I wanted to post a thought to send you into the weekend:
The following was taken directly from the Merciful Truth website. Please visit this great site if you have a chance. I may have used this before, but its worth completely bears repeating:
Nevertheless, truth will always withstand scrutiny, and it reveals depraved perversions within church traditions, which run contrary to God's deep love and perfection in his workings. They do not know the power of God. Not only is the very concept of a demonic house of terror unscriptural, abhorrent and outright sadistic, it solicits the lie that justice cannibalizes love. How many times will someone say "God is love, but he is also just" as though the two must be mutually exclusive? This shows what a mess the hell doctrine is.
"Hell" is neither a Hebrew or a Greek word (both Old and New Testaments were written in those languages), nor did it primarily indicate "a place of torment." Biblical translators actually derived it from a secular German word - spelled hel - meaning nothing more than concealed or covered. The concept of a demon regulated horror-house was indeed derived from that word, but it actually evolved from Teutonic mythology.
Not only is hell an ancient pagan tradition (not at all unique to Christianity), but the ancient Israelites did not understand death that way according to the Holy Scripture. This is why modern Bible translations are completely evicting that word from the Old Testament! Now, why would any Bible translation seek to remove a word unless it did not belong there in the first place? Because this disgusting fable, originated from a place other than God's Holy Word - yet was craftily slipped in by the dogma motivated church of ages past.
I would love to receive your comments about this topic. Have a great weekend!
4 comments:
What I love about your blog is that there is a clear desire to understand the fundamental underpinnings of your religious convictions from the point of the actual source material. Maybe I would take less humbrage with literalists if the literalists were better scholars.
Thank you.
It makes me crazy that MOST people who are religious are surface religionaires - they swallow what they are told, but never delve into the bigger picture and ask questions.
Catholics are told that the priest is the "translator" between the congregation and the bible. That is such a dangerous approach. It discourages research. It discourages seeking answers for oneself outside of a papacy. And it falsely assumes limitations on God's ability to shine in an individual's life outside of church. Catholicism, I have found, has never been focused on the spiritual, just on religious ceremony and racking up the sacraments like boy scouts trying to earn their badges.
And people, for some odd reason, can see how screwed up history is in general - now AND then - and not consider that people have screwed up the original translations of the bible, too.
Driving home from Indy this weekend we came across a giant billboard that said, "Hell is REAL". Sad to me that someone felt compelled enough to turn that sentiment into a billboard. It's nice that you are putting out a message giving alternate views. Too bad it won't fit on a billboard across the way from the above nonsense.
Thanks, Mev - I've seen billboards like that before, too, sadly. And its that type of context-free, explanation-free written public outbursts from the few that portray the whole lot of Christians as militant, ignorant, unmerciful assholes who cover their ears and go 'la-la-la-la-la' whenever someone tries to share different views with them.
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