Comments on: Hell is an invention of the church used to control people

By: Victor Counted

Victor Counted — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:32:08 +0000

The bible may have literary called this place ‘hell’, meaning is a place of condemnation. NT words used to describe this place of condemnation for our understanding are: ‘Gehenna’, ‘Hades’ or ‘Tartarus’. Conversely, the OT word used was ‘Sheol’.

This was of-the-then contextual expressions to posit and describe the verity of this place of condemnation for those who ignore God’s message of salvation.

I think i had this same discourse on my blog with RIck Lannoye.

By: Erin

Erin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:13:56 +0000

This man is a LEGAND =D

By: Rick Lannoye

Rick Lannoye — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:51:04 +0000

Yes, there are many Christians and church leaders, like Bishop Spong, who understand that God, at least not the God that Jesus believed in, would never ever torture anyone for a moment, much less prolong the pain for millions for ever. Too bad there are so many others who have been deluded into thinking they are following Jesus when, in fact, they are denying his core message about the nature of God and what that means for our present lives.

I’ve actually written an entire book on this topic–”Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There’s No Such Place As Hell,” (you can get a free ecopy of my book at my website: http://www.thereisnohell.com).
But as an example, in Luke 9:51-56, Jesus is very disappointed with his disciples for suggesting God burn some people to death. Surely he’d be very unhappy had they suggested burning people for eternity!

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:08:38 +0000

If you get a chance please read his book “rescuing the Bible from fundamentalism” – it absolutely destroys the Bible from a historical / theological point of view, but eloquently explains how we got it in the first place- It’s lucid and rational and you end up scrtaching your head why anyone having read it would give up on such supersticious fairytales. .

I just wish he would go that one step further and become a spokesperson for the Atheist movement!

By: Rebekah

Rebekah — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:01:52 +0000

Yes there is a wide group of people who call them self Christian. there are men such as Mr. Spong. There are Messianic Jews on the other end who strive for first century Christianity in the 21 century, for example Temple Aviv Judea, CA USA. ( I am not associated with this congregation. I just know that the rabbi publicly announced on the internet that he is open to answering question on the subject of Messianic faith.) And there are people such as my self who do not attend church but read the text and believe in god, but believe god gave us the capability to reason and we should use it.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:26:42 +0000

To be honest not a single one of us is ever going to find out until the day we all die……i believe alot of it has been man made so to speak, to make us all abide by societies ‘box’. As already stated alot of previous ancients had beliefs in their own versions of hell but fundamentally each hell was a horrific place you would not want to end up in so you were preached at to be good for your life in order to get where you want to go. Now i myself would love it if when we die we all end up in our own version of ‘heaven’ like the film What Dreams May Come because then i will spend eternity in a world of chocolate and be married to Al Pacino mmmmm now that’s my idea of heaven lol

By: Beth x

Beth x — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:20:45 +0000

I put something very similar to that statement in my GCSE philosophy and ethics exam the other day

By: OtherMike

OtherMike — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:44:41 +0000

It’s nice to hear Spong at first hand, and good to know he’s still out there doing his stuff. I’ve never understood why he remains in any sort of Church, but good luck to him. What he’s talking about in his sermon is more like a kind of humanist self-fulfilment. When he refers to “God”, I don’t know if it’s anything the average atheist would object to.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:59:42 +0000

I’d consider myself a fervent, Midwestern, American Christian, church every week and prayer groups and all that, and I think my beliefs fall pretty close to this bishop’s. “Hell” is a Norse word that the church wrapped up in a variety of medieval and Greek imagery and thrown a wide variety of ideas and texts from a variety of books in the New Testament at in order to control people.

I officiated a friend’s wedding this last weekend where I talked about a concept of Heaven on earth as a teaching of Jesus, not so much as an afterlife, but I even said I think people are going to raise form the dead someday and come live on earth. After the reception, we got into a conversation about Oujii boards, and I’pulled up the Derren’s video to show. So, the guy who believes in literal resurrection was the skeptic at the party. Funny world, eh?

By: Ashish

Ashish — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:38:50 +0000

Religious moderates attempt to reconcile two unreconcilable schools of thought. I can only see this as an attempt to salvage religion from the inevitable decline in followers as common sense grows common.