July 2008 Archives

From the beginning of time people have begged God to tell them...Why? WHY do terrible things happen to good people? Now comes this question for us to explore again, in a poignant letter and an electrifying reply...

Yesterday is usually Question and Answer Day on the blog...but because of the extraordinary nature of the exchange below, I am extending this feature one more day. I want you all to have a chance to see, and embrace with your heart, this entry. I hope you will also offer your comments -- whatever you feel moved to write...

Question: Dear Neale: I have so much to say to you that it is difficult to know where to begin. A new friend gave me two CWG books, and they have changed my life in several ways.

First, much of what I read in Book 1 reawoke memories of beliefs that I took for granted as truths when I was a very young child. Various pressures made me forget those truths over the years, and I ended up believing that everything about me was wrong, though somewhere in my soul I still believed my truths. I married a man whose most important value was his and his family's image in the eyes of society, and the marriage was a mistake. I hung in there for fifteen years and had four extraordinary children until I realized that I was dying in the relationship, and for my children's sake I had to leave.

At first, our life without my husband was idyllic, and then things began to change. A lot of it was my fault: I discovered that I was a young woman again and that I had a lot of living to do. My priorities were split between enjoying major rebellion and what was best for my children. Then my eldest daughter, with whom I had always been at loggerheads, had her custody changed to her father and his girlfriend, in spite of all my pleas not to, and very shortly afterward, she caught a lethal virus while swimming in a still, fresh-water pond, and died after eight weeks in intensive care. My grief and guilt were overwhelming.

To compound it, a rumor (encouraged by my ex-husband) circulated that I had been responsible for her death by giving her an overdose of drugs, which was patently impossible. However, people believe what they want to believe, and that terrible rumor destroyed what was left of my life.

I tried to carry on our lives as best I could while sinking ever more deeply into a morass of depression. My other three children went to boarding school and I sold our house in the South and moved into our summer barn in the mountains in New York to be nearer them. I had several jobs and finally ran my house as a bed-and-breakfast because that was the only way I could survive and keep my children's home. Finally the depression won out and I ended up in a hospital, suicidal.

After being told that if I went back to the mountains I would be either dead or back in the hospital within six months, I moved to another state. The children were all out of school by then and leading their own lives, and things began to look up. Then my beautiful, talented, warm-hearted, brilliant son was killed by a drunk driver one week to the day after his twenty-seventh birthday. why? What plan did your God have in that?

After my daughter died, by some miracle she and I were able to talk to each other. We forgave each other our badness to each other; she told me that what I had taught my children about what happens after you die was true, but I didn't know a millionth of it, and that she was happy and well and would always be one of my guardian angels. How could she let that happen to my son then? What in God's name was God's plan? That was almost eight years ago, but I still rage and grieve and rage.

Last summer I decided that my life was useless and I needed a new one. I moved to a place an hour away from my youngest daughter, and am giving a jump-start to a new career. With the help of your books, I will make a success of it. But the books and the newsletters are sugar-coated. Although so much of CWG is valid and true (and I know this in my heart and soul), how can you explain the terrible, painful things that happen? Is it a punishment for a few terrified years of self-indulgence? Is it a karmic payback for sins of a former life that I'm not aware of in this one?

It's hard to believe that I "chose" what has happened. Could anyone be that cruel? Reading the book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, took some of the pressure off, but the impression I got from that was that God doesn't concern Himself with the everyday actions and tragedies of mere people, that we are to Him as ants are to us. That certainly contradicts what I always believed (and taught my children to believe), that God is in all things from a blade of grass to the mightiest star. If I am to go on believing that, then I also have to believe that God is unconscious and uncaring, which is hard for me because of my personal miracles.

Please, if you have God's ear and voice, ask him why? why? Give me some answer that will take away the agony so that I can go on with my life. Platitudes won't help. I truly need an answer. Please. You were given a beautiful answer for the woman whose adopted son died at twenty-one. Can you find one for me? Respectfully yours, Cynthia, address withheld.

Neale's Response: Dear Cynthia, I was deeply touched by what you shared with me, and I only hope that my response can in some way be adequate.
Here is what I get, Cynthia, when I meditate on the situation you have described. Your son and your daughter made a pact before either of them came into their bodies. Their agreement was to arrive together and to leave together. These two souls have danced together many times before. They have laughed together and cried together; they have walked together on the path through the eons and across the centuries.

It may not seem this way to you now, Cynthia, but I can assure you that this is true. And when your daughter left and went to this golden place that she has described to you, your son was filled with a loneliness--experienced at the soul level--that is beyond anything you or I could possibly understand.

I do not know how close these two were in this lifetime, but I am very sure of how close they have been from the beginning of time. When your daughter left, it was only natural for him to follow. Your daughter did not "let this happened to your son," as you put it, but, rather, allowed him the choice he was making. She did not try to stop him, nor in any way seek to prevent what occurred, because to do so would have been to interfere with another's free will, and that is something that no soul on the "other side" would ever do.

I can tell you with absolute assurance that these two souls are happier now than you have ever seen them in your life. They are dancing together once more. They are laughing together again. And their only wish now is that you will release and let go of your anguish and your pain, of your rage and your grief.

These things, too, I can tell you categorically: what has happened has nothing to do with punishment. Your "years of self-indulgence" have nothing to do with it. As Conversations with God clearly says, God does not punish us, but always and only blesses us.

I know that it is hard to believe that you "chose" what has happened. At a conscious level, obviously you did not. At a super-conscious level, however, you agreed to give the gift of togetherness to these children, just as you gave them the gift of life. Both experiences were at some level painful, and both produced great joy.

Their is a grand plan, involving many lives together in the past, and many lives together yet to come. Trying to understand the plan is like trying to understand a snowflake. In the end, we can only behold the wonder of it. It does us no good to mourn the fact that it has melted. Far better for us to simply celebrate the beauty that it has brought into our lives.

I want to comment on your impression that God doesn't concern Himself with the everyday actions and tragedies of His people. Conversations with God makes the same point that was made in the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. This point is not that God does not care about us, but that God cares about us so much that He grants us total free will in the creation of the reality we choose.

God cannot impose His preferences on us. If He did, we would not have free will, but rather, we would simply be living lives which were being experienced according to a plan over which we have no control. This would not be fitting for enlightened beings, and we would soon become restless and unhappy. Just as our children would become restless if we told them everything we wanted them to do, stopped them from making every one of their mistakes, made sure that they never hurt themselves, or even experienced the possibility of hurting themselves. If we did that, it would be a very short time before they ran from us as fast as they could. For the human soul yearns to be free, not so protected that it can never experience anything that the Father does not want it to experience. CWG says clearly, "your will for you is God's will for you," and in this revelation is the answer to your question, Cynthia.

I'm sorry to have taken so much time with this response, but I have done my very best to reach inside, and not give you a shallow reply. I hope that you can return to a place of great joy in your life, knowing that everything is falling into place exactly as it should in order for you to be and to declare, to announce and to become, to express and to fulfill Who You Really Are. I send you love, and all the blessings from all the heavens. Thank you for writing to me, and sharing with me from the deepest part of your soul.

(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers' Circle at Neale's personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Each week Neale selects a question from those posted there, or from the book Questions and Answers on Conversations with God, and publishes it in this blog.)

Are our ideas about 'salvation' important in the daily life of the world? Or is this all just about our individual, personal, theologies?

I think that is a crucial question. I raise it because of comment made here two days ago in the Comment Section of this blog. As you know, I have been asking on this blog for several days now what Christians believe about 'salvation.'

I am raising the question again here because of the response I am going to post here in just a minute from a blog reader. The question is...

Do Christians really believe that anyone who is a non-Christian is going straight to hell upon their death? This would include a Jew, say, or a Muslim...or a Buddhist, or a Mormon (who many Christians insist are not Christian, even though they call their church the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). And it would certainly include people who don't believe in God at all.

To this question I received the following Comment from a regular poster here, a self-identified Muslim named Mounir...

WHO CARES ************* Let them believe whatever they believe in. It shouldn't make any any difference to you and me AS LONG they don't hurt me and others with their belief.

The most important thing to understand here, is for people to take care of each other here on earth even if what they believe in is hog wash.

Say, just for argument sake, if people believed in Hell/Heaven and did take care of their people, then they read your book and now they didn't believe in Hell/Heaven and stopped caring about others and start behaving with arrogance.. Is this better? I think not, the bottom line is right here right now, you can believe all you want with after life stuff.

You dear Neale have no proof that Hell/Heaven doesn't exist as much proof they have that it exists.. let's concentrate on what is important...

Mounir

To this i want to say....can't you see, Mounir, that this IS important? Do you not understand, yet, that wars have started over this question? Nations have fallen over this question? Lives have been destroyed over this question?

Are we all, each of us, unable to see how important this question -- and its answer -- is?

Mounir says that what is really important is how people live their lives. We must not stop caring about others and start behaving with arrogance, he asserts. Yet, Mounir, are you not able to see that it is precisely the answer to this question which has, in so many cases, CAUSED people to stop caring about others and start behaving with arrogance?

I just posted here, a few days ago, a note from a lady who was so sad because she lost a wonderful friend when he recently became a born-again Christian. He stopped caring about her and started behaving with arrogance BECAUSE of his religion, BECAUSE of his answer to this not unimportant question.

What makes this question important, Mounir, is that people's behaviors spring from their beliefs. Belief creates behavior. For instance, if you believe that God condemns people who do not believe in Christ to everlasting and unremitting and indescrible torture in the fires of hell, you would have no compunction about killing them right on the spot -- which Christians did in massive numbers during the 200 years of the Crusades.

If you believe that God wants it Only One Way in terms of what we believe about Him, you will think nothing of marauding through the countryside with an army of Beliebers in that One Way demanding that all people in their path join in this Nation of Believers or suffer not very happy consequences. This is exactly what Muslims did in Spain and elsewhere in Europe until this movement, like the Crusades, was finally stopped.

My book, What God Wants, offers a startling idea about all this, and makes the point that even today, Mounir, our thoughts about all this -- our ideas about What God Wants -- form and shape our global politics, our economics, and the education of our children. To this day these ideas start wars, providing the moral authority and offering a justification for killing others.

No, Mounir -- with respect -- i cannot agree that this is not important. Of course it is true that what really matters is how people behave with each other. Yet that is determined by what they believe about each other....and THAT, in turn, is determined by what they believe about What God Wants.

So I ask again...and I would really like some of the Christian writers who have regular blogs on Beliefnet to respond to this question, though it seems clear they have no intention of doing so...is it true that God sends everyone who does not accept Christ as their Lord and Savior to everlasting, unremitting, and indescribable torture in the fires of hell, no matter how good and kind and patient and understanding and caring and compassionate and generous and loving they may have been in their lifetimes?

Does Joel Osteen preach this? Does Franklin Graham? Did Billy Graham, for that matter? Is this what the Pope says? Do Muslims believe their is only one path to Allah? Or do Muslims say that Jews and Christians and Buddhists and Mormons and even "non-believers" in any kind of God go back to Paradise with Allah?

Or, if you are tired of addressing that question, how about this one: Does it matter what people believe? What do you think of Mounir's observation?

A few folks are upset with me because I labeled as "dimwitted" those Americans who still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Too bad. They are dimwitted. And, contrary to what some believe, I am not saying that because I support Obama for President. I am saying that because everyone knows that Mr. Obama is a self-professed Christian -- and attempts to pretend that he is otherwise in order to create an aura of suspicion around him about his beliefs is, indeed, "dimwitted." Especially if people believe that the rumor of Obama being a Muslim is true.

Having said that, I received this comment on this blogsite from a reader...

Neale,

I love all your books and I really wish you would use this blog to go into more detail about them instead of slamming your presidential candidate down the throat of your readers. Personally, I will not vote for Obama. I don't trust him.

Like any other presidential candidate, he will say anything to get elected. He threw his own grandmother under the bus and then his pastor. After going to his church for over 20 years, why all of a sudden did he extract himself from the church when his pastor's teachings were made public? I'm no fan of McCain, but if Obama is elected this country is in big trouble.

Perhaps your "dimwitted" readers will make their own decisions about who they want to run this country without your subtle brainwashing.

Posted by: lbj | July 25, 2008 1:58 PM

Hmmm...fascinating. Calling people who believe that Mr. Obama is a Muslim is "subtle"? Wow. i thought I was being rather direct. It is "brainwashing"? Wow. I thought it was mind-opening.

Then again, what do I know....?

I also found this comment from a blog reader fascinating...

People have every right to vote for the candidate of their choice, and I don't think it was Neale's intent to put people down for doing that.

I know it has been frustrating for me to receive many warnings from my circle of family and friends about Obama's allegiance to Muslim traditions, as if he'd side with Bin Laden. As one post said, 'destroy us from within.' I have to agree with Neale, it is dimwitted.

Posted by: Deb Reilly | July 25, 2008 2:26 PM

Good for you, Deb, for seeing things clearly.

Now, let's get this straight. Whether you support Barack Obama or John McCain...Barack Obama is NOT a Muslim. Nor is he going to support the radical agenda of terrorists who call themselves Islamists.

To think otherwise is to be, I will say again, dimwitted. Or...purposefully misleading, which is even worse. I can forgive stupidity. I cannot forgive deliberate deception masquerading as honest politics.

Wow, I must be mistaken about what Christianity teaches and what Christians believe. I thought that Christianity teaches, "Either believe in Jesus or go to hell." I thought that Christians believe that "either you believe in Jesus or you go to hell."

Am I wrong about ths?

Apparently so. At least, judging from some of the entries posted in the Comments Section here over the weekend -- to which I have my own responses, in bold, below...

As you know, last week I posted a blog about Barack Obama's beliefs, and about a Newsweek article in which Obama declared both that (a) he is a Christian, and (b) he does not believe that his mother is in hell -- despite the fact that she never, as far as Barack knew, embraced Christ.

i then asked...can a person believe that God does NOT send us to hell if we do not accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and still call himself a Christian?

I received this fascinating response from Jim T. ...

Neale, I don't think it is fair to paint all of Christianity with the "accept Jesus or go to hell" label. That is the view of the vocal minority of fundamentalists, but far from a universal Christian belief.

Most mainstream Christian churches long ago rejected the doctrine of eternal damnation because, as you often point out, it is unworthy of a loving God.

Some have even taken the more enlightened step of making a distinction between "Jesus" and "Christ." Christ is much larger than Jesus. Christ is the infinite spirit that bridges the gap between suffering humanity and God. Christ is as ever-present as God.

Jesus embodied Christ, but Christ is infinitely bigger than Jesus. So when Jesus said "No man cometh unto the father but by me" he was not referring to his personal self, but to the larger Christ he reflected.

Jesus left the Earth two thousand years ago. Christ never left. It predated Jesus as well. Not as the human personality Jesus, but as ther universal spirit of Truth and Love, ready to lead us whenever we are ready. Christ is the spirit behind the CWG books.

Many Christians already accept this more enlightened view. Please don't lump us in with the noisy fundamentalists who think their spiritual education was finished after first grade.

Wow. Is this true? Can this be accurate? Are you really telling me that "Most mainstream Christian churches long ago rejected the doctrine of eternal damnation because...it is unworthy of a loving God"????

Wow. I never knew that. Then along came a person posting as "karemiss" to add to the discussion...

Personally I think people should stop putting all Christians in one basket. If any one has read Jesus words, they would come to realize, independently of what any doctrine has established, that he puts people's salvation squarely on their shoulders: forgive, do not judge, help, give, and above all, love. And yes, he did say that he was the way -once. But when his diciples (who obviously at the time had no quite understood the message) asked him if they should destroy a city that did not beleive in him, Jesus rebuked them.

He also clearly says that just to say that you "prohesize" in his name won't do much. It is your actions and intentions, how much mercy, charity, respect, honor and love you showed towards others which will make you worthy. Jesus himself was accused of being evil, because he did not conform to the rules of a group of people. His answer? Evil does not destroy its domain by doing good.

Not all Christians believe that non-Christians are going straight to hell just because of their believe. We believe God is a loving, just father and we trust him to deal with people as a loving, just father would.

Wow. Is this true? Can this be accurate? Are you really telling me that "Not all Christians believe that non-Christians are going straight to hell just because of their belief"?????

Wow. I never knew that.

Could some Christian ministers or teachers help us here? Does anyone have the scoop on this? Is it true or is it not true that all souls that have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior go to hell? And...if a person does not believe this, can that person call himself a Christian?

Just wondering here, because we're getting some conflicting understandings...and I thought that the basic Christian doctrine was pretty clear cut on this issue.

Somebody? Anybody? Are Jim T. and karemiss all wrong on this? And if they both really believe what they wrote -- and don't change their mind before they die -- are Jim T. and karemiss going to hell?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Human beings are supposed to be the highest life form on this planet, right? We are supposed to know all about things like Love. Certainly, more than mere animals, who are said not to have the ability to self-reflect, to make value judgments, etc.

Yes, well, don't be so sure...

Watch this. And if this doesn't tear you wide open with joy and smiles from ear to ear, then you are among the Walking Dead.

Believe me....I would not put this before you if I did not think it was worth every second your time. You GOTTA WATCH THIS. You HAVE TO. Period. End of sentence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

yea, okay. Now.

You understand what love is about? What would it take for us to show that kind of love to every human being on the face of the earth? And what kind of planet do you think we would have if we did?

What IS love, anyway, except remembering who we really are? Isn't that all that is happening here? Isn't that what this video is all about?

When I see things like this I wonder again out loud about a violent, angry, and vindictive God -- the God that is talked about by so many people in our world who claim to have an Inside Track on who and what God is, and about What God Wants.

This Sunday I am going to run another excerpt here from the book What God Wants. I hope you will take the time to read it. In the meantime, I would like to respond here in dialogue form to the generous contribution made here yesterday at a person posting as Turk182. Here is that post, along with my dialogued comments in bold...

Neale,

You have asked the question: How can a God of love send anybody to Hell? Well, there are several answers to that.

One of course is that God doesn't send anyone to Hell. You send yourself there.

Turk, nothing happens against God's Will. That is impossible, even by your understanding of God. Therefore, if God did not want you in hell, you would not go to hell, you could not even 'send yourself' there -- isn't that right?

Would not the God of your understanding do the same thing? Would not "Our Father, which art in heaven" be at least as loving as our father who is on earth?

God has done everything He possibly can to keep you out of Hell and still leave you as a person with free will and not just a robot.

Turk, this feels inaccurate. God does not seem to have done "everything He possibly can." (By the way, who said God is a "he"?) God could forgive the offender and stop the offender from going to hell, could He not?

That's the way He made us--after His image, after His likeness, the power to say "yes" or the power to say "no," the power to reject our own Creator, and of course to take the consequences.

Why do there have to be 'consequences', Turk? And why do those 'consequences' have to be so dire? That is the question that the world needs to be answered, Turk. Why does God care so much about people coming to him in the ONE AND ONLY RIGHT WAY that He will punish you with everlasting and indescribable torture for the rest of all Eternity if you do not do with your "free will" what God commands you to do?

Oh, and by the way, Kurt....just out of idle curiosity...why kind of will is "free" when to exercise it in one way, as opposed to another, brings on everlasting torture? Gosh, where I come from, Turk, that is not called Free Will. That is called Coercion. Extortion. Intimidation. Terror. But certainly not "free will". If someone in your life on this planet offered you such a choice, I do not believe tht you would call it "free will." In fact, I believe you would scoff at such a claim. You would call it hypocrisy.

In one sense you can say He doesn't send anybody to Hell, because across the road to Hell he has placed the cross of Christ.

How wonderful, but what if you do not know who Christ is? Or what if you were born before Christ lived? Or what if you are a sentient being of "free will" living on another planet?

There are also the prayers of parents, pastors and Sunday school teachers, and all the other things that God brings into our lives to stop us on our selfish way and to bring us to the Savior. We have to go wandering on past it all and put ourselves in Hell.

Why does God not simply say, "There is more than one way to be saved?" Why does God insist on offering us only one path back to Him? Shouldn't a real and honest desire to get back to Him be enough? Must it be along a certain path? And must others, who do not take that path, actually be condemned to unending, everlasting torture for their "free" choice?

Sometimes you hear people say, "God wouldn't send His children to Hell." God certainly doesn't send His children to Hell because when we're His children we're in the family of God. We're born again and part of our salvation includes deliverance from judgment. We're not all children of God except through faith in Christ Jesus.

I see. So people who were born before Christ lived, or who were born into cultures which have not even heard of Christ, or people who have heard of Christ but embrace other religions, or people who embrace no religion at all, are all going to hell, is that it? They have all "sent themselves" to hell, do I have this right?

Oh, and Kurt...if God does not "send" people to hell, but, rather, they "send themselves," then what is Judgment Day all about?

Can a God of love send anyone to Hell? You might as well ask some other question to make just as much sense. Does God allow disease in the world? Does God allow jails and prisons for some people? Does God allow the electric chair sometimes? Does God allow sin to break homes and hearts? Does God allow war?

Yes. God "allows" humanity to create the earthly world that it chooses. This is a process called Evolution. "Allowing" souls to send themselves to everlasting damnation and eternal torture in hell -- which must be a place that God created -- would not be part of a process called Evolution. It would be part of a process called Extreme Ego Exerting Itself As Power Over Incredibly Interior Creatures That You YOURSELF Created.

This is a wonderful God that we have here...first He creates the conditions that make it possible to tempt us, then He punishes us for giving in to the temptation. Wow.

All of these things are the consequences of sin entering into the world, and in some cases the direct result of man's rebellion, and the result of greed and pride and egotism and hunger for power that doesn't have any use for people--only the desire to get ahead.

I agree with you on the causes of disease, jails and prisons, the electric chair, the breaking of homes and hearts, and war. These ARE, just as you say, the result of "greed and pride and egotism and hunger for power that doesn't have any use for people--only the desire to get ahead." I could not agree with you more.

This is the incredible fruit of sin. Sin brings suffering into the world. There's no way of getting around it. And the greatest sin in the world is to reject the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.

Why? Why is this the "greatest sin in the world?" And who said so? And who SAID it was said? And why does it matter at all? If a person is good and caring, compassionate and generous, understanding and forgiving (which the God of your understanding apparently is not), why would that not be 'enough' to 'get into heaven'? Why, Turk, why? I ask again, why does God insist on One Right Path, One Right Way, and reject all others who do not take that path, no matter how wonderful they are as people? Why,Turk?

We have our catalog of sins. We have rape and incest and murder ; and we have them all cataloged and classified--but there isn't one of them (or even put them all together in one big hunk) that comes close to the sin of keeping Jesus Christ out of your life. Did Jesus say, "I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin because they rob banks"-- or, "because they believe not on me"?

Whoa. WAIT a minute! I thought you just said that it it NOT God who sends us to hell, but we who send ourselves. Now you are asking if it was not God's Son who sent the Holy Spirit "to convict the world of sin" because they did not believe in him...Whoa....you can't have it both ways, Turk. Either it is Jesus (and thus, God) who is 'convicting' us, or it is not. Which way do you want it?

It is folly to expect that you or I can trifle with the Lord Jesus and not have a penalty attached to it. What ridiculous thinking people have in this area! We expect penalties for doing much less. Life is just built that way.

By whom, Turk? By whom? Who "built life that way?" If your idea of God is accurate, it is GOD who made life to be "just built that way." Hmmm....

You jump off a high building, the law of gravity will take care of you. You might say, "God is love," all the way down, but you're still going to get splattered when you hit the bottom! You break the law of gravity, and it breaks you! You may love your little child, but if he puts his finger up on that hot burner on the gas stove or the electric stove, he's going to get burned!

Fire burns. Gravity kills. Water drowns. And you can say, "God is love, God is love, God is love," until you're blue in the face. But water will still drown you, fire will burn you, and gravity will kill you, and sin will damn you no matter how much you say about a loving God.

Turk, you are right about fire, gravity, and water. But "sin" feels like something that we made up, something that we conjured. The proof of this is that we have changed our minds about what "sin" is from time to time and from place to place and from religion to religion, across the span of human history. When I was a child, Turk, I was told that it was a sin -- albeit a minor one -- to eat meat on Fridays. Then the Pope changed his mind and announced that meat could be eaten on Fridays. When I was a child, Turk, I was told that if a baby died before being baptized, it would have to spend eternity in Limbo. Then, a year and a half ago, the Pope changed his mind and announced that the 700-year-old teaching about Limbo was a mistake, and that no such place existed. A few years ago, Turk, the man who was then Pope announced that there was no such place as "hell." He said the idea of "hell" as a physical location, with fire and brimstone and torture, was a myth. When that Pope died, the new Pope declared that the old Pope had been wrong, and that there was such a location as "hell."

You see, Turk? We are making it all up. We're making it up as we go along...

God just set up life that way. He set up the rules. He set up the laws by which we are to live. And if we break those laws, they break us, and we pay the consequences.

God does not set up the rules, Turk, as I have just demonstrated. We do. We set up the rules. We imagine that we know the Mind of God, and we then tell other people What God Wants. But what if we are mistaken about all that? What if God's message to the world is, "You've got me all wrong..." ?

Here are some quotes from Christian leaders past and present that may help you understand more fully:

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.

All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

Wow, now you are talking my language, Turk. Now this makes sense. Yes, there can be a "hell like" experience after death...Home with God says exactly that. But it is an experience of our own creation. Home with God says that, too! And, startlingly, Turk, Home with God also says -- almost in these exact same words -- that "No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it." So, you and the writing in my book resoundingly agree. Yikes!

And yourself, in a dark hour, may will [a grumbling] mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood...

--excerpted from The Problem of Pain and The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), included in The Quotable Lewis, 1989 Tyndale

The only thing I disagree with here is the notion that there will come a day when you can no longer do it; no longer "repent." Why would God do that, Turk? Tell me why God would put a time limit on being good, and doing what's right? Why, Turk?

In a sense, the concept of hell gives meaning to our lives. It tells us that the moral choices we make day by day have eternal significance, that our behavior has consequences lasting to eternity, that God Himself takes our choices seriously.

The meaning in life comes not from threats of everlasting damnation, Turk, but from the deep sense of well being, inner peace, and true joy that comes from expressing our Selves while on earth in ways that reflect and demonstrate Who We Really Are -- and in ways that allow that demonstration to continually grow, thus serving the real agenda of God and Life: to evolve, and to become greater in the next moment than we were in the last. The purpose and the process of life is called Growth, Turk, not Run Scared.

The doctrine of hell is not just some dusty theological holdover from the Middle Ages. It has significant social consequences. Without a conviction of ultimate justice, people's sense of moral obligation dissolves, and social bonds are broke.

I disagree emphatically. Human beings do not need the overlay of regulations and the threat of punishment in order to act in their own best interests, or in order to be "good." People are inherently good.

Our "sense of moral obligation" comes from our basic sense of ourselves, Kurt, not from threats from God.

Of course, these considerations are not the most important reason to believe in hell. Jesus repeatedly issued warnings that if we turn away from God in this life, we will be alienated from God eternally.

Nobody said anything about turning away from God, Turk. But what about those who actually SEEK God...though not through one particular pathway? What about them, Turk?

And yet, although "the wages of sin is death," Paul also says that "the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). While breath remains, it is never too late to turn to God in repentance, and when we ask for forgiveness, God eagerly grants it. --excerpted from Answers to Your Kids' Questions, by Chuck Colson, 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries.

We may rest assured that no one will suffer in hell who could by any means have been won to Christ in this life. God leaves no stone unturned to rescue all who would respond to the convicting and wooing of the Holy Spirit.

As for the fate of [the damned] being eternal, it could not be otherwise. Death is not the cessation of existence but the continuation of the eternal being with which God lovingly endowed man--but now in painful separation from God and all else in utter darkness and loneliness.
--excerpted from In Defense of the Faith, by Dave Hunt, 1996 Harvest House Publishers

The Bible says that God prepared hell for the devil and his demonic cohorts (Matthew 25:41), that He is "...not wishing for any [person] to perish but for all to come to repentance." (II Peter 3:9), and that He has done everything possible to save us from that terrible, terrible place. Yet in the end God will not violate or overrule the deliberate choice of those who consciously and willfully turn away from Him.
--Daryl E. Witmer of AIIA Institute

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil."
--Jesus Christ, John 3:16-19, NASV Bible

Neale, you say what about the devout Buddhist, or Muslim, or Hindu, or Taoist, or whatever? Would God send them to hell just for believing in the "wrong" religion? There is no right and wrong religion, simply truth and falsehood. God put the truth out there for us in three ways: Through his sovereign creation, through the testimony of the Bible, and through the life, death, and resurrection of his son Jesus Christ. He has also sent us prophets, apostles, ministers, missionaries, sunday school teachers, youth counselors, camp counselors, and a host of other faithful witnesses to tell us what we need to know.

The reason your views are not trustworthy, Neale, is the lack of empirical evidence. To believe what you believe, we have to take your word for it. There is no revelation from past believers, no eyewitnesses here to corraborate your testimony, no outside sources that affirm that what you say is true.

Gosh, Turk, is it obvious only to me that the same is true of those who wrote the Bible? What makes their writing somehow more sacred and more valid than the writing in the Koran? Or the Upanishads? Or the Book of Mormon? Or the Talmud? Or the sacred texts of any other religion or sacred wisdom tradition? Or, for that matter, of Conversations with God?

The same can be said for a number of religious texts. However, the Bible has been proven trustworthy time and again. The New Testament has over 8,500 manuscripts still in existence, the most for any ancient book (by comparison, Homer's Ilyiad has 160, Alexander the Great's autobiography just 1). The people, places, and events described in the Bible have been verified through archaelogical and extrabiblical findings and writings - the people, including Jesus of Nazareth, are real people; the places described actually exist and are real places, and the historical events pictured in the Bible really happened. It is not just a bunch of myths or made-up stories, it is living history. And there were hundreds of eyewitnesses to both the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ himself.

Oh, my. Surely you are not saying that everything is the Bible is therefore without error, are you? Do I have to go over, once again, what I wrote here just a few days ago about the Book of Deuteronomy? Is that Book of the Bible verified and without error, Kurt? Just wondering here, because it says to kill your children if they are rebellious and disobey...it says to stone and kill women who marry when they are not virgins...

As to your philosophies, the apostle Paul spoke of such things to his friend Timothy in 1 Timothy 4: 1-4, which reads,

[In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction. 3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.]

People don't want to hear about punishment and hell because it makes them accountable to a higher power for their deeds here on earth. Therefore, when someone like you comes along with a system that conveniently skirts around the sin issue, some people can't fall over themselves fast enough to grab hold of it. You are saying exactly what their itching ears want to hear - NO JUDGMENT, ONLY LOVE! Only that is a lie, and by teaching it you are leading others away from the true path of righteousness which is found only in the person of Jesus. I will pray for your repentance, Neale, because if you continue down the way you are going, may God have mercy on your soul.

James 3:1 [Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.]

Turk182

Okay, Turk, more on all this on Monday. I want to give my blog readers here a chance to use the weekend to read all this and offer their own replies. Thanks, Turk, for sharing your point of view!

Love and hugs....Neale.