Grateful For The Hell Teaching.

[Llwellyn]

There is a certain class of people who restrain from brutalizing each other and are spurred to consider one another only because they believe in divine destructive retribution. Thank God this belief and teaching exists, for their sakes and for ours.

 

So long as these people are capable of believing in "divine vengeance," then it is best that they do believe it. If they were better men and women who wouldn't need such a motivation, then they wouldn't be capable of believing it. If they can be satisfied with religious ghost stories, then they must, ipso facto, be persons who should be threatened with divine brutality in order to behave, since reason and their own moral sensibilities can't keep them in check.

 

While they are capable of being satisfied with the Hell teaching, there is no advantage in their becoming intellectually convinced that such thoughts were wrong. I would not speak a word to persuade them of it. Success would be worthless. In fact, if such people no longer believed in divine wrath, they would be a menace to themselves and to the rest of us.

 

That is why I am grateful for the hell teaching.

[R. S. Martin]

You bring out an interesting point, Llwellyn. maybe there's a better place to begin the work than on their hell belief. I do believe the hell belief is dangerous and damaging. It is abusive of children, as testified by the many adults who tell stories on this site of crying themselves to sleep as little children (ages 6-8) because of their religious fears, not least of which was the fear of hell. Or of the rapture and being left behind. I wish Josh McDowell had been one of those.

[Vigile]

I disagree. I see no evidence that the hell doctrine restrains anyone from acting out on their sociopathic tendencies. In fact, a sociopath by his/her very nature does not feel the common restraints that the rest of us do. The rest of us do not act to hurt others, not through fear of eternal retribution, but through fear of current retribution and because we were indoctrinated with common societal values during our formative years.

 

Those who do believe in this doctrine, however, have throughout history acted against their common societal values, replacing them with their self-assured eternal values, to the harm of countless others who represented "evil" to them.