Question from Becky:
I was never a big believer in the Christian God but I did read the Bible which showed me nothing but a vengeful God as oppose to one of love. I considered being a deist but hell has latched into my brain and won’t let go. Worst knowing there is fire underneath the earth seems to support hell even more since Jesus said he was going to the heart of the earth I just want to let the fear go since it was a main reason I believed. How do I let this fear go?
Answer by SmartLX:
You’re suffering from what I call faithdrawal, the continued fear of the wrath of God (including banishment to Hell) after belief in God has faded. As the link shows, I’ve discussed it a lot, because you’re not alone in dealing with it. You realise of course that it’s irrational because in a doctrine where God is responsible for the existence of Hell there can be no Hell without a God, but since when was fear rational all the time?
Let’s look more closely at the apparent piece of support you’ve found for the existence of Hell: Matthew 12:40, where Jesus spends three days “in the heart of the earth”. First of all, that might simply have meant he was physically down in his tomb for that long. If instead it is actually a claim that he was in Hell between his crucifixion and his supposed resurrection, I wouldn’t be surprised at the implication that Hell is deep underground. In the same way that it’s easy to imagine Heaven being up in the clouds, the unexplored depths seem like a perfect place for Hell, and may even have been part of the inspiration for the popular image of Hell. People living near volcanoes and elsewhere along fault lines, in Biblical times as in any other, would have seen and documented literal lakes of fire and many varieties of red-hot wrath spewing from fissures in the ground. Miners all over the world would have noticed the increase in temperature in a deep enough cave (though this might often have been caused merely by lack of ventilation). From the science of geology we now know why it happens in great detail, so the God-of-the-gaps has retreated from the subject entirely. Unlike our ancestors, we know the lava isn’t coming from Hell.
To answer your final question directly, It’s not a matter of letting the fear go so much as the fear letting you go. An irrational fear, like a belief, must be reinforced artificially in the absence of evidence, by various means: acts of devotion, new personal discoveries in the source texts (like the “heart of the earth” thing) and so on. If you recognise on the face of it, and continue to actively recognise, that all support for the reality of the danger is unfounded, it won’t kill the fear but it will leave it with no reason to remain. Over time, and without emotional reinforcement, the fear will fade and leave you. Though it’s frustrating to hear, the less you worry about it the faster it will go, so engross yourself in something else for a few weeks or months.
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smartlx answers the question on non-existence of hell, but says nothing about non-existence of soul.
human brain is matter and matter only.
no soul in there. i repeat, only matter.
what you consider as soul, your thoughts and feelings, are actions of chemicals in brains in between each other.
when body dies, brain is body, it stops working, and so do thoughts and feelings.
He gave an answer. But is it the answer? From where is he getting his facts. What are his sources. The Bible has the answer even though some do not take all of what the Bible says. I will try to make clear what the Bible actually says about the soul, where we came from and about Hell, where it is and when it is. And what actually happens when the uninvited soul crashes the party which was never meant for them
Gerald writes: [He gave an answer. But is it the answer? From where is he getting his facts.]
That’s just it, Gerald. There are no facts that support any supernatural claim from any culture or society on Earth…ever. No empirical data at all. Places like Hell are unsupported speculation, nothing more. The stories throughout human civilizations about a “bad place” in the ground is easily understandable for the very reasons LX listed above.
Becky. I know that it is hard to believe, but God is not vengeful. He is all of what we can imagine love can be ND even more. And that is without showing something that looks like love but actually is infatuation. I would like to post more right now but I’m in church. But I will post more about what Satan wants you to feel about God but it is a false concept that Satan wants us to have about God so that just what you are feeling will happen. Remember the Bible says that God is Love. And any idea that we get that shows a contrary concept to the basic and wonderful concept that God is love, does not come from God. I will post more later.
Gerald writes: [Becky. I know that it is hard to believe, but God is not vengeful.]
Ezekiel 25:17 “I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them.”
If you don’t believe him Becky, just ask all the people who have suffered starvation and disease and the Holocaust and every other human misery just because some woman ate an apple off a tree in a garden. That same god directs jihadists in a different book to kill unbelievers. I can’t possibly understand why anyone would consider the Abrahamic god vengeful…
Gerald writes: [Remember the Bible says that God is Love.]
Revelation 20:15 “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Psalm 7:11 “…and a God who feels indignation every day”
If that’s love, you can have it, Gerald…