Atheist With a Christian spouse

[Zorra]

129. I apologize to you, Bryant.

It appears that I have underestimated your grasp of Judeo-Christian theology and metaphysics.

It appears that the church has modernized the concept of hell, or at least finally grasped the intended scriptural communication of what hell is, and changed the accepted concept of hell from that heinous superstition based place that they threatened me daily with as a toddler/child. The church is slow to change, but as new information becomes available, it does have the wherewithal to eventually adapt.

Unfortunately, largely due to 20+ centuries of pushing the concept of Dante's Inferno as hell, the church has successfully cemented and institutionalized this concept of hell into the collective consciousness of the "western world".

That's really awesome. I was forced to go a Catholic School, 5 days a week, and Mass, 6 days a week, beginning when I was 4 years old. During my 8 years there, I never once heard a nun or a priest describe hell as "our unwillingness to be saved". I did, however, hear almost daily, often while being smacked with a stick, that if I did not believe in the church, if I did not believe what the church told me, and did not do what the church told me to do, and did not remain in the good graces of the church, that I would go to this place forever:

"But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death" (Revelation 21:8).

Frankly, I can't fathom that an omniscient, omnipotent divine entity would really give two shits about most of the do's and don'ts, such as eating shellfish, folks' sexual preferences, or that S/he/Whatever would consider an individual's purposely not going to Catholic mass on Sunday "unwillingness to be saved". Rather, it would be, to my mind, logical and reasonable for an omniscient, omnipotent divine entity to intrinsically simply "know" what is in the heart of any and every individual.

I can kind of buy "unwillingness to be saved" as a type of hell, I have often thought that maybe people who deliberately and perpetually do rotten things to others create their own private nasty little hell for themselves within themselves.

Loosely, in the Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Sikh religions, karma is the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence. I kind of like this better than the church's concept of hell, because no one is eternally separated from the divine. Everyone keeps getting another shot at "heaven' until they "get it right". Which in reality does not appear to overtly contradict the Christian concept of hell as you seem to be expressing it.

I don't necessarily believe nor disbelieve in karma, but am simply pointing out a similarity between the concept of karma and "unwillingness to be saved" and redemption. Of course, by definition, an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being would know from the beginning of human existence if an individual was ever going to really get it or not. If so, then what would be the point of forcing them to live this life, and only to suffer in eternal misery because they didn't ever "get it". (This is known in Christian theology as the "Doctrine of Predestination&quot . It's kind of a WTF for me, why would a Loving God let someone exist in eternal misery if they never even had a shot at "heaven" to begin with?

I am totally down with my evolving understanding of simple "Love" and "Light", in all manifestations, as my personal path; that is what works for me in my existence. I feel that maybe, in the "Overall Grand Scheme of Things", the essence of what we perceive as a good way for us to be as individuals, is the same.

Again, I sincerely apologize for underestimating you.