Evangelical It-Boy Rob Bell suggested in a 2011 book, “Love Wins,” that hell just might be a human construct. He took it in the teeth over that — mostly from fellow pew warmers — and eventually he left the church to enter the gauzy world of Oprah Spirituality.
That last sentence sounds more dismissive than I mean, but do not worry, Bro. Rob is doing fine.
“Love Wins” was a brave and important book and if fellow evangelical/would-be fundamentalists got their knickers in a twist over it, well, to hell with them. The book made me think. Where I grew up, hell was very much a real place, a scary threat that kept us on the straight and narrow. It was intriguing to think of it as gone, just like that, poof!
What also intrigued me was the next question would be: What if we loved people to avoid being sent where our flesh would eternally melt from our bones (a situation that is hard to explain scientifically)?
What if we loved people out of a sense of, well, love?
So here’s your chance. I know not everyone is a pew-warmer here. If we remove the notion of hell, what’s your version of heaven?
Great question to start the morning. I don't think heaven is a place; I believe heaven is a consciousness. I believe it is a consciousness of love and connection. I believe we can have that here (embodied) and beyond here (when our soul lays the body down,) "The kingdom of God is in the midst of you." (Luke 17:21) Hell is also a consciousness, a consciousness of fear and disconnection. I have known people to hold heaven on earth, and those who are (and often bring) hell on earth.
Well said, Melina. I too think it is a spirit or consciousness. I believe the good will find their loved ones who have passed before them including their pets and will guide and watch over their loved ones who are still alive. I think karma does exist but not in a fire and brimstone kind of place but more in a spirit that is stuck in fear and hate with no eternal rest. And those who get the spiritual heaven do not get there just by going to church, but by living a good and caring life.
A state of heart, too. There is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that has always resonated with me, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
I pretty much think heaven, like god, is just another made up human construct but when a growing up friend passed away in the past year his wife said something at his memorial that struck me. “Heaven, life after death, is in the memories of those who miss you”.
Yeah. “Beliefs” aren’t based on verifiable, empirical evidence. In the lack of those things, it’s a subjective choice. To borrow from Penn Gillette, “I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy”. It’s like the universe. Science expands our understanding of the verifiable universe. Beyond that, we can make up whatever we want. And we do.
The tangling of belief and fact is on my mind, too. Of course facts can't be proven without first having a theory. Still, until proven, theory remains only a theory. I think of belief as a jump from theory to implied fact, without the proof.
I was brought up in the United Church of Christ, and hell didn't really turn up in church, in part because it's not much of a thing in the Bible. In Southern Illinois, where I grew up, most churches were hell churches, I think, but that didn't turn up in the VBSes I took part in that weren't UCC. So I heard people talking about hell in live and televised public discourse, but not lots about it.
One Sunday our mild Scandinavian-USian pastor did mention the concept, I can't recall in what context. So I asked my mother what she thought about hell. She said, wisely, I always thought, "I don't know, but I know that people can make hells on earth."
So I was never afraid of hell, no one having tried to induce me to be in any effective way. And yet when one of my ordination gatekeepers asked me at riddle time, "Do you love your fellow man?" I said, "Well, that's a funny thing. Human beings are probably my least favorite species, but I do love nearly everyone I've ever known." (About fifteen years later, I realized that if he wasn't just Saying Some Words, he was likely to trying to ferret out whether I'd jump down his throat for saying "man," acts I came in stinking of feminism. A righteous stink, founded on my well-cultivated muckheaps. But I'm not mad keen on correcting people, and prefer to understand them and continue te conversation....)
Oh, yeah, right in with that fundamentalism, right?
I spent about three years-- recently finished, I devoutly hope-- remembering all sorts of mostly small and mostly customary ways I did horrible things as a child and young person, and excoriating myself for each. I think it may have stopped because of the fruit it bore: that we learn humanning from our adults and colleagues, and aren't initially in any position to think of it that way or make choices among unknown alternatives or indeed, really perceive alternatives and think critically, for some time.
I struggle with wondering if there is an afterlife at all. There is no real scientific proof, only my wishes and hopes for something more. So this is also where my interest in facts and solid science creeps in and says - belief is not the same as fact. Proof leads to facts. The thing is, with all of my interest in somehow reconnecting with loved ones who have passed throughout my life, I have had never had any solid proof that any such thing could or did occur. There have been things that have happened that I want more than anything to link to someone who has passed. I mean, maybe it is possible. But without solid proof, I teeter between what may be a possibility or a wish, and thinking that when a person dies it's like the switch has been turned off (apparently, my son of a pastor, physician grandfather once said that). Though I wish for something more beyond this life, maybe that something more is nothing other than the effects we each have had on the living and any lessons learned. And if that is all there is though, is that so bad? If the legacy of those who have passed is what lives beyond them, and that legacy includes a lot of good things, maybe that is the heaven that has been created. And if the legacy is destruction and harm, that is the hell that a person has created. Maybe heaven is in front of us, right now, to create or destroy, based on all of the things we have learned from the people who have been and are in our lives. So if we want to create our own heaven, we do it now, while we're still here and able to love, connect, and do good things.
Might heaven be what we create during our lives through kindness, fairness, justice, caring, and love? What we do versus a place we go for reward? And can we conceive of heaven as inclusive of imperfection - the product of our attempt to do our best, knowing we'll never be perfect?
As usual, this brings me back to a piece of my heritage, a passage from Talmud that exhorts us to follow the right path, but acknowledges the difference between perfection and aspiration: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
I believe that Jesus's message -- the "good news" -- was that life here on Earth could seem as Heaven if we would just treat each other with the same love and kindness that he modeled to us: feed the hungry, heal the sick, etc.
One of my college roommates was the daughter of a pastor who my liberal young self considered very conservative. I remember she told me that “hell” is defined as rejecting God’s love. Great definition that has stuck with me forever.
Agreed. I have an imaginary “picture” of someone in hell. Except they are really in the consciousness of love, and they refuse to see it, or accept it. So they stand with their fists balled and their eyes shut and just will not open themselves to what love would make of them, how it would heal them.
A Priest who was a friend, Father McLean, of the now closed Catholic Bookstore in Hartford, told this story of Hell/Heaven. In Hell, people sat around a banquet table with the arms locked in a straight out position therefore they were unable to enjoy the feast situated before them. In Heaven it was the same exact scene EXCEPT the people were feeding one another. I always loved that story.
I was born and raised a Catholic in the days of inane rules. Through the last few generations these rules meant little as the church became a ‘victim’ of itself. Now thousands of churches are closed and many dioceses are collapsing. Meanwhile the right wing religious zealots like the judge on Alabama’s Supreme Court are imposing their warped views upon the populace (read Professor Richardson’s Substack today) - yessiree bub embryos are living, breathing humans so you infertile couples longing to have a child risk jail if you dare seeking birthing via artificial insemination! Just another WTF moment that convinces me that hell does exist - we are living it here on Earth! Howz dem apples?!?
I believe in heaven & hell. Pulpit pounders focusing on burning lakes of hellfire & Satan poking sinners with physical or emotional pitchforks miss the scary part of hell to me. That would be Jesus closing Heaven’s door saying he never knew me and thus my missing His banquet & other festivities. To miss seeing him and the Father face to face at long last and being fully embraced by their love would be a totally devastating tragedy. I can only imagine traveling around Heaven seeing loved ones & meeting people who lived in different centuries and countries. Hearing music from varied cultures. Dancing & singing joyfully in eternal brotherhood.
Great question to start the morning. I don't think heaven is a place; I believe heaven is a consciousness. I believe it is a consciousness of love and connection. I believe we can have that here (embodied) and beyond here (when our soul lays the body down,) "The kingdom of God is in the midst of you." (Luke 17:21) Hell is also a consciousness, a consciousness of fear and disconnection. I have known people to hold heaven on earth, and those who are (and often bring) hell on earth.
Well said, Melina. I too think it is a spirit or consciousness. I believe the good will find their loved ones who have passed before them including their pets and will guide and watch over their loved ones who are still alive. I think karma does exist but not in a fire and brimstone kind of place but more in a spirit that is stuck in fear and hate with no eternal rest. And those who get the spiritual heaven do not get there just by going to church, but by living a good and caring life.
I love that. A consciousness. A state of mind.
A state of heart, too. There is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that has always resonated with me, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
I pretty much think heaven, like god, is just another made up human construct but when a growing up friend passed away in the past year his wife said something at his memorial that struck me. “Heaven, life after death, is in the memories of those who miss you”.
That's beautiful.
No way to know, is there?
Yeah. “Beliefs” aren’t based on verifiable, empirical evidence. In the lack of those things, it’s a subjective choice. To borrow from Penn Gillette, “I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy”. It’s like the universe. Science expands our understanding of the verifiable universe. Beyond that, we can make up whatever we want. And we do.
The tangling of belief and fact is on my mind, too. Of course facts can't be proven without first having a theory. Still, until proven, theory remains only a theory. I think of belief as a jump from theory to implied fact, without the proof.
To see is to believe or to believe is to see, which one of these?
Much like the existential axiomatic conundrum (attributions highly questionable).
“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Sinatra
I meant to link to this since I quoted it. I may have put it up here before.
https://www.npr.org/2005/11/21/5015557/there-is-no-god
My goodness, but these comments are so thought-provoking. I knew they would be, but da-yum!
I was brought up in the United Church of Christ, and hell didn't really turn up in church, in part because it's not much of a thing in the Bible. In Southern Illinois, where I grew up, most churches were hell churches, I think, but that didn't turn up in the VBSes I took part in that weren't UCC. So I heard people talking about hell in live and televised public discourse, but not lots about it.
One Sunday our mild Scandinavian-USian pastor did mention the concept, I can't recall in what context. So I asked my mother what she thought about hell. She said, wisely, I always thought, "I don't know, but I know that people can make hells on earth."
So I was never afraid of hell, no one having tried to induce me to be in any effective way. And yet when one of my ordination gatekeepers asked me at riddle time, "Do you love your fellow man?" I said, "Well, that's a funny thing. Human beings are probably my least favorite species, but I do love nearly everyone I've ever known." (About fifteen years later, I realized that if he wasn't just Saying Some Words, he was likely to trying to ferret out whether I'd jump down his throat for saying "man," acts I came in stinking of feminism. A righteous stink, founded on my well-cultivated muckheaps. But I'm not mad keen on correcting people, and prefer to understand them and continue te conversation....)
I would have corrected him. The older I get, the more I wonder why that is my go-to.
Probably your adults taught you by example that that was how to human.
That one must at all times be right. That figures in, too.
Oh, yeah, right in with that fundamentalism, right?
I spent about three years-- recently finished, I devoutly hope-- remembering all sorts of mostly small and mostly customary ways I did horrible things as a child and young person, and excoriating myself for each. I think it may have stopped because of the fruit it bore: that we learn humanning from our adults and colleagues, and aren't initially in any position to think of it that way or make choices among unknown alternatives or indeed, really perceive alternatives and think critically, for some time.
I struggle with wondering if there is an afterlife at all. There is no real scientific proof, only my wishes and hopes for something more. So this is also where my interest in facts and solid science creeps in and says - belief is not the same as fact. Proof leads to facts. The thing is, with all of my interest in somehow reconnecting with loved ones who have passed throughout my life, I have had never had any solid proof that any such thing could or did occur. There have been things that have happened that I want more than anything to link to someone who has passed. I mean, maybe it is possible. But without solid proof, I teeter between what may be a possibility or a wish, and thinking that when a person dies it's like the switch has been turned off (apparently, my son of a pastor, physician grandfather once said that). Though I wish for something more beyond this life, maybe that something more is nothing other than the effects we each have had on the living and any lessons learned. And if that is all there is though, is that so bad? If the legacy of those who have passed is what lives beyond them, and that legacy includes a lot of good things, maybe that is the heaven that has been created. And if the legacy is destruction and harm, that is the hell that a person has created. Maybe heaven is in front of us, right now, to create or destroy, based on all of the things we have learned from the people who have been and are in our lives. So if we want to create our own heaven, we do it now, while we're still here and able to love, connect, and do good things.
On the other hand, it is comforting to imagine being reunited with loved ones on the other side of this life. I'll still hold onto that wish.
Might heaven be what we create during our lives through kindness, fairness, justice, caring, and love? What we do versus a place we go for reward? And can we conceive of heaven as inclusive of imperfection - the product of our attempt to do our best, knowing we'll never be perfect?
As usual, this brings me back to a piece of my heritage, a passage from Talmud that exhorts us to follow the right path, but acknowledges the difference between perfection and aspiration: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
I like that approach best. I have no idea if I'm around for an afterlife, so I can concentrate on THIS life and die happy.
I believe that Jesus's message -- the "good news" -- was that life here on Earth could seem as Heaven if we would just treat each other with the same love and kindness that he modeled to us: feed the hungry, heal the sick, etc.
One of my college roommates was the daughter of a pastor who my liberal young self considered very conservative. I remember she told me that “hell” is defined as rejecting God’s love. Great definition that has stuck with me forever.
Agreed. I have an imaginary “picture” of someone in hell. Except they are really in the consciousness of love, and they refuse to see it, or accept it. So they stand with their fists balled and their eyes shut and just will not open themselves to what love would make of them, how it would heal them.
A Priest who was a friend, Father McLean, of the now closed Catholic Bookstore in Hartford, told this story of Hell/Heaven. In Hell, people sat around a banquet table with the arms locked in a straight out position therefore they were unable to enjoy the feast situated before them. In Heaven it was the same exact scene EXCEPT the people were feeding one another. I always loved that story.
I don’t want to go to the heaven that I can imagine, I want to go to the heaven that God can imagine.
In that case then I want God to imagine that heaven is like Birdland in the fifties, without the cigarettes.
I was born and raised a Catholic in the days of inane rules. Through the last few generations these rules meant little as the church became a ‘victim’ of itself. Now thousands of churches are closed and many dioceses are collapsing. Meanwhile the right wing religious zealots like the judge on Alabama’s Supreme Court are imposing their warped views upon the populace (read Professor Richardson’s Substack today) - yessiree bub embryos are living, breathing humans so you infertile couples longing to have a child risk jail if you dare seeking birthing via artificial insemination! Just another WTF moment that convinces me that hell does exist - we are living it here on Earth! Howz dem apples?!?
I hear there’s a bill in front of the Alabama house to register sperm cells as republicans.
I laughed.
I love the lyrics from Dan Fogelberg’s song “Part of the Plan”—“There is no Eden or heavenly gate, that you’re gonna make it to someday.
All of the answers you seek can be found in the dreams that you dream along the way.”
I believe in heaven & hell. Pulpit pounders focusing on burning lakes of hellfire & Satan poking sinners with physical or emotional pitchforks miss the scary part of hell to me. That would be Jesus closing Heaven’s door saying he never knew me and thus my missing His banquet & other festivities. To miss seeing him and the Father face to face at long last and being fully embraced by their love would be a totally devastating tragedy. I can only imagine traveling around Heaven seeing loved ones & meeting people who lived in different centuries and countries. Hearing music from varied cultures. Dancing & singing joyfully in eternal brotherhood.