2d ago

Toxic empathy...?

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Sadly, this is a thing.
(Note: I am not encouraging one to read the link.)
Witnessing to Liberals by Ron Rhodes
God’s primary attribute is said to be love. His holiness, judgment, and wrath are practically ignored. Thus, it is not surprising that liberal Christians hold out the hope of immortality for all people. The idea that any will spend eternity in hell is rejected.
The writing spends a lot of time arguing against the "mischaracterizations of evangelicals", while mischaracterizing "liberal Christians".
Such a horrible out world view.
(I don't care to find out what this detestable person has to say about Atheists.)
- The idea that any will spend eternity in hell is rejected.
  Hell isn't a scriptural concept, it was taken and evolved from Hellenism. While I'm deconstructed, I know several "leftist Christians" that reject most modern evangelical dogma as "unscriptural." I agree with them, but there is no ethical justification for things like "God told the Israelites to genocide an entire people, including babies." At the end of the day, even if you agree with Jesus' humanist teaching, the Bible is full to the brim with "God" ostensibly telling people to do horrible, unjust, repugnant things.
  
  The hell everyone thinks of was basically just biblical fan fiction.
  
  Most people’s understanding of Satan and Hell is more from Milton and Dante than from the Bible. With the “Rapture”, it’s all Tim LaHeye, Hal Lindsey and basement church videos regurgitation of John Darby.
  
  There absolutely is support for the existence of hell in scripture. Of course, the bible is constructed in such a way that you can use the contradicting passages to support nearly any viewpoint you want.
  A large amount of the early christianity is Hellenistic, hence the influences.
  
  There isn’t. Every single word that gets translated to “hell” in English has a different and specific meaning in the source documents… usually “grave” but sometimes “Gehenna” which was an actual place with bad connotations, and “Hades” in the context of a parable, being literally the Greek/Hellenist underworld.
  Jews, including Jesus, did not believe in an afterlife, per se. Instead, there were two schools of thought. First was that you get one life die, that’s it. This was espoused by the ruling, priestly class. Second, and what Jesus literally espoused, was that at the end of time, everyone would be resurrected and judged. Those judged righteous would then be granted a new life in a newly created place and everyone else disposed of, permanently dead.
  
  There is text in the bible referring to unworthy people suffering after their deaths.
  That it was not literally called "hell" in the original text is a distraction.
  
  There is not. Not in an afterlife, at least. You may be thinking of the last judgement, which is part of the “resurrection of the dead” that I previously mentioned. That’s the part with the “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
  
  Luke 16:24 is absolutely in the afterlife.
  
  That is actually a parable, just as fictitious as the one that comes immediately before it. It utilizes Hellenist terms and imagery for the benefit of an audience familiar with those concepts. The parable is set in Hades, the literal greek underworld. The point of the parable is to drive home the hopelessness for hoarders of wealth, as the more someone has, the more is expected of them.
  
  I understand that it is a parable.
  But it is still literally scripture, where someone suffers in the afterlife. That the moral of the story is the rich must share their wealth to avoid the same fate rather supports my position.
- Against my best judgement, I read the whole thing. (You practically begged me to!) He's just offering incredibly disingenuous "talking points" for "liberal Christians" that are actually things you might say to an atheist. The whole thing just exists to characterize non-conservative Christians as fake Christians.
  
  100% agree. It is fully repugnant.

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