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Underground > Temple >

Christians Wrong From The Starting Line?

05:31 / 25.03.04

Read, Consider, Understand. Does this not mean that the basic reason why Christians feel it is imperative to be a Christian is entirely incorrect? Link

rising and revolving

06:00 / 25.03.04

Only if you believe people are Christians from a fear of hell. I tend to think that fear is a terribly poor justification for doing anything, myself. I'm sure many Christians agree with me.

There are, I'm sure, a proportion of Christians who do have faith because of fear. Just as there are atheists who don't believe in god because they fear him, and having read too many D&D rulebooks think disbelieving will make him go away. I think categorising it as in some fashion the "basic imperative" of the Christian faith is ... misguided.

If you accept your premise (that hell is the basic imperative for being Christian) then yes, it does render that invalid. I just happen to think it's one of the crazier premises I've seen waved around recently.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:04 / 25.03.04

In fact, the fear of Hell is neither identified as a principal reason for Christianity, but is also for many outside the Jack Chick end of spirituality positively a bad thing... the good old-fashioned doctrine of attrition states that you should not repent through the fear of damnation, but rather out of sincere penitence.

So.... no. Certainly the question of what is scripturally understood as Hell, and when the idea of Hell as we currently have it was identified, is a very interesting one, but that doesn't support the idea that Christians are "wrong fromt he starting line", because I don't thinkt he wish to avoid damnation is necessarily the starting line, for modern or ancient Christianity.

Tryphena Absent

11:31 / 25.03.04

This is perhaps a stab in the dark but I've always been under the impression that any importance that hell takes in the actual structure of Christianity seems to stem from Medieval times. Christianity has evolved quite drastically and particularly through that period and again hell is rather a denominational thing. The Roman Catholic church seems far more focused on it than the average evangelical church.

Jack The Bodiless

11:36 / 25.03.04

However, interpreting broadly from the thread title - we're given a link to a page that seeks to 'prove' several key mistranslations in today's Bible that relate directly to established dogma in several denominations. It also mentions the doctrine in many Christian denominations that says that scripture is the word of God, and therefore inviolate, to briefly paraphrase. So, expanding and turning the question around slightly...

The Bible may not be entirely as advertised. And there may be no scriptural basis for the common Christian theological concept of 'hell'. What does this mean, if anything, for Christianity as a religion? How does this affect the beliefs of those of use who consider themselves to be, or to have been, Christians? Maybe we can use this thread to discuss it in as objective a manner as possible.

(By the way, as a kind of slightly paranoid preemptive statement - this is the Head Shop, for intelligent, articulate and preferably objective discussion. If you just wanna bash Christians, this still ain't your thread, I don't care how badly you think they treated you when you were an impressionable teenager, or how upset you are about the Christian Right being in the White House.)

12:55 / 25.03.04

Here's another site that doesn't get into the translation problems of "Hell" but does point out contradictions within the Bible about the existence of Hell. Even if you accept the translation, the gospels and epistles of the NT do not all subscribe to a concept of Hell, and furthermore they disagree on why someone would be condemned to hell.

In my Baptist Christian upbringing, it was not supposed to be the fear of hell that compelled you to worship God, but rather love and gratitude for His and Jesus's sacrifice. The attitude was almost one of, how could you not love this diety who loves you enough to die for you, despite your imperfections? The true horror of "hell," according to what I was taught, was in being separated from and rejected by that deity - that if you'd rejected Him in life you'd realize in death what a heartbreaking error you'd made. However, we were told that punishment was eternal.