Popehat: I always kind of shuddered at the “someday every knee will bow, someday every tongue will confess” songs and references, because of this “I can’t wait until you are writhing in a lake of fire” vibe.

I always kind of shuddered at the “someday every knee will bow, someday every tongue will confess” songs and references, because of this “I can’t wait until you are writhing in a lake of fire” vibe.

I mean, if the concept that unbelievers will suffer incredibly gives you “comfort,” I have to ask what exactly the “good news” is to you.

Jesus: Someday you will be with Me in Heaven. Most of crowd: Hallelujah! Jesus: Certain others will be in Hell Joel Berry: WOOOOOOO all right SUCK ETERNAL FIRE, OTHERS [pumps fist Arsenio audience style] WOOF WOOF WOOF Jesus: . . .

For some, it's less about the actual punishment so much as the validation. Their entire vibe is "Hah hah I was RIGHT and you were WRONG!"

Yep, this is absolutely, 100% it. Big "wait till my dad gets home" energy

Jehovah's Witnesses have developed a version of this recently where there's no hell but most people will still be slaughtered in Armageddon, and then all the "righteous" people left on Earth will spend the next several years cleaning up the bodies(???) and they fantasize about it every single day

Sounds like a really fantastic ideology. Very sane.

Yes, it's all very coherent and definitely makes people want to live alongside them for eternity

So their religion is like The Jesus Christ Crime Scene Cleanup Company?

It's a very welcoming work culture

This could be an illustration from the next Ari Aster film.

They should just play Visceral Cleanup Detail ffs

I caught up with an old coworker and it wasn't long before he said he was proud to be a racist and misogynist and was really hoping God would get on with the smiting real soon now. He's been Married and divorced twice. Hopefully he loses my phone number.

Me, I'd employ those handy little phone menu items that say "Block This Caller," then "Delete Contact."

The Bible ends at Malachi for those folks...

Hell isn’t in the Hebrew Bible; we Jews don’t have it. It’s from your “post-Malachi” material.

I love it when Christians blame NT ideas on the Jews, truly. Makes my day.

Please excuse me because I am quite ignorant, but I looked back over the posts and didn't see any reference to Jews. Is there a dog whistle that I missed? I can't hear most of them.

Ehhhh. That depends on a fairly narrow definition of "Hell" - there are verses in Navi about eternal punishment, and the concept of a place where bad people go to be punished after they die is all over the Talmud and Midrash. But we don't anticipate eagerly watching our foes being thrown into fire.

Our Sheol & Gehinnom aren’t the same thing as Christian Hell. Sheol is just an underworld, not a punishment. Gehinnom was conceived as more hell-like in Talmudic & Medieval times (the latter under cultural influence of Christianity), but the punishment was capped at 1 year, max. It’s never eternal.

Please don't say this sort of thing. While the Tanakh doesn't end with Malachi because Jews use a different order, the whole "Old Testament Bad, New Testament Good" meme is still offensive and contributes to anti-Jewish prejudice. Also, evil Christians are still Christians.

I'm not calling you an antisemite, to be totally clear. It's just wrong (morally and factually) to blame some Christians being awful on their believing in the same books Jews do.

Christians worry far too much about being called an antisemite. They don’t actually give two shits about doing Judenhass. Judenhass is an activity one does, not an identity. Except there are some twisted fucks who do make it their identity. But I don’t think that’s the case here.

Important note: conservative Christians accuse Liberal ones of picking the parts of the Bible they like. In turn Liberals point out that they only like the Old Testament as a way of saying they don’t actually follow Jesus. The Old Testament is part of the Bible making it Christian.

C.S. Lewis explicitly agreed with you on that last point.

Huh. That's good to know.

These guys believe in the vengeful, smiting Jesus of the Book of Revelations, rather than the love-thy-neighbor, do-unto-others version featured in the gospels.

Don’t go preaching that Woke Jesus stuff.

Also the whole "*MY* sins will be forgiven but *YOUR* sins (which are of a type that I personally don't think should be forgiven) will most certainly land you in hell" thing

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Whoever wrote Matthew understood humans.

So what he's saying is unless you're like me go fuck yourself....or did I miss something

I don't really understand how wishing eternal damnation/torture on others gets you into Heaven, too. But the whole concept of Christian Heaven seems like a version of hell to me, so what do I know?

Hell starts when they realize they’re not watching real people, and that the theater has no exits.

Yes, this. Even as a Christian who believes some version of "every knee/every tongue", if that doesn't mean that everyone is reconciled and everything is set right, it's not good news. Too many people contort pretty bad so they can rejoice over eternal torture. Ick.

Heck these people want to start the eternal torture sooner rather than later, just give them a chance and they'll inquisition as many people as they can lay their little hands on

You're not wrong. The whole concept of "love your neighbor as yourself" has gotten lost somewhere in there.

"gotten lost" is entirely too soft language. These types of christens are active revenge fetishists. They want to be elevated over everyone else and force those lower people to suffer while they revel in their suffering.

I'd suggest it's more like Trump's "suckers and losers" philosophy. If they spent their whole life being good, turning cheeks, etc, and then arrived in the place in the clouds only to find they let *everyone* in, regardless of their sins, they'd resent it. So... bad people must go to the hot place.

How much of the change in ideology do you think is because of capitalism? I think when the greatest metric of human value becomes money, this is the natural out come.

You can’t lose something you destroyed intentionally millennia ago

My guess is that if you made a Venn Diagram of the people who shouted "legalizing gay marriage devalues my own marriage!" and the people who celebrate the idea of the Rapture from the perspective of vengeance, it would be a perfect circle.

It's like how bigots say "the country is being destroyed" is not a lie but a self report what they want the country to be. How religious people talking about being "rightous" and "moral" is true in their frame of reference where the optimal state of mind is a religious dictatorship.

To be fair, this grotesque idea dates at least back to Thomas Aquinas, who wrote “In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.”

that is dark as fuck

It made it into my first novel! (if you check my main TL you’ll see the clip)

There's a lot going on there, but nothing about the concept of Heaven involves "jeering at the sinners in Hell."

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