Am 6. Dezember 2013 von John Shore auf die Site http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnshore/2013/
gestellt - zwar in englischer Sprache, aber gut zu verstehen, so kompliziert
ist die christliche Höllensage nicht, es zu übersetzen war mir zu viel Zusatzarbeit...
(While sitting at Starbucks yesterday I overheard the following conversation
between two men I'll call Christian and Tom. Christian was trying to evangelize
to Tom. As you'll see, Tom ended up wiping the floor with Christian. Why? Because
Tom was right: the whole concept of the Christian hell is manifest nonsense,
for the reason he so well articulated. Here's hoping that more Christians hear
what the Toms of the world are trying to tell them.)
Tom: But what you're saying simply doesn't make any sense.
Christian: What doesn't?
Tom: That if I don't believe in the reality of the same God that you just
told me loves me, then that God will con-demn me to hell for all eternity. How
could God love me and do that to me?
Christian: Because God loves you enough to let you decide your own fate.
Tom: But that doesn't change the fact that if I choose to not believe in
God, God could, if he wanted, still not send me to hell. He could commute my
sentence. He could forgive me for the mistaken choice I made. God has that power,
right? Because he's all-powerful?
Christian: God can do anything.
Tom: Which means he can certainly choose not to send me to hell. And that
can only mean that if I do end up in hell, it was God's will that made that
happen. Ultimately God wanted me in hellso that's where I ended up. God actively
chose hell for me.
Christian: You chose hell for yourself by refusing to accept Jesus Christ
as your lord and savior.
Tom: That I made that mistake doesn't alter the fact that God has chosen
to punish me for that mistake by forcing me to spend eternity being physically
tortured. And anyone who would choose for me to suffer horribly through-out
eternity as punishment for doing nothing more egregious than using the mind
he gave me cannot possibly love me. Under no definition of the word would doing
anything so unconscionable qualify as love.
Christian: It's divine justice.
Tom: Really? That's justice? I've got the little tiny span of my lifetime
to try to figure out a whole bunch of stuff about God and man, and, with the
extremely limited range of information available to me in the course of that
time, I decide incorrectlyI guess that there's not a God, or I decide that
I just can't be sure either way, or I choo-se to believe in a different God
than the one prescribed for me by Christianityand, as punishment for that mista-ke,
God decides to condemn me to spending the rest of forever having the living
flesh seared off my bones? And you're comfortable calling that justice? That
doesn't strike you as
oh, I don't know
excessively punitive? Like the kind
of unbelievably cruel thing you might expect from a cruel, petty, ego-maniacal
dictator, rather than from a God of love?
Christian: Hell is just God's judgment upon the sinner who refuses to accept
his love.
Tom: You've got to understand that you're using words to mean what they don't
actually mean at all. In fact, you're using words to mean the exact opposite
of what they mean. You don't choose an eternity of torture for so-meone you
love. And if you do choose that for someone for the reason you're saying your
God does choose that for people, that is not justice. That's injustice. Look:
After I'm dead, God either has the power to send me to hea-ven instead of hell,
or he doesn't. If he doesn't have that power, then he's too weak to matter.
If he does have the power to send me to heaven instead of hell, and he wills
me to go to hell, then he is without compassionor at the very least he certainly
doesn't love me. But those are the only two choices. By your own definition,
God is either not all-powerful, or not all-loving. But he can't be all-powerful
and all loving, if Ia nice guy, a loving guy, a guy who gives to charities
and actually does help people in the worldcan end up in hell. It just doesn't
make sense. I can't love somebody and shoot them in the head because they refuse
to answer my phone calls.
Christian: You're looking for rational explanations for mysteries that only
God comprehends.
Tom: Oh, that's so typical. Whenever Christians run into a simple logical
inconsistency that cuts directly to the viability of their entire belief system,
they resort to the only "argument" left to them - which is that we inferior sinners,
who are so pathetic that we think it's a good idea to use our rational minds
to help us understand things that don't seem to make sense, can't possibly begin
to fathom God's "mysterious ways." At the slightest chal-lenge, Christians like
you absolutely abandon logic. It's ridiculous - and at best should be embarrassing
to you. If you can't explain the simplest, most obvious, most terrible contradiction
in the qualities you say your God possesses much less in the primary quality
you say he possesses, which is his love for all mankind -then how in the world
do you expect anyone but a sheer moron to take you or your religion seriously?
Christian: God bless you, man. I fear for your soul.
Tom: I'll let slide all the repelling, presumptive arrogance inherent in
that statement. But I will tell you this: I fear for your mind. Later.