantage is wrong is an ignorant position, and frankly it's a position that has driven people away from the church and to new forms of liturgy...like those offered by a guy like Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans, Glennon Doyle Melton, and others who are anathema to those holding onto tradition as if it's an unassailable truth.

And I know it's beating a dead horse in a sense, but the distinction is important to me because the terms "God" and "Christian" have many meanings and neither Perseus nor I, with our distinct viewpoints and the canyon between them, represent anything that actually is.

I used to think of Midwest roadie a seeker of the truth. Maybe he is but he seems quite the provocateur. I don't believe that you believe the existence of hell is a lie. I think it is presumptuous to know what you think. As to doing everything you can to make sure people are not going to hell I think spreading the gospel doesn't involve hitting people over the head with it. That approach seldom works. It may well be you are doing all you can by being friends with people, living a good life and when people see you are different having the ability testify to the gospel as being the reason why. 1 Peter 2:12 and Matthew 5:16. And 1 Peter 3:15. Have a great day.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

 

Then there are those of us like me who find these ancient texts as full of guiding and metaphorical, but not absolute, truths that call us into conversation about what it is to live life well, with meaning, and go through the journey of what it is to be human, a journey continually filled with birth, brokenness, redemption, death, and spiraling back through that throughout our lives.



This is a great description of what the ancient Stoic writing have meant to me. How I can connect these principles of living a virtuous life to those of living a Christian life, so I can find a happy common ground with my wife and in-laws. This is the next great question of my adult life.

I can appreciate and understand that characterization. When it comes to the notion of "hell" and how that's been defined and represented amongst Western Christians, that's a fair assessment of my approach. Personally, I've seen far too many people damaged in this life by an eternal Hell theology of damnation; I've seen far too many people crippled in a sense by the weight of fear the tradition a Hell-based approach to faith can bring on and their inability to escape that tradition. Case in point, I know someone whose only reason for not committing suicide at one point was the fear that they'd go straight to Hell for "giving up on God". OK, I'll admit that from a practical standpoint that belief did something for a moment in their life when they were at their lowest, but it did nothing to take them from that moment and move them toward healing and wholeness; instead they were told that depression was a symptom of a spiritual issue, they needed to turn back to God, and then they'd be healed, the unspoken point of the idea being that they were completely in control of whether or not they were depressed, because if they obeyed and prayed hard enough it would just go away, so they were doomed to a hell here or a hell in an afterlife. Nothing was done to address why they were depressed and in fact they were discouraged from seeking counseling outside of pastoral counseling, which is ill-equipped for such a thing.

It's just a human thing to say that we love or believe in something when our actions don't support it. Sure, I love the idea of having a 6 pack and say I really want a 6 pack; but the truth is that I don't really want it and am content with my outlined yet not chiseled abs, because if I did actually want a 6 pack I wouldn't pick up another couple of macarons to have with my late night coffee after I get the kids to bed. I can say I believe in Hell because it's a convenient, theological tradition that's developed into what it is over the last 150 years, but I don't really believe in it if it's supposed to be as terrifying as we're told, because if I did I couldn't live with that terror while knowing that people I care about might experience it. It's theoretical, comforting beliefs, but we should challenge it when those beliefs are nothing more than belief and have the capacity to actually do damage to others. So, sure, I'll own up to the fact that when it comes to the notion of Hell I'm a provocateur, but overall seek to find meaning in my own life and help others find it in theirs without making claim that what's meaningful to me is "the way."

People are flawed and as a result they're really good at messing things up. I'll be the first to admit the same thing has happened in Christianity and Catholicism. All throughout the Bible people screwed up and we're still screwing things up to this day. I find most churches frustrating and I'm working a masters in counseling because most churches are horribly unequipped to deal with significant issues. After two years of counseling my best friend filed for divorce. His wife has mental health issues but denies it. The church heard about the divorce and a few pastors asked to meet with them. Their answer was to pray more. Wow what great insight! My Mom has had a health issues since her early 20's some well meaning idiots told her if she had enough faith God would heal her. Then, when she wasn't healed she was ashamed of her faith.

All that to say I understand where you're coming from. I have been let down by people and bad teaching and theology. Most churches in America teach that Jesus is your homeboy and wants to make you happy. Then when people are confronted with the hard, bad and ugly parts of life they feel betrayed.

I don't understand how you can say we don't have absolute truths when that very statement is a claim to absolute truth.

He never talks about scripture as a justification for a supposition. He does do some analyses of the Bible. Jordon Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality psychology with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief and the assessment and improvement of personality and performance. I normally don't have a long attention span for conversational Youtube videos but for whatever reason I have watched an array of videos from him discussing and debating a wide array of topics and find him compelling to listen to.

It doesn’t feel like a challenge to maintain my absolutist stance that we cannot call a religious belief an absolute truth with the fact that my statement is one of absolutes. We're talking about two different measurements of absolute, two different things really.


We can measure and observe countless things and call them absolutes, or at least absolute within the context of the knowledge we have inherently and have acquired. It’s not possible to take a specific religion or theological stance and say that it absolutely does contain the path and the definitive truth, at least the truth from a measurable standpoint. I.E. I cannot say that Jesus is “the way, truth, and life” in the sense that Jesus is like a doorway through which I must pass to enter a terrestrial Heaven. First, there’s not a way to show that Heaven actually *is*. There’s not a way to show or prove that Jesus *is* an observable entity or being today. And even if I could prove that those things do exist, I cannot take some ancient Scriptures and show that Jesus is the way to that Heaven.


What we can observe and know is that certain ways of living and approaching life add value to our communities, those around us, and our planet (this in addition to the standard observable knowledge of the sciences). Like emotions, that value may be tough to judge, understand, and measure, but it’s there. In a world filled with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet 7x over, somehow we keep marching forward; in the face of indescribable tragedy, we keep coming together. There’s a buzz, an energy, a soul of humanity that keeps moving on. We cannot measure it, we cannot know why or what it is, but we keep going forward. That thing is how I would begin to describe God, but I cannot describe God because every time one begins to describe or name God they un-describe or de-name the concept of God since the very description is reductionist of the irreducible (stealing the thoughts of the great theologian Karl Barth). I also cannot state that an intangible, inexplicable God is a being if I cannot even state what it is or that it is. Even less so can I state that it’s specifically tied to one particular faith system. Even less than that can I say that a specific interpretation of specific scriptural texts is an absolute. To make God a thing and then tie that god to the specific texts is instead to idolize the belief system or text at the expense of an exploration of what the god is, an exploration that takes all of life and all of one's being as the very essence of what it is to live and explore life.


What I can say is that in my exploration of depth and meaning as a person I personally find comfort in the life and path of the Jesus story. Christianity is my tradition; Jesus is relatable. I can find meaning and depth in the life journey of the Gospels — Matthew written in the spirit of how to live in the exile of the soul and a call to change and mature in response to the "voice" calling within each of us; Mark written to an audience under the boot of empire, called to live through despair and see something worth continuing on for; John written to an audience moving past despair and learning how to find new forms of love and joy after a season of pain; Luke written to call us toward sharing these new lessons in community, a hero’s journey; and these themes constantly repeating themselves throughout our life cycle, making the gospel messages enriching as a part of the full human story. This is a meaningful truth in my life, without specific theological stances being held as pinnacles of a definitive, measured truth. I personally interpret Jesus's credited words as calling us into recognition and exploration of that journey while simultaneously cautioning against taking absolutist stances, as in the ways he challenged the law and challenged people to go deeper into the motivations of soul even if they didn’t technically violate law (But I tell you, even if you’ve looked on someone with lust, etc.). Jesus through this lens is far more meaningful to me than the Jesus as a Lord I must accept and serve. That latter Jesus is one that requires too many mental gymnastics for me, as it’s a statement of an absolute with no ability to measure or observe that it’s an absolute. In practicing a faith that holds nothing as the point of certainty, I can personally hold all things and places as opportunities to experience something divine, even if divine is actually absent; all ground, and this ground, can become a holy ground of sorts. Yet it takes a great faith to go still go through life this way, because the lizard brain seeks a certainty that can be defended.

This is why I am comfortable making an absolutist statement that a religion of absolutes is ignorant, as those absolute claims cannot be proven to actually be absolute; the attempt at proof can disregard as untruth something that others find deeply meaningful. I understand and can accept how those claims of absolutes can be believed and comforting to some people with something like salvation, for example, but what I cannot accept is claims or imposition upon others that it is the truth that must be accepted by all.

While I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a Stoic expert by any means, what I've read of Stoic philosophy has a lot of similar threads to the rich tradition of Christian mystic thoughts, which shares themes with Buddhist thought, which shares themes with mindfulness principals. An interesting, read about this cycle of life journey is Alexander Shaia's work on Quadratos, which may be that middle ground between Stoicism and deep respect to a Christianity which speaks a similar language; Shaia is rooted in a perspective that's historical and in the lens of the ancient perspective that's more focused on the mysterious than it is the religious. Shaia studied under Joseph Campbell, whose work about stories of myth was heavily influential on George Lucas.

The idea that the present idea of hell in Western Christianity doesn't share alot with the both the early church and the church throughout the ages I just don't buy it. The early church surely didn't have a total consensus about hell. However the idea that hell is a place of judgment, that it was is terrible place to be that it is not just metaphorical was the majority view. Luther and Calvin seemed to have believed in hell and the major catechisms of the reformation teach of it existing. If anything the idea that hell is a metaphorical idea or nothing more than a seperation from God seems to have come to prominence recently. C.S. Lewis seemed to believe that seperation from God by itself would be a type of hell. Don't recall what he said about hell itself. This got me looking up people like John Stott who are quoted as not believing in hell but that isn't accurate. He just didn't believe in eternal torment rather that at some point the damned are annilated so their torment doesn't go on forever. Bonhoffer didn't believe in hell but I don't think many people think of him as a theologian. By the way when people talk about Western Christianity I'm not sure what exactly they mean. Aside from the last maybe 300-400 years what would non-Western Christianity be? Coptics or Eastern Orthodox Christians?


I just got myself off anti-depressants. Yeah! The withdrawl symptoms were bad I hope my patients are not experiencing the same things. I don't know for sure what the total cause of the depression was. My dad died, a colleague of 20 years died at age 53 taken away by ovarian cancer and one of my good friends got divorced. But it also was a spiritual thing. I got caught up a bit too much in thinking that having everything okay financially would make we happy and my faith that God would take care of me and my family was somewhat weak.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

I've always assumed Eastern Orthodoxy was what they primarily mean, but I have the impression there were any number of other "churches" outside of the west that probably had different theologies.