Precious, treasured, treated like a “holy grail.” The doctrine of a place ordained by God for eternal torment and pain for all lost souls. Woe betide anyone who points out that this “hell” is an ancient heresy, still practiced today; then a cold, sharp breeze blows against you, as if you had somehow dared to secretly steal the household silverware. The outrage that such a hell supposedly doesn’t exist is generally enormous. Indeed, the characters who emerge here are quite a logical consequence of this belief in a tormenting God.
Assume the character of Jesus Christ
Whoever “sees” Jesus Christ will gradually take on His character, as stated in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.“
To “look at” Jesus Christ doesn’t mean picking up some fanciful image of Jesus to gaze at all afternoon, but rather to consider His attributes, His character, His teachings, and ideally, to emulate them all. The goal is clear: to adopt the same qualities that Jesus Christ possessed, thereby automatically doing God’s will and thus also automatically keeping all Ten Commandments. This also includes studying the Word of God, for it is here that the power of the living Word of God becomes effective.
Ultimately, a hypocrite
One could also simply turn the tables and believe in a God who, on the one hand, represented love itself, but in the end this is merely a “good face for a bad cause,” since somewhere there is a place where all lost people languish for eternity in an eternal hell, kept alive by God so that these lost souls can fully experience perpetual torment. God supposedly established this place specifically for the devil and his vassals, but then also for countless lost souls.
This (erroneous) belief in a place of eternal torment is not held by some peculiar splinter groups, but by a solid majority of all Protestant churches, and the Roman Catholic Church as well. Is it therefore particularly surprising, especially in the case of the Church of Rome, that the misled flock, faced with such a secret “monster God,” an angry Jesus Christ not always inclined to mercy, would seek refuge in a “saving, gentle, and supportive” hand? The Catholic version of Mary ideally fulfilled this purpose.
Hell does not exist.
There simply is no such thing as this “eternal, tormenting hell.” It is a figment of the imagination of pathologically misguided minds, inspired by the pagan Hellenism of antiquity, and still practiced as a tradition in large parts of the Christian world today. These are precisely the characteristics of the Roman Catholic Church, dating back to its “Church Fathers.” A looming place of torment—what an ideal means of declaring one’s own church relevant to salvation (a sacrament), thus herding the frightened flock into its own fold.
However, the meaning of the term “hell,” even upon sober consideration, as revealed by the original Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture, is anything but a place of eternal torment (Info).
Watching “Monster God” – The consequence?!
Anyone who, according to 2 Corinthians 3:18, contemplates Jesus Christ in order to adopt His attributes, then it is only logical that the same applies to contemplating a God who is essentially hypocritically loving and who torments the lost throughout all ages. Anyone who constantly watches action movies and superheroes will gradually adopt similar or even identical characteristics. Only a minority would likely doubt this.
The character of Jesus Christ is the stark opposite of what would be expected from the maintenance of a burning place. Is it therefore not surprising that the belief in a place of torment and the contemplation of the one who fuels this institution for all eternity leads to assuming certain traits of such a monstrous character? The mass tortures perpetrated by the Church of Rome would be one such example, the reasons for which, particularly for the establishment of the Inquisition (today the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith), were primarily monetary in nature (expropriation of the accused).
Protestant churches are not innocent lambs.
The early Protestant churches also behaved far from honorably when it came to defending their own faith. The persecution of the so-called Anabaptists began early on, which also resulted in imprisonment, torture, and death. Why? Because the Anabaptists recognized, among other things, that infant baptism is anything but biblical (see Info). Instead of acting like Jesus Christ and simply letting them “go” (e.g., John 6), the Anabaptists were imprisoned and tortured before being put to death by being drowned in a manner befitting their station in the church.
The motive for this is not really comprehensible. While the Roman Catholic Church gave itself a clean bill of health by stating its intention to intervene across the board whenever unity was considered to be threatened, it appears that some early groups of the Reformation simply refused to accept this and resorted to a kind of revenge and punishment.
History repeats itself.
Such developments are foreseeable again in our time. This is especially true for (extreme) evangelicals in the USA. The “subtle” difference, however, lies in the fact that (former) Protestantism no longer acts from its own motives, but rather sings the song of the Church of Rome (USA, Beast from the Earth – Info).
In the future, there will be no “difference” in this matter, as evangelical ambitions are to be enshrined in law (e.g., Project 2025), under threat of sanctions for non-compliance. Violence will once again become commonplace, and this also touches upon the topic of the “Mark of the Beast” at the end of earthly times (Info).
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Galatians 5:22
Bible verses from King James Version
