|
Many years ago there was played on a popular late-night talk show (a program dedicated to paranormal topics), an audio clip said to have been taken of vocal pandemonium originating way beneath the earth. I recall this indelible recording to this day: the chilling sound of screams and hollering, supposedly of people inhabiting the inner region of the planet. I forget how this bit of audio was said to have come into being, and it’s likely that most of the nation-wide listeners thought it nothing more than a hoax.
What to make of some “deathbed visions,” in which loved ones, at the bedside of the soon-to-be departed, have witnessed the dying, amidst their slipping in and out of wakefulness, describe horrific images of the afterlife just prior to their passing? Some of these near-decedents have been known to shout out terrified final words; wide-eyed, their mouths agape.
Recently, I re-watched an excellent documentary titled “Root Of All Evil,” hosted by Richard Dawkins. Although I am not an atheist as Mr. Dawkins is, there is a part in the program in which the belief in everlasting torment is discussed. It has the host seated in conversation with a child psychologist. They discuss the doctrine of Hell and how this is particularly unsettling and potentially psychologically damaging for a small child to be indoctrinated in. Mr. Dawkins is also shown attending a religiously based theater that specializes in the putting on of Hell-themed morality plays.
The Bible is very explicit when it speaks of what will become of the damned. Still, there are a few unorthodox sects that teach that when the Bible speaks of torment and lakes of fire, that this language is meant to be understood metaphorically; that no God of love would literally condemn the wicked to an eternity of conscious agony. I suppose anyone can put their own euphemistic spin on what is plainly worded in Scripture but it doesn’t alter the fact of what the Bible unequivocally states. Theologians have noted that Christ speaks more of damnation than he ever does of heaven. The account at Luke 16:19-31, of “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” always disturbed me growing up as a child within a Bible-believing community that nevertheless taught soul-sleep and annihilationism for the unrighteous. (If but a parable and not an actual past or future experience, why would Christ, of all the scenarios imaginable, choose to use such a disturbing setting to illustrate a teaching, if only to be interpreted allegorically?) Numerous verses in the books of Matthew and Revelation refer to Hell, without outright calling the condition or place by this name. (The word “rapture,” for example, is not used in the Bible, but the teaching of it is explictly expressed.) The teaching of eternal torment it is also mentioned in passing within the Epistles (e.g. Hebrews 10:27).
Do I believe in Hell? If it’s real it really doesn’t matter what my belief of it is. If it exists, I don’t think we humans “create our own” version of it, as is commonly thought by many afterlife believers nowadays, but rather will take the Bible’s word for it that it’s a place of judgment reserved for impenitent sinners and deniers of Christ.
It is one, if not a major, reason why I am not a Christian. It has nothing to do with my wanting to do my own thing, living apart from God, or deceiving myself into thinking that I can be (like) God. I simply cannot love and would never want to worship a deity that condones torture.
|