The Theology of Jesus

I've been thinking a lot recently about the theology espoused by Jesus.  Yes, I admit, I sit around thinking about things like this.

In thinking about these things, I have come to realize - and even marvel at - how different Jesus's theology was compared to modern Christian theology.  For those who read my blog a lot, it may come as a surprise to discover that I have only just recently come to grips with a firm and clear understanding of what Jesus's basic theology entailed.  More on that in a minute.  

First, it might be important to define what I mean by "theology."  Simply put, theology refers to what you believe about God or supernatural things.  Ancient Egyptians, for instance, believed that when you died, you were judged by a divine tribunal, headed by the god Osiris.  Your heart was weighed against the feather of the goddess Ma'at.  If you had lived by Ma'at's precepts during your life (in other words, if you were a "good" person), you would pass that test and be presented to Osiris, who would ultimately grant you eternal life.  If your heart did not pass the test against the feather of Ma'at, you would be fed to the goddess Amemet, who was part hippo and part lion, with the head of a crocodile, and who had the job of devouring the hearts (and thus the life force) of the wicked.

This, then, is theology.  It's what you believe about divine things.  

When we look at the theology of modern Christianity, we find, of course, that it is all over the map.  This is why both Mother Theresa and a member of the KKK can claim to be Christians.  But it is certainly possible to describe the most common aspects of modern Christianity - those theological beliefs that are most widely adhered to by everyday, practicing Christians. 

In a nutshell, modern, mainstream Christian theology states that Jesus was the divine son of God who became a great prophet and healer, doing the work of God and spreading God's message to his followers.  He was crucified and buried, and then was physically resurrected through the power of God.  Because of his resurrection, human beings can be reconciled to God by accepting Jesus as their savior and asking forgiveness for their sins.  If they do this, they will go to heaven when they die, to live eternally.  If they do not accept Jesus, they will spend eternity in separation from God, which, for most Christians, means going to hell.

But when we turn to the pages of the New Testament itself, to see what Jesus, himself, actually did and said during his life, we find something completely different - virtually nothing like the theology of mainstream Christianity.  

Before I even begin here, I want to point out that what follows is not my own pet theory about Jesus.  It's not some harebrained idea that I've put together.  It is basically Jesus Theology 101, similar to what any student would be taught at any mainstream seminary across the country.  I stick to the basics and discuss only those things that are widely-accepted and established among scholars, historians, and theologians.     

To begin with, Jesus said explicitly that his message was only for Jews - for the children of Abraham.  This wasn't an effort on Jesus's part to be ethnocentric, or to exclude someone who was not ethnically Jewish.  Anyone could follow him, but following his teachings included following the teachings of the Jewish scriptures - including all the purity laws of Moses.  Doing so, however, would by definition make you a Jew.  A Jew is not just someone of a specific ethnic background, but also of a specific religious background.  In the same way that a person today can be ethnically non-Jewish, but Jewish by religion, this was true in the 1st century as well.  Jesus welcomed everyone, but he also taught that Jewish laws and customs had to be followed, because they came from God.  Ethical teachings from the Jewish scriptures were essentially the basis of Jesus's own ethical teachings.    

Secondly, Jesus was a firm and outspoken apocalyptist.  What I mean by that is that Jesus believed the end of the world was right around the corner.  He says this explicitly in the gospels, even affirming that the end would happen within his own generation, and within the lifespans of many of his followers.  No matter how uncomfortable this might make people, it is a fact that simply cannot be ignored.  It's right there in the texts of the New Testament.  For instance, in Mark, chapter 13, he tells his disciples all the things they are going to see at the end of the world, and then goes on to say: "When you see these things happening, you will know that [the end] is near, right at the door."  He follows this up even more explicitly by saying: "This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."  

So Jesus was a dyed-in-the-wool apocalyptist, believing that the world was coming to an end.  But what, exactly, did this end-of-the-world scenario look like?  What was going to take place?

In short, the world would descend farther and farther into chaos.  Wars would occur between nations.  Many people would die.  Eventually, Israel itself would be consumed and overrun.  But then God would intervene and establish what one scholar has called "the Great Divine Clean-Up" of the world.  His agent for this clean up would be a figure called the Son of Humanity (or "Son of Man" in earlier Christian parlance).  Many debates exist about who Jesus thought this person was, with the most common conclusion being that it was Jesus himself; but many other scholars argue that Jesus was talking about a different person all together, or maybe even using an expression meant to refer to the Jewish people as a whole.     

In any case, how can a person ensure that they are on the right side of God when the Son of Humanity comes to institute the Great Divine Clean-Up?  Easy; by following the path of righteousness taught by Jesus, which essentially meant being a good person and following God's commandments as outlined in the Jewish scriptures, especially the commandments about loving others, helping others, and performing acts of loving-kindness.  If you do that, Jesus said, you will be among God's chosen people; you will be on the right side of the fence when the end of time occurs.

So what, then, will happen during the Great Divine Clean-Up?  Put simply, God will sweep away all the powers and nations of the earth, which have grown out of the corruption of sin, going all the way back to Adam.  Essentially, God will push the "reset" button.  The kingdom of God, sometimes called the kingdom of heaven, will be enthroned here on earth, and will rule a new earth, transformed from the old, corrupted earth on which we now live.  It will be an earth like God originally envisioned for humanity, where human beings will live in harmony together, loving God and one another, and living for eternity in this blissful paradise that is essentially a remaking of the Garden of Eden.  No one will "go to heaven."  Instead, heaven, essentially, will come here, to this planet, to earth.  

Jesus says that the coming Son of Humanity will institute all of this, and will "gather his chosen ones from the four corners of the earth."  In other words, all of those who followed Jesus's path of righteousness will be gathered together, where they will become the inheritors of God's renewed earthly kingdom.  When Jesus said that "the meek" and "the poor" and "the persecuted" will inherit the earth, he wasn't talking metaphorically.  He meant that statement quite literally.  The ones who follow God will literally become the future rulers of God's renewed earth.

So what about evil people?  And what about those who are already dead when all this takes place?

As for those wicked people who are still alive at the end, they will effectively be cast out of God's renewed earth.  Their bodies (presumably still living), will be thrown into hell.  Hell, for Jesus, was not the supernatural dimension of Medieval Catholicism and modern day fundamentalism, but was instead a quite literal place, right here on earth - just as God's kingdom is a literal kingdom right here on the literal earth.  The word Jesus uses, which is translated into English as "hell", is the Greek word "Gehenna."  This Greek word, in turn, was a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, which was a literal valley on the southwest side of ancient Jerusalem that you can still walk through to this day.  At its most southern point, it met up with the Kidron Valley, which is also mentioned in New Testament writings (in the Gospel of John, Jesus crosses the Kidron Valley to get to the Garden of Gethsemane).

In ancient times, the Valley of Hinnom was essentially where Jerusalem's garbage dump was located.  As such, it was an immensely "unclean" place, where no self-respecting 1st century Jew would ever venture.  In addition to dumping refuse there, corpses would be placed there as well, if the deceased had no one to pay for a burial (such as a homeless person or criminal).  Ancient writers indicate that this enormous pile of garbage burned year-round.  

The Valley of Hinnom had long been associated with punishment and judgment in Jewish thought.  Jewish scripture (specifically, 2 Chronicles and Jeremiah) indicates that the Valley of Hinnom was the place where Canaanites performed religious rituals, including the sacrificing of children in fire, and another account - this time in Isaiah - indicates that the fires of the Hinnom Valley would consume the enemies of Israel (specifically, the Assyrians).  

So by the time of Jesus, the Valley of Hinnom was viewed as the unclean place where pagans, in the "olden days," had burned their children in sacrifices to their evil gods, and where now an enormous pile of garbage, topped with the corpses of criminals and other evil-doers, burned in perpetuity.

It is not hard to understand, then, why Jesus, and other Jews of his day, began imagining the Hinnom Valley as a place of divine retribution - Isaiah had indicated that very thing more than 700 years earlier.  

So whenever Jesus mentions "hell" in the New Testament, he is explicitly referring to the literal Valley of Hinnom, ancient Jerusalem's burning garbage dump.  His teachings indicate that the wicked who are still alive at the end of time will be cast into the Valley of Hinnom, where their bodies will be consumed and ultimately destroyed by the fires that never go out.  

And this is a key, and quite eye-opening, aspect of Jesus's theology.  He never says, not even one time, that wicked people will go to hell and suffer there forever (as many modern Christians, particularly evangelicals, believe).  I remember growing up and wondering how someone could live forever in hell, without ever dying.  It made me shudder to imagine experiencing the scorching pain of fire, for all eternity, without the ability to "die" and make it go away.  In fact, Jesus never, ever, ever, not even once, says such a thing about hell.  Instead, he says that the bodies of the wicked will be destroyed there.  It is the fire that is eternal, not the body inside the fire.  

For many modern Christians, the punishment of not following Jesus is having to burn eternally in hell.  Jesus wasn't nearly that vindictive.  For Jesus, simply dying, having your body permanently annihilated, and not getting to take part in the renewed earth, was punishment enough. 

As for the wicked who have already died, Jesus never really mentions this group of people explicitly, but one can assume that they will simply remain dead.  Their bodies have already been destroyed by natural processes.  They have already gotten their just desserts.  

So what, then, about the good people who have already died?  Those who followed Jesus's path, but who died before the End?  Unlike the wicked who have died, the righteous will be resurrected - their bodies will literally come back to life and rise up out of their graves and tombs.  The Son of Humanity, through God, will restore them back to life, to join up with the others who were are still alive.              

All these things, then, make up the gist of Jesus's theology.  The world is coming to an end, very, very soon.  Jesus, himself, brings the good news of the coming kingdom of God, and tells people what they need to do to prepare - essentially, they need to follow the teachings of Jewish scripture.  When the End comes, God will send the mysterious Son of Humanity, who will gather the living from around the earth, and separate the good from the wicked.  The good will inherit God's renewed earthly kingdom, and becomes its rulers from Jerusalem.  The wicked will be cast into the Hinnom Valley where their bodies will be destroyed.  Of those who are already dead, the righteous will be resurrected to join in the festivities of the new earth.  The wicked who are already dead will, presumably, just remain that way.  All of this is going to happen within a few years, or maybe a few decades at most.    

This is Jesus's theology in a nutshell.

And, of course, it doesn't take a theologian or Biblical scholar to point out that it is practically nothing like what modern Christians believe.  To modern Christian sensibilities, in fact, it would no doubt seem absolutely preposterous.  Heaven isn't on earth, it's up in the sky, or it's in some kind of otherworldly dimension.  You don't have to wait until the end of time to be resurrected - your soul is resurrected to heaven immediately upon your death.  People aren't sent to hell to be killed, they go there after they die, and they live there forever in torment and agony.  Jesus's message wasn't just to the Jews of his own day, it was to all people in all time periods.  Jesus didn't expect the world to end in the 1st century - that would mean Jesus was wrong about something!  

Unfortunately, these things simply are not consistent with what the New Testament gospels explicitly tell us about Jesus and his life and beliefs and theological dispositions.  For Jesus, heaven was the place God lived, not the place where humans go after death.  Human beings don't go to heaven.  They die and await resurrection at the end of time, where they will be raised up to live again on a renewed earth.  The end of time is not thousands of years in the future; it's literally going to happen in the next few years.  Jesus's message is for anyone who wants to hear it, but it involves essentially becoming Jewish by following Jewish laws and religious customs.  Wicked people don't burn in hell for all eternity.  If they are still alive at the End, they are thrown into the burning garbage dump of the Hinnom Valley, where their bodies are destroyed.  

It is my firm and passionate belief that if Christians want to step more fully into the lifestyle that Jesus taught and gave his own life for, it is vitally important to understand who he was, and what he taught, and why he taught it, even if those things are uncomfortable.  As many great theologians and Christian scholars have come to realize over the centuries, the fact that Jesus was, effectively, a failed apocalyptist, does not mean that Jesus, himself, was a failure, or that Christianity is a fraud.  It simply means that Christians have to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus and to be a practicing Christian in the 21st century.  And this frequently means jettisoning old ideas and old ways of thinking that simply do not hold up to scrutiny of the texts of the Bible.  It means joining Jesus on his path of righteousness, following him in his lifestyle of love, kindness, and living for others.  For Christians in the 21st century, this is what it means to attain salvation and commune with God.    

The History of Hell

As noted in a previous post, I have been thinking recently about the Christian concept of hell, and although I have written about hell several times in the past, I wanted to add some fresh perspectives on the topic.

When I went off to college in 1993, to a small, Baptist school in central Kentucky, I had the same traditional beliefs about hell that many Christians still hold today: hell is a literal place where people who are not saved literally go to spend eternity in suffering and torment. Like many Christians, I don’t think I had ever given a whole lot of thought to this idea; I believed it simply because it’s what I had been taught from a young age. The bizarre idea that a loving God would send the vast majority of humans to suffer in eternal flaming agony for all eternity had not really crossed my mind. That was an intellectual conundrum I would not come to face for quite some time.

In any case, shortly after arriving at college, I heard talk about how one of the religion professors (at this small school, there were only about three) did not believe in hell. I was scandalized by this. How could someone, especially a Christian professor of religion at a private, Baptist college, not believe in hell? I found this perplexing indeed, and wrote it off at the time as simply the weird ideas of a new-age academic (“new-age” is the term I would have used at the time to refer to what is now frequently called “liberal” or “progressive”).

Now, seventeen years down the line, I count myself among those Christians who disbelieve in the existence of hell. I can state categorically that I do not believe hell is a literal place of flame and torment that exists in space and time.

This statement, of course, may cause my readers to ask the same sorts of questions I asked when I first learned about the religion professor who did not believe in hell. How can someone be a Christian and not believe hell exists? The Bible, after all, talks explicitly about hell. Hell, as the counterpart to heaven, has been part of Christian beliefs from the earliest days of Christianity. Jesus mentions hell in the gospels. When you deny the existence of hell, aren’t you essentially saying that Jesus was at best mistaken, and at worst a liar?

Like many issues within Christian history and theology, this requires a bit of background.

JEWISH BACKGROUND

In the Jewish scriptures – the Christian Old Testament – hell is never mentioned. Indeed, the ancient Jews had no conception of a place like hell. In the Old Testament, when people die, they simply go to the grave. Good or bad, Jew or non-Jew, the grave awaits us all. The Hebrew word in question is sheol.

Sheol was a word used both literally and metaphorically by the ancient Jews, much the same way we used the word “grave” both ways today. We talk about visiting our loved one’s grave, and we also talk about having “one foot in the grave.” The same is true of sheol in the Old Testament. It can be used metaphorically (“The cords of the grave [sheol] entangled me, the snares of death confronted me” Psalm 18:5), or literally (“The bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs [sheol]” Jeremiah 8:1).

Sheol was not, as some recent commentators have suggested, the equivalent of the Greek idea of Hades. In Greek thought, Hades was the abode of the dead. It was not a grave, but rather a sort of collecting place for human souls that had departed their dead bodies. All human souls went to Hades – good and bad. Hades was not a place of punishment or reward, but simply a place for souls to congregate in a sort of dreary underworld existence.

The reason sheol was not like Hades is very simple: ancient Jews had no concept, as the Greeks did, of a soul separate from the living human body. This of course, like the existence of hell itself, is different from much modern theology, which tends to affirm the existence of a soul. Our ideas about a soul separate from our bodies, of course, come from the Greek philosophers of late antiquity, most notably Plato. This Hellenistic philosophy was rampant through Judaism by the time of Jesus and the earliest Christians, which is why souls are talked about consistently by the Jewish-Christian writers of the New Testament. But in the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, the human soul is always mentioned in unified connection with the body. For the ancient Jews, souls weren’t separate. They did not leave the body at death. Soul and body were inseparable. The soul, for the ancient Jew, was equated to the breath. The very Hebrew word for “soul” had, as its root, the word “breath.” Just as God “breathed” his own “breath” into Adam, so our own human “breath” is equated with our soul or spirit.

What this all means is quite simple: the ancient Jews had no concept of an afterlife. Soul and body were inseparable, two sides of the same coin, and when a person died, their body (and thus their soul/spirit/breath) simply went into the grave. These ancient Jews, of course, had a concept of heaven, but heaven was not a place of eternal reward for everyday Jews. Heaven was the abode of God and his retinue, not a place pious Jewish souls ventured after death. And there was no concept of a place of punishment like hell at all. Death itself was punishment enough.

Why didn’t the ancient Jews conceive of an afterlife for everyday Jews? That’s a difficult question to answer, but at least part of the answer probably lies in the Jewish tendency to reject anything that smelled of Gentile theology. Remember that the story of the Jews began in slavery in Egypt. After the Exodus, when the Jews settled in the Promised Land and began forming their own kingdom and their own religious codes, they tended to reject all the trappings of “pagan” religions, especially those centered in Egypt, the land of Jewish captivity. They did not worship multiple gods, like the pagans. Unlike the pagans, they did not utter their god’s name. They did not build statutes or draw pictures in likeness of their god – they considered such things to be “idols.” And, unlike the ancient Egyptians, whose concept of the afterlife permeated all levels of Egyptian culture – indeed, it’s fair to say the ancient Egyptians were certifiably obsessed with the afterlife – the ancient Jews did not accept such pagan ideas. The afterlife was a Gentile notion; that, by itself, made it immediately suspect to the sensibilities of self-respecting Jews.

(It’s interesting to note that the ancient Egyptians, while having a very complex and well-developed theology of afterlife, also did not have any concept of a soul separate from the human body. As noted above, this is an idea that did not develop in Western culture until Plato and the Greek philosophers of late antiquity. The Egyptians mummified themselves for the very reason that they had no concept of a soul-body separation. The physical body itself needed to be preserved for the afterlife.)

CHRISTIAN BACKGROUND

We have seen that the ancient Jews had no concept of an afterlife for humans, which means they also had no concept of a place like hell. We have also seen that their word for “grave” – sheol – did not mean anything like the Greek idea of Hades, which necessitated a belief in a soul separate from the human body – a concept that did not exist among ancient Jews.

In the last few centuries before the birth of Jesus, however, Greek culture began to permeate the Jewish homeland. Although the Jews fought, and ultimately won, a great war against Greek overlords in the 160’s B.C.E., Greek culture had come to stay. The Jews, as they say, had become Hellenized.

With this Hellenization came new theologies and ideas. First and foremost, the Jews began to conceive of an afterlife. But their concept was not like afterlife conceptions most common in Christianity today. Since, despite Hellenization, Jews still clung to the idea of a soul inseparable from the body, the Jews began to develop the notion of resurrection. Those pious Jews killed so unjustly over the centuries by various invaders and persecutors, would one day be physically raised back to life. Their bones and bodies would literally reform and come walking out of their tombs.

Along with resurrection for the pious, Jews also began conceiving of punishment for the wicked. God would not only reward the pious with resurrection, but would enact punitive measures against evildoers. This punitive aspect of God was, of course, nothing new in Jewish theology. But where the God of the Old Testament had always enacted his punitive measures against evildoers during their lives (usually by some horrible method of dying), now God’s punitive measures would extend beyond the natural human life. Jews looked around themselves and saw their enemies and persecutors prospering, living fat and happy to a ripe old age. Clearly the old ideas about God’s punitive measures against Israel’s enemies could not stand up to this “modern” scrutiny. So Jews began conceiving of “ultimate” punishments for evildoers. While the pious would be resurrected, the evil would be eternally punished.

What would this punishment look like? In Jewish sources from the time, a number of metaphors are used to convey emerging ideas. From a 1st century B.C.E. book called the Wisdom of Solomon:

The Lord will laugh [the unrighteous] to scorn. After this they will become dishonored corpses, and an outrage among the dead for ever; because he will dash them speechless to the ground, and shake them from the foundations; they will be left utterly dry and barren, and they will suffer anguish, and the memory of them will perish.

Later, in the 1st century C.E., around the time of the New Testament gospels, a work of Jewish apocrypha called 2 Esdras was written, most likely in response to the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 C.E. As an apocryphal book, it envisions the end of time and the Last Judgment:

The pit of torment shall appear, and opposite it shall be the place of rest; and the furnace of hell shall be disclosed, and opposite it the paradise of delight.

It was, of course, in the gospels of the New Testament, written about the same time, where we begin to see references to hell, usually on the lips of Jesus.

In both the New Testament, as well as the above-quoted passage from the book of 2 Esdras, the word used for hell is the Greek word geenna. This word referred to a place outside the city walls of ancient Jerusalem known as the Valley of Hinnom. It was here, in the Valley of Hinnom, that the inhabitants of Jerusalem deposited their collective waste products. It was, quite literally, a garbage dump. Because such a place would have been considered immensely unclean to average Jews, it was perpetually on fire, which helped to keep the contagion of “uncleanness” in check, and also helped the dump from becoming overwhelmed with garbage.

As such, references to geenna (often transliterated into “Gehenna”) were metaphorical in nature. When, for instance, Jesus states, in Matthew 23:33: “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?” he is referring to Gehenna – the Valley of Hinnom, the burning garbage dump outside Jerusalem’s city walls. He is not, quite obviously, suggesting that God is going to send all evildoers to the burning garbage dump outside Jerusalem’s city walls for all eternity. He is using that place as a metaphor for destruction – which is, itself, a way of referring to exclusion from God’s kingdom. If you reject God’s love and God’s vision of justice, you are not part of God’s kingdom; you are as good as a corpse burning in the Valley of Hinnom.

Consider a modern analogy in regards to flushing a toilet. I might lose my job and, upon returning home, my wife might tell me that I’ve just “flushed my career down the toilet.” Does she mean that I have literally flushed my literal job down a literal toilet? Of course not. It’s a euphemism – a metaphor.

Suppose I said that evildoers – those who are not part of God’s kingdom – are flushed down the toilet. Would you suppose I meant a literal toilet and a literal flushing? No. You would understand that I was using a metaphor. Now suppose that a thousand years from now, Christians come to believe in a literal cosmic toilet where God literally flushes evildoers into an eternal tank of sewage and waste. Sound silly?

To literalize Jewish metaphors about the burning garbage dump outside ancient Jerusalem’s city walls is to completely misunderstand the idea that was being conveyed. If Jesus, or the early Christians who used the metaphor of Gehenna, could somehow be told about modern concepts of hell, based on the euphemisms they used in the 1st century, I believe they would find it bizarre at best. Geenna – Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom – was a metaphor used by early Christians to illustrate their ideas about what one’s life was worth outside the kingdom of God. It wasn’t considered in cosmic terms.

Despite its common place in Christian theology, hell is mentioned only about a dozen times in the entire New Testament. More than half of those come in the Gospel of Matthew alone. There are other references to “fire” or a “lake of fire,” but most of these also come in Matthew and the book of Revelation.

In the modern day, many people imagine Satan as the ruler of hell. This is reflected in our jokes and our colloquialisms. Yet, in the New Testament, no such thing is ever implied about Satan. Satan is not the ruler of hell; he is an evil presence on earth. In Revelation, in fact, the writer tells us explicitly that Satan lives and has his throne in Pergamum, a city in modern day Turkey!

I know where you are living, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you are holding fast to my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan lives” (Revelation 2:13).

Antipas, referenced in this passage, was the bishop of Pergamum who was martyred in the early 90’s C.E. (and not Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee during Jesus’ life).

There are only two spots in the entire New Testament where Satan is connected to hell, and these two spots, again, come to us from Matthew and Revelation. In both cases, the writers predict that Satan will be thrown into “the fire” at the end of time (in Revelation it is the “lake of fire and sulfur”). Hell, then, is a punishment for Satan, at the end of time, as it will be for evildoers. Satan does not rule hell.

In the same way that “hell” (geenna), is used metaphorically, so are these references to “the fire” and the “lake of fire.” They are metaphors for utter destruction. In the ancient world, fire was one of the four elements of nature, and it was nature’s destructive force. When an ancient person equated an ultimate punishment to “the fire,” it was a way of saying that the coming punishment was destruction. When Jesus, for instance, says that the “fire” is reserved for “the devil and his angels,” he is saying that evil’s fate is destruction. Again, if I said that my career has been flushed down the toilet, am I talking about a real toilet? Jesus isn’t talking about a cosmic pit of fire.

This may not be persuasive to many of my readers who believe strongly in the existence of a place called hell. But consider one final point. “Fire” and “hell,” as ultimate punishments for evil, are used most frequently by the writers of Matthew and Revelation. But other writers use them as well, particularly “fire.” Such references can be found in both Mark and Luke, as well as 2 Peter, Jude, and the book of Hebrews. Yet among these different writers, there is disagreement about the nature of hell. In Matthew and 2 Peter, for instance, hell, or “the fire,” is a place of complete destruction. For instance: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28); and “But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the godless (2 Peter 3:7). Additionally, Hebrews 10:27 speaks of a “fire that will consume” the ungodly, and 2 Peter, Luke, and Jude all make references to the utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, reduced to ash, and how that is a symbol of what will happen to the ungodly.

In all of these accounts, the ultimate punishment is destruction. Yet most people, when they think of hell, think of a place of eternal punishment, where one will burn in agony without dying, suffering through all eternity in unimaginable torment. In the New Testament, there are only two spots that seem to support this sort of view. The first is found in a parable of Jesus. As a parable, of course, the details are not intended to be taken literally in the first place, but to be seen as pointing to a greater truth. In any case, the parable in question is found in Luke’s gospel, and is usually referred to as the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. In this story, Lazarus is a poor man begging in front of a rich man’s house. The rich man ignores him. In time, both men die, with the beggar going to heaven, and the rich man going to hell. The rich man is in “torment” by the “fire,” and asks for a drink of water, which Abraham (who is there by Lazarus) is not able to give him, because of the great chasm that separates them.

There are a lot of interesting things to say about this parable, but the one that matters here is the image of hell not as a place of utter destruction, but a place where someone remains alive in tormenting flames.

The only other spot where this idea is supported in the New Testament comes at the end of Revelation, after Satan is finally defeated by the forces of God at the end of time. There, the writer tells us that the devil will be thrown in the lake of fire, to be “tormented day and night for ever and ever (Revelation 20:10). Again, this supports the idea of hell being a place not of destruction, but of eternal, unceasing torment.

These are the only two spots where this idea is affirmed by the New Testament. As noted above, there are far more references that support “ultimate destruction” rather than “eternal torment.” Furthermore, one of these two spots comes in a parable of Jesus – a morality tale rather than a statement of metaphysical truth. Additionally, it is important to note that Luke never actually uses the word “hell” (that is, geenna). Instead, he calls the place Hades. Also, he doesn’t say that Lazarus is in “heaven,” but rather “with Abraham.” Finally, as the use of the word “Hades” makes clear, by the time of Luke’s gospel (circa 90 C.E.), many Jewish Christians had been Hellenized by Greek philosophy, and had adopted the idea of Hades as a holding place for souls to await a final judgment. Luke adds in the idea of torment and flames, but since he calls the place Hades and not hell, it is consistent with his other comments (the Sodom and Gomorrah reference above) about the ultimate punishment being utter destruction. Hades first, then complete destruction at the end of time.

With that taken into consideration, it is fair to say that of all the New Testament writers who talk about hell, fire, and ultimate punishments, only one writer – the apocalyptic author of Revelation – affirms the idea of hell being a place of eternal torment, rather than a place of final destruction. And even in that account, it is only the devil, the beast, and the false prophet who are explicitly said to be “tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Other ungodly people will be thrown in the lake of fire, so they too will presumably suffer this same outcome, but that is not necessarily stated explicitly by the writer of Revelation. Perhaps only the devil and his angels will get that particularly odious fate.

CONCLUSION

We are left with a few things to make sense of. First, the Jews of the Old Testament did not believe in a place like hell. They had no particular afterlife beliefs at all, good or bad. By the start of the Christian era, Hellenism had brought ideas about souls, the afterlife, and Hades to Judaism, and Jews themselves had developed apocalyptic ideas about ultimate punishments and rewards. In the New Testament, these apocalyptic ideas are illustrated with the use of metaphors: ultimate punishment is related to the destructive element of nature – fire – and is symbolized by the metaphor of the burning garbage dump outside Jerusalem’s city walls – the Valley of Hinnom. Ultimate reward, on the other hand, is symbolized by the kingdom of God and a life lived in union with God. The yin-yang idea here is one of life and death; in early Christian practice, these were referred to as "the Two Ways." One led to destruction – that is, death – and the other to abundant life. Numerous authors in the New Testament describe ultimate punishment in terms of ultimate destruction. Only one writer explicitly refers to ultimate punishment as eternal torment, and even that is only given in the context of the devil and his minions. It is left unclear whether this counts for ungodly human beings as well.

For these reasons, I do not believe in hell as a literal place of eternal torment for people who have not made the right profession of faith. I believe hell is a metaphor for separation from the sacred, from God, and therefore functions as a symbol of what life apart from God might look like.

In the words of the early Christians, it’s like being thrown on the burning garbage dump outside town; in my own words, it’s like being flushed down the toilet.

Why The King James Version of the Bible is an Inferior English Translation

The King James Version of the Bible (dubbed the Authorized Version by the Church of England) has without question been the most read, quoted, and recognized English-language version of the Bible since its creation in the first decade of the 17th century.

The KJV was first commissioned by James I of the England in order to create a universal English-language text of the Bible that would conform to the doctrines and theologies of the Church of England. James intended to create a translation that would not only “compete” with the Latin versions used by the Roman Catholic Church, but which would also pay homage, theologically, to the concerns of new Protestants in England, most notably the Puritans. James wanted a completely “de-catholicized” version of the Bible. The work was begun in 1604 and was completed in 1611.

Because of its widespread popularity, which lasted well into the 20th century, the KJV is the most “comfortable” translation for many Christians. Phrases, verses, and passages that have fallen into the general Christian lexicon are almost universally KJV in origin, and simply do not “sound right” when read from any other translation.

For this reason, many modern Christians are still partial to the KJV, and many Protestant churches – mostly evangelical and Pentecostal – still insist that the KJV is the only translation that should be read. I am reminded of Kiefer Sutherland’s fundamentalist Christian character in the film “A Few Good Men.” When questioned about “proper authorities”, he responds: “I have two books at my bedside, Lieutenant, the Marine Corps Code of Conduct and the King James Bible. The only proper authorities I am aware of are my commanding officer Colonel Nathan R. Jessup and the Lord our God.” Even among more moderate denominations, the KJV is routinely used and quoted from.

Recently, a KJV supporter said the following to me:

“…the KJV…is the direct translation from the original Greek and Hebrew texts. The Greek and Hebrew texts from the first century were copied word for word from generation to generation. To them, it was the Word of God and very precious, so no words were changed for all of those centuries…It’s the truest version from the original tongue.”

Unfortunately, while this person seems clearly to believe what he says, he has either been sorely misled, or simply does not know the facts of the matter. Since I think his perspective is somewhat common – especially among conservative Christians – I would like to attempt to clear this matter up once and for all.

It is true that the KJV was translated from a Greek and Hebrew text. This is true also for every other major modern English translation. The KJV does not hold any special place among English versions of the Bible for having been translated from the original Greek and Hebrew.

Unfortunately, with regards to the KJV, the texts used by the translators are known – and have been known almost since the time of the translation – to have been inferior and full of errors.

The KJV translators relied solely on one Greek manuscript for the New Testament. This manuscript is known as the Textus Receptus. It was put together in the early 1500’s by a Dutch scholar named Erasmus. In putting together the Textus Receptus, Erasmus used only a handful of sources, and all of these sources date from the 12th century or later. Furthermore, only one of his sources came outside what is called the “Byzantine” texts, which were a group of texts all copied in and around a specific geographic region (i.e., Byzantium). Scholars recognize that the Byzantine texts are full of scribal errors and do not conform to other earlier textual groupings, such as the Alexandrian texts.

Bart Ehrman, a textual scholar, who studied under the most pre-eminent textual scholar in the world – Bruce Metzger – has said that Erasmus’ text was based on “one of the worst…manuscripts that we now have available to us.”

So the Textus Receptus was the only source used by the KJV translators, and this source was itself based on only a few sources, all of which came from the Middle Ages or later, the majority of which came from only one geographic region, and all of which are known to be inconsistent with earlier texts and textual groupings.

What this means is that the New Testament in the KJV is based on very late manuscripts, which are known to be full of textual errors and wild variations.

Moving on to the assertion that the earliest texts were all copied perfectly, this is demonstrably untrue. In fact, among the thousands of ancient manuscripts and partial manuscripts in existence, hardly any of them coincide 100% with each other. In fact, among all our handwritten manuscripts (which is all of the manuscripts up until the printing press was invented in the 1400’s), there are something like 200,000 different variations among the numerous texts. And this is a conservative estimate. Some textual scholars say there might be as many as 400,000 variations. Either way, the variations are so numerous, that even in this age of computers, scholars have yet to catalogue all of them.

The earliest copyists were not professional scribes – copying the sacred texts was generally pawned off on whoever in the community happened to be able to read and write (which, during the earliest centuries, was very few). Thus, they were not professionals, and were prone not only to dramatic mistakes and errors, but also to changing texts intentionally based on whatever particular doctrine or “school” of Christianity they happened to come from. These sorts of theologically-motivated changes are numerous, and can be demonstrated among the earliest texts.

Furthermore, in those early days, Greek was not written like modern languages are written. Everything was in capitals, there was no punctuation, there were no spaces between sentences, and there were not even necessarily any spaces between words.

THEWRITINGLITERALYLOOKEDLIKETHIS

One can imagine, then, just how tedious a task it would have been to make handwritten copies of a text written like that, with thousands and thousands of lines. Not only would it have been physically tedious, but it would be easy to misread lines, without spaces between words. An English language example was put forth by Bart Ehrman:

ILOOKEDATTHETABLEANDSAWABUNDANCETHERE

Does this say you looked at a table and saw a lot of food, or does it say you saw a piece of bread get up and start dancing?

Add all this to the fact that the earliest copyists were not professional scribes to begin with, and it is not difficult to imagine that countless errors, omissions, and changes were made, usually unintentionally, but often intentionally.

So now we have the KJV New Testament, based on only one text – a text that was itself based on just a handful of late, error-ridden texts – thus leading to numerous variations in the KJV from the words that the original New Testament documents most certainly contained.

Add now to this the fact that the KJV is literally fraught, almost from beginning to end, with Puritan doctrinal and theological bias. I will provide a few examples that I have discovered in my own research.

1. The use of “hell” in the Old Testament. Hell was not a concept in ancient Hebrew culture. It did not begin to develop until late antiquity, in the decades before Jesus’ birth. It did not become a central aspect of Christianity until many centuries after Jesus lived. There is certainly not a single mention of “hell,” or any place like hell, in the Old Testament. Yet, if you look in the KJV, you will see “hell” repeated numerous times in the Old Testament.

The Hebrew word for “grave” or “underworld” or “pit” was Sheol. This is how ancient Jews viewed life after death. There was no heaven (at least, not for human beings other than a few special prophets, like Elijah), and there was no hell. There was simply death – the grave, the pit, the dark, dank underworld. This is where all humans went, good and bad, Jew and Gentile, after they died. Yet, in the KJV, any time that the death of a good person, or a Jew, is being discussed, and Sheol appears in the Hebrew text, the translators accurately translate it as “grave” or “pit.” However, when Sheol is used in the context of the death of a bad person, or an enemy of the Jews, the KJV translators called it “hell.” This is simply Puritan bias, taking the meaning of the text far away from its authors’ clear original intent. The Puritans were the ones with a highly-developed concept of hell – not the ancient writers of the Old Testament.

2. The use of the phrase “born again,” in the Gospel of John. The idea of being born again is a long-standing tradition within Protestant Christianity. It is symbolized in most Protestant churches by baptism. The phrase “born again” only appears three times in the New Testament: once in 1 Peter, and twice in a teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of John. The problem is, in the passage in John, the phrase does not actually say “born again.” Instead, Jesus asserts that in order to take part in the kingdom of God, one must be “born from above.”

The Greek word used is anothen, and this word means “above,” “top,” or “beginning.” In every other place in the KJV when anothen is encountered, it is translated correctly. However, in this passage, the translators’ bias crept in, because they clearly wanted to see Jesus asserting the Puritan “born again” principle; thus, they had Jesus utter the now famous phrase: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Translating it correctly (“born from above”) opens the door to many problems. Is Jesus saying that only a select few can enter heaven – those who are somehow “born from above,” or born with heavenly approval? Is Jesus saying only the most holy and pious will ever make it to heaven? The KJV translators could not have such theological problems confronting their congregations, so they simply cleared it up by inserting their particular Puritan viewpoint. You must be born again – that is, baptized following a profession of faith – if you want to get to heaven.

3. Also in John, there is a famous utterance of Jesus where he proclaims: “In my father’s house are many mansions…” The Greek word used there, translated by the KJV translators as “mansions,” does not mean mansions at all, but simply “rooms” or “dwelling places.” The Puritan bias in this passage came from the well-entrenched, though not otherwise Biblical, idea that heaven would be a place where everyone would live in grand glory, like the king himself. It was easy, then, for the translators to call this word “mansions,” to fit with the notion of heaven as a place of palatial glory, even though that is not what Jesus was saying. He was simply saying there is room for everyone in the kingdom of God – he was not promising that we would all live like Hollywood socialites.

These are just three examples that I have discovered on my own. There are countless others, which have been catalogued and displayed by textual scholars over the years. Furthermore, as I have already alluded to, it is an established fact that when James I commissioned the translation, he specifically ordered his translators to ensure that the new English text conformed directly and specifically with Anglican doctrine and theology. This was done to ensure that this English translation supported the Church of England, and not the Church of Rome. So it was known from the very start that the text was theologically- and doctrinally-biased. They did not even try to hide this fact.

To recap, here is what we have with the KJV:

1. The New Testament of the KJV was based on only one source (as opposed to modern translations which use hundreds of sources). This one source was itself based on only a few very late sources, which are known to be error-ridden and full of scribal variations.

2. The KJV was specifically commissioned to conform to Anglican theology, Puritan interests, and to be the Bible for the Church of England, specifically against the Church of Rome. As such, it was openly theologically-biased, and this can be demonstrated in countless places in the text itself, where words, phrases, and passages were translated inaccurately in order to conform to specific Church doctrines and beliefs.

These things are more than enough, by themselves, to cause anyone to shy away from using the King James Version for studying the Bible. However, there is yet a third issue, one that is probably the most obvious: the King James Version was written in Shakespearean English. Since we no longer speak this kind of English, it makes the KJV very difficult to follow and understand for modern readers. For example, Galatians 4:9 in the KJV: “But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?” What exactly is being said here? Of course, if one is reasonably intelligent and educated, one can read it over several times and figure out what the point is, but studying the Bible is difficult enough without also having to dig one’s way through highfalutin 17th century English. And when one considers that many folks in small, rural Pentecostal and evangelical churches are not typically well-educated or well-read, the problem multiplies tenfold.

Newer translations, like the New Revised Standard Version, are based on hundreds and hundreds of the most reliable early manuscripts and they also take into account a lot of new knowledge that modern scholars have about ancient Hebrew and Greek – knowledge that folks like Erasmus and the translators of the KJV did not have. Furthermore, we have far more early manuscripts available to us now than the earlier translators had – this allows us to get a better idea of how the original texts probably read. Finally, versions like the New Revised Standard – in addition to being highly accurate and true to the original words – are also written in plain, modern English. These reasons are why scholars – both conservative and liberal alike – tend to recommend the New Revised Standard Version for English readers of the Bible. The KJV is probably the last version any modern English speaker needs to read, unless they are simply reading it for the beauty of the words and the literary quality of the prose.

As a Christian, should one want to read what is comfortable and most familiar, or should one want to read what is accurate and most clear?

I would most certainly choose the latter.

A Biblical Look at Hell

We've been having an interesting conversation on the Rush messageboard about hell. One of the more enlightened and intellectually honest Christians on the board created a thread asking about what the bible actually says about hell. He has, apparently, been struggling with the concept of an all-loving, all-merciful God who also sends the majority of human beings to eternal damnation in a lake of fire (what intellectually honest Christian wouldn't struggle with such an abominable and counter-intuitive idea?).

As a result, there has been an interesting conversation taking place. I wanted to post some of my own thoughts from the thread here on my blog, for a wider reading audience.

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Did you know that the word "hell" only appears 14 times in the bible? Fully half of those instances are in the book of Matthew alone, and 12 of the 14 are in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). The other two are in James and 2 Peter.

How can something that plays such an otherwise insignificant role in the bible be such a central theme within Christianity? By way of comparison, consider the instances of these words in the bible:

Free: 186
Prison/Jail: 140
Slave: 164
Field: 301
Flower: 22
Tower: 51
Life: 589
Love: 697
Compassion/Compassionate: 88
Vomit: 13
Spit: 17
Semen: 6

I mean, for crying out loud, the word "vomit," or a variation thereof, is used as many times in the bible as the word "hell"!!! And look how many times "love" appears in the bible. Based on some of these numbers, what do you think is most important in the message of the bible? Eternal damnation for sin, or showing love and compassion to each other, and bringing the message of abundant life to the people you encounter each day?

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There is very little in the bible regarding hell. There are plenty of references to Satan, but not a single one of them is referenced in a passage regarding hell.

Think about that for a moment.

In the bible, Satan is characterized as the embodiment of evil, temptation, and wayward living. Hell, on the other hand, is where you end up if you are out of communion with God. Christianity, and other religions, connect these two things, but if you simply look at biblical texts, you won't find a clear connection between Satan and Hell. If you assume hell is a real place, the very first question you must ask yourself is "Is Satan there too?" The bible doesn't make this clear. For me, this is strong evidence that our modern concepts of hell and Satan are entirely manmade. If God were a supernatural entity attempting to communicate with us through the bible, he sure messed up on giving us a clear picture about hell and Satan.

The reason for the ambiguity in the bible, of course, is because hell, as a theological concept, was still in its infancy when the New Testament was being written. I've remarked elsewhere that I don't personally believe Jesus probably ever said anything about hell. I think the references Jesus makes to hell in the gospels were probably words put into his teachings by later Christian writers who were writing after the concept was beginning to be incorporated into Christian theology.

Thus, for instance, when Matthew has Jesus say, in chapter 5, verse 4, "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell" I think the part about hell was probably added to Jesus's authentic teaching. More than likely, Jesus's teaching would have been about eternal separation from God -- thus, discard your sinful ways (that is, ways that lead you out of communion with God), and begin leading God-centered lives, so that you don't end up permanently out of communion with God. When such a teaching is translated into late 1st century emerging Christian theological language, you end up with what Matthew wrote.

Whether Jesus actually used hell language or not, the issue still remains irrelevant for me. As a 1st century spiritual teacher, Jesus may well have used language and concepts that were common to the people he was teaching and to the culture in which he lived. However, since hell wasn't a concept within Jewish theology, I don't believe he ever talked about hell. Even if he did, 1st century conceptions of eternal damnation are irrelevant for 21st century theology, in my opinion, even if they are from Jesus.

To go a little deeper, let's look at another hell reference in the New Testamant. Most scholars agree that 2 Peter was probably the last NT book to be written -- written sometime in the first part of the 2nd century. There is a reference to hell in the second chapter.

"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment....."

Gloomy dungeons? That doesn't sound like a lake of fire to me. Interestingly, the Greek word for hell used in this passage was "Tartarus," which refers to a deep, dark pit or hole where the dead await judgment. This concept was drawn directly from Greek mythology, which stated that Tartarus was within Hades -- Hades being the abode of the dead. It's very closely related to the Jewish concept of Sheol.

The point, of course, is this -- this particular biblical reference to "hell" is clearly not related to the concepts of fire that you get in other biblical hell references, and certainly not in the modern evangelical concept of hell. To the Christian community that composed 2 Peter, hell was not about eternal fire and damnation, but more in line with Jewish and Greek concepts as a holding tank for the final judgment. This speaks to Jeremy's original question about whether we get a chance, after death, to accept God. It would seem, by the standards of the writer(s) of 2 Peter, that final judgment doesn't happen during life or even at death, but at the end of time -- and this was a distinctly Jewish idea, not at all like what we understand in modern Christianity.

All this leads back to the original statement -- and that is that the bible gives no clear idea of what hell is, and no clear connection at all to Satan. Hell was a concept that was in use in sporadic Christian communities during the 1st and 2nd centuries, and there was no clear agreement even among these communities about what hell was or what Satan's role was there. It was not until much later that specific ideas about hell, Satan, fire, and eternal damnation were developed. And because we now have these sorts of ideas about hell, we read those same ideas back into the bible, even though those ideas aren't actually there.

It's important to note, too, that no reference to hell ever appears in Paul's writings -- the earliest Christian writings in existence. If Jesus talked about hell, and hell was an important Christian concept, wouldn't the father of Christianity have at least mentioned it in passing? I firmly believe no Christian ever talked of "hell" until the latter part of the 1st century, long after Jesus, his followers, and the earliest missionaries were gone.

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Just remember....hell, as a location, is mentioned in only 5 of the 66 biblical books (that's less than 8% of the books in the bible), with a total of only 14 mentions, half of which are in one book alone. Hell is never mentioned by the New Testament's earliest writer, and the general father of Christian theology, Paul, and it is also not mentioned in other early New Testament books like the book of Hebrews. Finally, hell and Satan are never mentioned together in the bible, and there is no indication in the bible that Satan lives in hell, or that hell is place of eternal and irreversible damnation. All of those ideas were developed long after the biblical books were written, and by people and institutions that were not part of the earliest Christian communities.

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If you want to read further on my beliefs and feelings about hell, click here. This is a blog post from March where I talk about hell.

Hell: The Disgrace of Christianity

I recently ran a poll on an Internet message board I frequent, asking respondents to choose what they believe God will do with humanity at the end of time. Among the choices were the following:

1) All non-Christians will go to hell.
2) Anyone who doesn’t believe in God will go to hell.
3) People will get a chance to accept God before the final decision is made.
4) Only the most evil and unrepentant will go to hell.
5) God will have mercy on everyone.

I then asked them to choose what they would do if they were God. The same choices applied. My gut feeling was that some people would choose answers 1 or 2 in the first poll (believing that God would either send all non-Christians to hell, or at least all non-believers to hell), but that far fewer people would choose answers 1 or 2 for the second poll.

My assumptions proved true. For the first poll, two respondents believed that all non-Christians would go to hell, and one respondent believed that anyone who didn’t believe in God would go to hell. The majority, of course, chose something between answers 3, 4, and 5. Yet no one, when answering the second poll – the one about what they would do if they were God – answered choice 1 or 2.

What does this say about our conceptions of God? Could it be true that these rebellious, sinful, hopeless creatures called human beings are more merciful, forgiving, and loving than the very God who created them? If one abides by a traditional/evangelical Christian view of reality, this seems to be the only assumption one can make. We think God will send all non-believers, and maybe even all people who aren’t specifically born again Christians, to hell, yet if we were God ourselves, we would be much more lenient, merciful, and forgiving.

Something’s wrong with this picture.

By the standards with which we understand the terms, the very idea that an all-loving, all-merciful, all-compassionate God could even conceive of a place such as hell is counter-intuitive and nonsensical. You must redefine those terms in order to make sense of such a concept.

Yet, this is the prevailing concept within traditional/evangelical Christianity. God is love. God is merciful. But God will send you to roast for eternity in unimaginable torment if you don’t believe and do the right things.

It can’t be both ways. If you abide by traditional/evangelical Christian thought, then you must either acknowledge that God is not loving, not merciful, and not compassionate, by the standards with which we understand those terms, or you must acknowledge that the very concept of hell is flawed.

I personally believe that the hell doctrine is Christianity’s single biggest doctrinal disgrace. For centuries it has been used as a tool to wield power, scaring people into submitting to the will of the Church for fear of eternal punishment. It is certainly not worthy of the God we believe embodies love, mercy, and compassion, and it is not even biblical, if one understands the background against which the bible speaks of hell. Even if one makes the argument for the biblical veracity of a place called hell for sinners, such teachings would clearly fall into the category that the Episcopalian bishop, writer, and scholar John Shelby Spong would call a “sin of scripture.” It can stand proudly beside those other sins of scripture such as mandatory execution for homosexual acts, the slaughter of innocent Egyptian babies, and words of encouragement and support for beating and abusing wayward children.

I don’t personally believe in hell. I believe in a God of love, a God of compassion, and a God of mercy. I believe in forgiveness and acceptance. I don’t believe that anyone is completely guilty of whatever crimes/actions they have committed. No one is born evil, or born with a desire to do evil. We learn these things through society and culture, and usually a healthy dose of neglect, abuse, and bad influences. Even if someone is born with a mind seemingly pre-wired to criminal pathology, is it their fault they were born with such a mind? Did they ask to become a homicidal maniac, child molester, or serial killer? I believe in the concept of basic human innocence. We are born innocent, and anything that happens thereafter is a complex combination of psychological pre-wiring, nurture, and societal influence. No one can do anything other than attempt to make their way in the world with the set of parameters they have been given. Some of us get two loving parents, a nice house in suburbia, reliable cars, good schools, and positive influences. Others of us get an abusive mother, a drug-dealing father, dangerous schools, ghetto tenements to live in, and the stench of crack pipes to fall asleep to. Still others get the impression of stability in white suburbia, but grow up behind the scenes with sexually, physically, and emotionally abusive parents.

Where would you be, if you had been given scenario number two or three in the paragraph above?

I’m not suggesting I believe that crimes should go unpunished or that serial criminals should be allowed back on the streets. What I am suggesting is that when it comes down to ultimate truths and ultimate realities, we all have innocent souls. Therefore, how could anyone be worthy of a place like hell? Don’t forget – hell is not just a place of temporary punishment where you get to burn in utter agony for a few weeks in order to pay for your crimes. Hell is a place where you burn in utter agony, without dying, for all eternity! No crime/action/inaction in life could possibly justify such a punishment – especially not the crime of believing in the wrong religion, or choosing not to believe at all.

The ancient Jews did not really have any unified or structured concept of hell. The closest thing to an afterlife to the ancient Jew was the place called “Sheol,” which was more or less the underworld – the world of shadows, under the ground, where all people went when they died. It had nothing to do with eternal torment, or any sort of reward/punishment cycle.

Hell came into being along with the birth of the Christian church. If you open your bible, you won’t find any reference to hell until the New Testament. During the time of the birth of Christianity, there was a garbage and refuse dump outside of Jerusalem, called Gehenna in Greek, which was routinely on fire as the city’s waste was burned. The early Jewish Christians combined their understanding of the spiritual place called Sheol, with their knowledge of the physical place called Gehenna, to form the concept of hell. It was a way for them to makes sense of the tragedies and persecutions that they suffered, and it was a way for them to satisfy the basic human idea of reward/punishment.

Although the gospel writers (writing several generations after Jesus’s life), attributed words to Jesus that included talk of hell, most scholars do not believe the historical Jesus would have had any concept of hell as we understand it, as the concept was not developed until long after his death. If Jesus ever spoke of eternal rewards and punishments, it would have been in a metaphorical sense – in other words, to live apart from God is to doom yourself to eternal suffering through being separated from the source of your being; to live in union with God is to live in perpetual exaltation with the source of life and love. Which sounds better to you? I know I would choose the latter.

For the kingdom of God to be realized in the present, I believe Christianity must jettison outdated and immoral doctrines like the doctrine of hell. If God is all-loving, all-merciful, and all compassionate, then all human beings have innocent souls, and all are equally deserving of eternal communion with God.