Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua Forum

Blind Chihuahuas Playground

Not logged in. · Lost password · Register
Forum: Seeking Truth: Religion & Science RSS
Going to Hell
Is arrogance really necessary to monotheism?

Compose post

Username:
Subject (optional):
Verification code: VeriCode Please note the verification code from the picture into the text field next to it.
Please shorten the quotation to the essential to improve readability.
You are not logged in and writing this post as a guest.
Help
Smileys: :-) ;-) :-D :-p :blush: :cool: :rolleyes: :huh: :-/ <_< :-( :'( :#: :scared: 8-( :nuts: :-O
Special characters:
Smaller – Larger +
Text length: ? characters (Maximum: 10,000)
Post options
·
The last posts in this thread   (newest first, maximum 10 posts):
Wings 2008-03-11, 01:29
Member since Mar 2008 · 9 posts
Show profile · Link to this post
Subject: OH HELL !
I found the door to Salvation in the center of a self-created hell...In recovery I waded into a few other self-created hells; some were in mansions some were in rescue missions, jails,or other institutions...God sends His Peace and Love to share and try to be His light to those who are lost . . .I agree with the scooper,if I understand him right...I couldn't save myself I sure don't know who goes to hell and who doesn't,but I don't think it's in my job discription . . .I just know I don't want to go there again...
Avatar
scooper 2008-01-13, 20:38
User title: Pooper Scooper
Member since Apr 2006 · 62 posts · Location: United States
Group memberships: Language Moderators, Members
Show profile · Link to this post
Persecutors? Just persecutors? Perhaps Hell is for the unrepentant. Those who refuse to encounter the truth about themselves. Since when we encounter God we encounter Truth (with a capital "T") those who refuse to encounter the truth about themselves will flee encounter with God. And that flight is Hell.

We are all tempt to flee God's Presence. (Even when we seek God, is it really God we want, or our idea of God, our private idol?) Yet we have a friendly guide in the Risen Christ, who forgives us being like those who crucified Him.
Because there is more to Religion than pleasing your Imaginary Friend.
mairnealach (Guest) 2008-01-13, 13:57
No profile available.
Link to this post
My guess is that Ms. O'Connor understood Hell not as something which grants dignity, but as an artifact of the dignity granted by God.

That is, if Jesus is correct when he teaches there is an unpardonable sin, and if that sin looks like the kind of persecutory hardheartedness which Jesus continually railed against, then Hell, to those being persecuted, is one of the corollaries of God's faithful deliverance. It's the place that oppressors will be cordoned off for eternity, unable to oppress any longer.

Rescue. Sounds fairly dignifying to me.

Of course, your first post was not arguing against the propriety of persecutors going to hell. It was arguing against the propriety of saying somebody goes to hell based on a geographical or historical accident of birth. On that, we agree whole heartedly.
Avatar
scooper 2007-10-07, 22:19
User title: Pooper Scooper
Member since Apr 2006 · 62 posts · Location: United States
Group memberships: Language Moderators, Members
Show profile · Link to this post
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?

Mairnéalach, how in hell does hell separate us from animals and give us dignity? I just don't follow that one.
Because there is more to Religion than pleasing your Imaginary Friend.
Mairnéalach (Guest) 2007-10-07, 03:35
No profile available.
Link to this post
If there were no hell, we would be like the animals. No hell, no dignity. -Flannery O'Connor
Deacon Tom (Guest) 2007-08-10, 15:24
No profile available.
Link to this post
Subject: Heaven, Hell, Wind and Salt
Feel feel feel. I feel this. I don't feel that. I am comfortable with this and not that. Hmmm. Christopher Reeve was not uncomfortable with his paralysis because he couldn't feel anything. So are we in hell because of pain? Are we in heaven when we are in ecstacy? Perhaps hell is no feeling at all. So if you have pain in this temporal world, or feel uncomfortable in this temporal world, or feel anything in this temporal world...maybe you can conclude that after death there is a heaven because heaven is a perfect feeling while hell is no feeling at all. Hell would be the quadraplegism of eternity....we would be conscious of our non feeling, of our aloneness, of our emptiness.

There are good people and there are bad people. on the whole if a person is good, they will be rewarded. If there is no hell, there is no heaven either. But I think the rewards and punishments of this world are the indicators that say that in a non temporal sense, there will be a place where suffering will have been duely "earned" and there will be a place where true happiness will be available if we accept the fact that Christ earned it for us. But if there is no hell, then why do I bother being good. I might as well be a hedonist, glutton, thief, all for me and none for you. There is a place in eternity with no bounds (so it is not a place really) It is a feeling that we will never move from the position we are in ---- totally frozen like Lot's wife, forever having to stand unmoving while all else moves around us and we are not allowed to interact or react or even protect ourselves from erosion into nothingness. That is hell for looking back into the mirror in self admiration (narcisissm). Let's hope that when we look into the mirror, mirror on the wall, we will see the face of Christ and that is all." If that is the case then we will have the freedom not to be a pillar of salt and we can move in the ocean of heaven like the fish of the sea who can move in all directions unencombered and breathing the water in that sustains them. Hell is being out of the water where the winds erode us into nohtingness or the windless day cannot move the ship of our souls in anydirection. We are subject to lapping waves against the hull as we linger forever in an ocean in a boat with no destination. It is the "death" of the Dead Sea where you cannot even sink to the bottom but float interminably as the salt corrodes and burns the soul starving for movement and creativity and invention, which is the offering of our first fruits to the God who invented us.It hurts to offer our best and first fruits. It doesn't "feel" good in other words to give away my best. We like to hoard. And yet it is what is appropriate to prompt the gentle breezes of the four directions to move our sails,of our oblivious ship cloer to the shores a new and better world...an undiscovered country promised to us thousands of years ago to a man named Abraham. Let us not be like Lot's wife who "felt" like she wanted to go back to Sodom. Let us not act out our "feelings". Let us set our face like flint to go to Jerusalem knowing we are ready to experience the vastness of God's will in following the narrow way, through the center of the Cross into the very pores of the wood weaving our way through inner space and out again on the other side where we find we have wings and really can fly -- resurrected like the Phoenix.

As for my Chihuahuas? Well they would be the first to offer themselves up against a pitbull to do what is defined as no greater love. There is something of truth in the behavior of the Chihuahua....they are like David with the sling hurling the stone against the giant. Enough for now.
misericordia (Guest) 2007-03-04, 17:10
No profile available.
Link to this post
I believe that hell and heaven are a continuum of our life here.  So that, if I am full of rage and have no peace, my hell will be more of the same, but without the opportunity to directly affect my circumstance or state of mind/heart and soul.

And if I have peace with myself, but it is a false peace, ie; sitting on my laurels or buckets of money, feeling secure because of wealth, talent, youth, beauty or position, without stepping outside of my comfort zone to help others, then I am doomed by virtue of the truth I will see at my death/judgement.
(I include jihadists in this category).

I am catholic and believe the three Abrahamic religions should remain distinct from the other and be respected by all three.  For, who are we to limit God in His grand expression to man.

We are the sons and daughters of Abraham, we should silently pray for peace in the manner God has shown us.

I wish we could stage a world-wide silent pray-in for peace, all 3 of us, like Gandhi did to free India.  (And did you know that though he was not a christian, Gandhi studied the New Testament and Tolstoy to devise the peaceful resistance movement.) ...figures that a non-christian would get the message exactly right.
Avatar
scooper 2006-09-11, 20:55
User title: Pooper Scooper
Member since Apr 2006 · 62 posts · Location: United States
Group memberships: Language Moderators, Members
Show profile · Link to this post
KayNKansas,
Welcome! Ah, but the declaration that hell does not exist is also arrogant, is it not? I think that judgment and redemption are two ways of experiencing God's presence. It all depends on whether you are trying to hide anything from yourself in the encounter.
Because there is more to Religion than pleasing your Imaginary Friend.
Avatar
scooper 2006-09-11, 20:51
User title: Pooper Scooper
Member since Apr 2006 · 62 posts · Location: United States
Group memberships: Language Moderators, Members
Show profile · Link to this post
Chasid,
I don't believe that people who believe other religions are going to hell. But Zarqawi thought he was going to heaven for what he did, a ridiculous proposition. I wanted to ridicule it by lampooning the jihadi announcements of "martyrdom" which resemble wedding announcements.
Because there is more to Religion than pleasing your Imaginary Friend.
KayNKansas 2006-09-08, 22:51
Member since Sep 2006 · 1 post · Location: Lenexa, KS
Group memberships: Members
Show profile · Link to this post
Subject: Going to Hell




I have evolved from brainwashed former Roman Catholic to a place where there is just "God and me," and I like it here!  It was scary at first, of course, the idea of being responsible not only to, but for, myself.  And then there I was, feeling very free, brave and strong.

So I concur that hell, as defined by organized religion, does not exist in its depiction.  Revelation proved that for me, because when I read it in it's entirety I felt no fear but I kept 'hearing the same message:  "I am the Lord thy God and there shall be no other gods before me..."  or words to that effect.

And I concur that God alone can make the decisions that reflect truth and justice.

But sometimes I think that organized religion is here for a purpose other than those it proclaims.  I believe that it is here to be 'outgrown,' or 'opened,' and that in every one of us there exists the light and the power to love openly.

Is that not the message brought by Christ?
This board is powered by the Unclassified NewsBoard software, 20100516-dev, © 2003-10 by Yves Goergen
Current time: 2010-09-08, 17:39:13 (UTC -07:00)