2007-12-31 14:24:26 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
You have to realize that hell is a concept created by Christians to keep people enslaved to their religion. They use fear to keep you bound to their ideas. Study some other religions and get to know some other people of other religious backgrounds. Read Nietzsche, especially "The Antichrist." You will realize hell is a silly belief. And besides, as the author of Paradise Lost wrote, "it is better to reign in hell than to serve in Heaven."
2007-12-31 14:35:01 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 2⤋
well don't be scared into heaven, thats not the right way to go into the faith. i dunno what your doubt is, but if you are on the fence, either use the bible index and find a passage to help you or talk to an older christian you trust and sort things out with them.
2007-12-31 22:42:15 · answer #2 · answered by the one they're talkin bout 2 · 2⤊ 1⤋
One cannot exist without the other, so if you have a feeling of hell you may also have a feeling of heaven. You are a believer but in doubt. Its not an emergency, all you need to do is be the best person that you can be and if there is a hell at least you won't be there when you die! God bless.
2007-12-31 22:40:48 · answer #3 · answered by surani_ud 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
The fear passes with time. Think of it this way: No sane, truly loving parent would hold their child's hand over a fire, even for a second. If God is worth honoring, surely He (or She) is at least as compassionate and wise as the best human parent?
You might find this quiz interesting:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html
2007-12-31 22:31:00 · answer #4 · answered by prairiecrow 7 · 5⤊ 2⤋
This nagging fear of hell is just the remnants of your childhood indoctrination. With time, it too will pass. Conditioning cannot be undone in an instant.
2007-12-31 22:30:34 · answer #5 · answered by Subconsciousless 7 · 3⤊ 2⤋
Well, being raised Christian doesn't mean you WERE Christian or saved...but if you have this nagging fear...maybe it's the Holy Spirit. Maybe you should investigate further, figure out why it is your family is Christian and decide whether or not you believe it. Good luck!
2007-12-31 22:29:18 · answer #6 · answered by Michelle 3 · 2⤊ 3⤋
That's how they get ya! The best sales tactic ever invented.
2007-12-31 22:28:18 · answer #7 · answered by Alex H 5 · 3⤊ 2⤋
hell? as a place created by Jesus to torture people?
For centuries, a fiery hell of excruciating torments has been envisioned by religious leaders of Christendom as the certain destiny for sinners. This idea is still popular among many other religious groups. "Christianity may have made hell a household word," says U.S.News & World Report, "but it doesn't hold a monopoly on the doctrine. The threat of painful retribution in the afterlife has counterparts in nearly every major world religion and in some minor ones as well." Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jains, and Taoists believe in a hell of one sort or another.
Hell, though, has acquired another image in modern thinking. "While the traditional infernal imagery still attracts a following," states the aforementioned magazine, "modern visions of eternal perdition as a particularly unpleasant solitary confinement are beginning to emerge, suggesting that hell may not be so hot after all."
The Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica observed: "It is misleading . . . to think that God, by means of demons, inflicts fearful torments on the damned like that of fire." It added: "Hell exists, not as a place but as a state, a way of being of the person who suffers the pain of the deprivation of God." Pope John Paul II said in 1999: "Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy." As to the images of hell as a fiery place, he said: "They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God." Had the pope described hell in terms of "flames and a red-suited devil with a pitchfork," church historian Martin Marty said, "people wouldn't take it seriously."
Similar changes are taking place in other denominations. A report by the doctrine commission of the Church of England said: "Hell is not eternal torment, but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so absolutely that the only end is total non-being."
The catechism of the United States Episcopal Church defines hell as "eternal death in our rejection of God." A growing number of people, says U.S.News & World Report, are promoting the idea that "the end of the wicked is destruction, not eternal suffering. . . . [They] contend that those who ultimately reject God will simply be put out of existence in the 'consuming fire' of hell."
2007-12-31 22:28:05 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
That's the way it was planned... they got you as a child, now you are screwed.
2007-12-31 22:27:37 · answer #9 · answered by Morbid One 6 · 1⤊ 2⤋