By Renoliz ~ I did a couple of articles on the concept of Christian hell awhile back: " Hell - Revisited " and " Hell- Roots" and I said I wanted to do an article on why hell is such an abusive concept. Dr. Marlene Winell recently sent in a video where she discussed that Armageddon and the Rapture are terrorism . And they are. So is the concept of hell. In the article Hell – Roots I said: My beef is with the Christians who use eternal Hell - this irresponsible and immoral concept – and use it to great effect. Christians who do not believe in Hell are sent packing. They are scorned by most Christians. Most of Christianity wants Hell as a doctrine. They can’t give it up. It is a tool of control; a weapon to keep those who join the Church from leaving; a motivator to get the sheeples to do as the pastor/preacher/minister/priest desires. I have no doubt that there are sincere Christians but I also have no doubt that Hell is a baseball bat aimed at the knee c...

By Renoliz ~ Y ou just can't come up with a coherent message from the gobbledygook of the Bible. It is the wackiest, scariest story ever told. We are born as worthless sinners and filthy rags fit only for the dustbin because of two people long ago. God never mentions his great plan in the entire Old Testament [several chapters in Isaiah not withstanding, especially since you have to really pick through the whole thing to get what the Christians are getting out of it and it doesn't read the same if you translate it directly from Hebrew instead of from the Greek version]. Image by AlaskanLibrarian via Flickr Anyway, the myriad of problems with the Bible not stopping there. Biblegod then sends his son who is really himself to get a good beating and save us from Hell . Now, Hell was never mentioned in the Old Testament either. So, Jesus gives the ultimate sacrifice of giving up his life but not really since he came back after only two days even though we are going to s...

By Renoliz ~ S o, how did Christian Hell become such a gruesome concept? It didn’t start out like that. Let’s reach far back into time. Some four thousand years ago. In “The History of Hell” by Alice K. Turner we have a resource that shows the beginnings of the concept of an underworld. At least, the first accounts about an Underworld that were put into writing in the area of the Middle East and Mediterranean. Image via Wikipedia The Sumerians [and the Babylonians] write of a goddess, Inanna , who visits her sister, Ereshkigal in the underworld. Inanna arrives from the world above and descends through seven gates to confront Ereshkigal. The sisters fight and Ereshkigal is the winner. She hangs Inanna on a stake for three days and nights. Inanna’s faithful vizier petitions the gods for Inanna’s return and Ereshkigal reluctantly permits her sister to return to the upper world provided Inanna provides a substitute or a ransom for herself. So, Inanna’s shepherd consort Dumuz...

By Renoliz ~ I got to thinking lately about how we are only human. ~ Only Human ~ I remember a pair of gals I knew that lived in an apartment on the bottom row at the end of the building. They were not smart. In fact, they were pretty dumb. They had persistent diarrhea. It turns out that they were not rinsing the dishes after they washed them in soapy water. Once they were told about this necessity they did learn to rinse the dishes. However, they never seemed to get any smarter and had to learn everything about life one detail at a time. They simply did not have the ability to think ahead or transfer knowledge from one set of circumstances to another. It was a real turning point in my life when I said to myself "I was born just like anyone else on this planet and I deserve as good a life as possible. I do not deserve to be abused, poor, cold, hungry,confused and such." Most of us are a bit smarter than that. Even so, our brains can play tricks on us. We ...

By Renoliz ~ T he concept of Hell is what got me started on my journey out of Christendom. I could not bear the thought that God would be punishing people I knew, or even people I didn’t know, in eternal hell. It was tearing me up so I started doing some research. Ironically, it is this same concept of Hell that keeps many people from questioning their religious beliefs. Seeing the many comments and concerns voiced by visitors and contributors to exC, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this topic myself. Whenever I write a reply that refers people to one of my favorite website I use the disclaimer that it is a Christian website. And why wouldn’t it be? Only Christians would care about the concept of eternal hell and only Christians are worried about having a god that is roasting untold millions of people. Much of the world does not believe in Christianity and would have their own concerns. Vast numbers of people live in fear of this place of imagined unending...

By Renoliz ~ M y mother is apparently dying as I write this. She will soon take her last breath. Whilst not wanting to speak ill of the dead I am yet baffled by a life so wasted. I am incensed by a life so injurious to her children. I found out from my sister that Mom has spoken with a chaplain at the hospital. "She has regrets about her life," my sister states "But she does believe in God." So, apparently, all is forgiven and she can die in peace. I wonder why Mom didn't try to make amends when she could -- with us real human beings? Instead, last minute and all, she decides that she will talk to a chaplain. What did he tell her? That god loves all of us and that we are all born sinners. She couldn't help the bad things that she did. Did he tell her that children should honor their mother and their father? We children just haven't done right by her. We should be punished not her. I wonder if he told her that she should forgive us ...

By Renoliz -- I can’t seem to help but to mull over my last, and final, brush with Christianity. And my bizarre fear of Satan and obsession with Hell . Mostly, these fears are gone now but it seems so strange. “What happened?”, I ask myself. I was completely out of Christianity for years. 20 or 25 years. Then, after only a couple of years of going to church, I was afraid - afraid of Hell. Afraid of what Hell was doing to the unsaved. Afraid people would never hear the Good News of Jesus and roast in Hell for eternity. I can only think that the Hell concept had been like a ticking time bomb. An implanted idea that exploded when I started going to church again. I went from being sort of spiritual to being a Christian afraid of Hell in a fairly short time span. And when my logical mind was ready to leave the church, a few years later, my emotional brain was not so easily subdued. My rational self determining being was going into combat against my emotional Hell fearing s...

By Renoliz -- H eaven or Hell? Pick one or the other. These are your options. Dancing on streets of gold or roasting for all of eternity? Hmmmm. Sign me up for Heaven! J.W. got me to thinking about the fact that when an evangelist shows up at your door, you are not given all of your options. You are certainly not given your options if you grow up in a household that believes in the Bible and God. You simply may not know there are other options available and you may not know what questions to ask. Let's say you go to a restaurant, look at the menu and order your burger and fries. The waiter serves you your meal. Then you look around and see one couple at another table with mouth watering giant shrimps, a delicious green salad and those mash potatoes with the garlic in them. You say, "Waiter." "Sir/Madame," he replies. "I didn't see that on the menu." "Oh, that's not on our menu but there are other options if you know what to ...

By Renoliz -- I just wanted to say how nice it has been to be able to "speak up" on the topic of Christianity. The damn has burst and I have commented on several of the articles. Image by vicsaez via Flickr I have never participated in on-line discussions or made any comments before recently. Since it is anonymous, I do feel that in some ways I can say what is really on my mind. I truly hope that something I say here will be helpful to somebody else who is considering leaving Christianity. However, this has been liberating for me. Reading others thoughts and feelings has allowed me to work through an awful lot of anger and angst. There has been sadness and fear. Knowing that I am not the only one struggling with fundamentalist indoctrination has helped me to no end. Realizing that the "nice" church I went to as a child also instilled a fear of Hell in me has helped me crystalize my feelings that Christianity is not a healthy concept. Truthfully, I...

By Renoliz -- I have been lurking around on this site for quite some time. And I am so grateful I found you folks. About 2 years ago I broke free from Christianity and I know this time it is for good. It was really difficult. I was afraid my husband would be upset. I was even afraid that that butt-head running that fundamentalist Baptist church we were in would try to get between us. And that weasel did try. But my husband stuck with me. He would still like to think he is a Christian but, thankfully, when we went to church with Mom and Dad at Christmas, we were falling asleep in our seats. It was so boring. So my fear of him wanting to go back to church is waning. When I think of the horrible message of salvation and it's ensuing emphasis on hell, I shudder to ever get involved in Christianity again. And, of course, all the other religions are just as inane. I really would like to tell you the whole story someday, dear people. But for now I would just like to b...