Anyone else believe they're going to hell? (4 Viewers)

[dseag2]

I identify as agnostic these days. If I'm pressed I'll say I do not believe in the divine, but I choose to have faith anyway. As paradoxical as it might sound, it feels like the most honest answer for such a complex question.

Same here. I believe in a Greater Being but not the one presented in any of the organized religions. I'm actually grateful that organized religion was such a negative experience that it caused me to look more inside myself for answers.

 

[Individual]

Hell is for the living, RIP.

 

[Revelation]

Same here. I believe in a Greater Being but not the one presented in any of the organized religions. I'm actually grateful that organized religion was such a negative experience that it caused me to look more inside myself for answers.

church is a mixed bag.

we attend a home church almost everyday and then go to Formal churches in the area

tonight i went to a Pentacostal church for a men's fellowship and dinner. we chatted a while and i asked a lady to help a friend of mine who has Cancer and is struggling.

so i try to care for all of those God sends my way.

but yeah, church people can be negative. just move on and find a place where God can help you.

some years i may go to 10 different churches. i want to see how God is working in me and others. some days are better than others, it is like Panning for Gold...we are Panning for God instead.


blessings.


.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Same here. I believe in a Greater Being but not the one presented in any of the organized religions. I'm actually grateful that organized religion was such a negative experience that it caused me to look more inside myself for answers.

We do seem to be on similar paths in this regard.

 

[BabaVoss]

The old joke response to being told to ‘go to hell’ is “well, at least I’ll be with people I know.”

There is no heaven.
There is no hell.
When we die we are dead.
If you think about it, that should make life precious indeed.

 

[Parker_Chess]

Same here. I believe in a Greater Being but not the one presented in any of the organized religions. I'm actually grateful that organized religion was such a negative experience that it caused me to look more inside myself for answers.

I

all of us have Parker

for all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God, from Romans 3



many don't, in fact most don't.

Jesus said the 'way is narrow that leads to Eternal Life, and few there be that find it'.

Parker, you can be the few that find it.



we all deserve hell, but God doesn't want you to go there. he wants you in heaven.

as a teenager, i talked to the minister about this. God convicted me of my sin and God was calling me to change and follow Jesus.

so i did.

the preacher showed me John 6:47 'all that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I shall in no wise cast out'

that night i believed and God gave me peace.

so i repent daily and confess sin direct to God; then i asked to be filled with God's Spirit of love joy peace et al.

he does, and begin my day. makes a difference for even the Chiefest of Sinners as the Apostle Paul said. he killed Christians until God stopped him one day and he repented.

so can you.

be honest with God concerning your lack of faith et al. start there.

stay at it every day until you get peace. in time you will.

look for CR (Celebrate Recovery) in your community; basically a fellowship of christians like you that have 'hurts habits and hang ups'

i have gone there for about 4 years and it makes a difference. and it is free, we go through 12 steps of Recovery from whatever. ours has dinner every week, so i attend the dinner and fellowship. on Sunday i find a good church and worship; i attend quite a few churches, some better than others.

then i read a book on a Seminary level: 'Life in the Son' by Shank. made a difference in my understanding of God and what we desperately need to know.

enjoy peace and an Eternity in heaven.

doesn't matter what others do or fail to do; you do you.

blessings, many are Praying for you. i will

@tosca1
.

Thanks for sharing. I feel so jaded and like I don't have a home anywhere. I converted to Mormonism and spent a year attending my local ward. Then during General Conference I realized the "prophets" on my TV Screen did not teach the god I believed in. Then I started attending an Orthodox Church for a year but my attendence has jaded quite a bit. I stopped reading my scriptures and praying. I still brought myself to attend on Easter Sunday Liturgy. I enjoyed it but then felt slightly uncomfortable with seeing old people I used to know. Now I've just been drinking and sinning alot. I live alone and have no family. I really don't know what I'm doing with my life. Part of me thinks, I should go back to Mormonism because at least there people seemed to care about me. But then again I don't believe it so I'd be living a lie.

 

[Lycanthrope]

The old joke response to being told to ‘go to hell’ is “well, at least I’ll be with people I know.”

There is no heaven.
There is no hell.
When we die we are dead.
If you think about it, that should make life precious indeed.

I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again." - Achilles, from Troy 2004

I wonder what kind of world we'd have if everyone - believer of whatever and nonbeliever of all - kept this at the forefront of their mind.

 

[Revelation]

The old joke response to being told to ‘go to hell; is “well, at least I’ll be with people I know.”

There is no heaven.
There is no hell.

When we die we are dead.
If you think about it, that should make life precious indeed.

Life is Precious.

so is Eternal Life.

life in the usa is a mixed bag Baba; for yur sake, i hope that dee cee gets better for you. however it may not.

get something better than anything we debate about in the political forums. if the Politicians could save us, then they would have one hundred years ago.



blessings.

 

[BabaVoss]

Life is Precious.

Indeed it is.

so is Eternal Life.

That is a fantasy.

life in the usa is a mixed bag Baba; for yur sake, i hope that dee cee gets better for you. however it may not.

Dee cee? I don’t live there. My life is pretty good, so thanks for your concern, but I am better off than most.

get something better than anything we debate about in the political forums. if the Politicians could save us, then they would have one hundred years ago.

blessings.

Ok

 

[TypicalRussian]

Intense existential worry about the afterlife is imported from Egypt and received via Calvinists. Eternal Life is important no doubt but intense emphasis is a non-Christian trait

 

[Grand Mal]

I've done far too many bad things. And burned too many bridges. I don't even try to live a Christian life. I never repent or say sorry. Hell is appropriate punishment for my actions.

Are you friggin' serious? Do you really think hell might be real?
It's just a fairy tale told to kids to frighten them.

 

[Grand Mal]

amen that is a start.

my father was an atheist and asked God if he was real; so God picked up on that and convinced him of who God was.

we all go thru the same thing; we must pursue God and he will respond.

.

Doesn't matter which God, if you 'pursue' him/her, she/he will respond.

 

[Revelation]

I

Thanks for sharing.

welcome Parker. i have been there many times, down deep we are all the same.

so i just Trust God for the remedy. lately it is physical and i have to get some surgery for a better life even though i don't want to. however it will help me live better and serve God and others the way i should.

so i go by faith, for years i tried to avoid it.

I feel so jaded and like I don't have a home anywhere. I converted to Mormonism and spent a year attending my local ward. Then during General Conference I realized the "prophets" on my TV Screen did not teach the god I believed in. Then I started attending an Orthodox Church for a year but my attendence has jaded quite a bit. I stopped reading my scriptures and praying. I still brought myself to attend on Easter Sunday Liturgy. I enjoyed it but then felt slightly uncomfortable with seeing old people I used to know. Now I've just been drinking and sinning alot. I live alone and have no family. I really don't know what I'm doing with my life. Part of me thinks, I should go back to Mormonism because at least there people seemed to care about me. But then again I don't believe it so I'd be living a lie.

Celebrate Recovery is a good place to start, it was for me and thousands of others.

Home - Celebrate Recovery

Celebrate Recovery is a safe place to find freedom from your hurts, hang-ups, and habits.

celebraterecovery.com

There are now 35,000+ churches with a Celebrate Recovery ministry, plus Celebrate Recovery is found in recovery houses, rescue missions, universities, and prisons around the world. We are a part of something much larger than one church’s recovery ministry. Celebrate Recovery continues to be a growing global movement.

The need for Celebrate Recovery is unmistakable, being a safe place for people to find freedom from the issues controlling their lives. https://celebraterecovery.com/

all kinds of people go there and you can find friends there, i do. some have issues of drugs, alcohol, porn addiction, divorce, and loss of loved ones.............so quite a mix.

kinda strange at first, but i got used to it and help the others that come. every body has different issues, and i help them. my past included health care and social work in college so i about seen it all.

we try to offer hope and encouragement best we can; but it really is the person that must want help. so we point them to God.

i help both men and women, young and old. some make me laugh or cry, others are just fun to be with. and i pray for them all the time, hoping the addict comes one more week and finds the strength to carry on .........they do.


blessings.

.

 

[Revelation]

Doesn't matter which God, if you 'pursue' him/her, she/he will respond.

God let my father know in a powerful way, every atheist is unique my friend.

i don't write anyone's story; God treats you like a friend and touches the hurt in your life........if you want him to.

every day i wake up and pray for God to take over, help me in my weakness.......lots of them.

some days on this forum are good too, hopefully i do better responses as time goes by.

but i like some of the people here who take time to help others, even if it is to vent concerning this sorry world.

wish i could fix this world, doesn't look good to me most days concerning what we fuss politically about. i really fear what the military is up to..........nuff said.

.

 

[Revelation]

Are you friggin' serious? Do you really think hell might be real?
It's just a fairy tale told to kids to frighten them.

wish it was a fairy tale.

some believe we are just annihilated, but the evidence i read is this is not the case.

regardless, better to Find Hope; God created this universe and our impossible dreams are so possible with him.


.

 

[Hari Seldon]

I've done far too many bad things. And burned too many bridges. I don't even try to live a Christian life. I never repent or say sorry. Hell is appropriate punishment for my actions.

 

[Phys251]

Interesting thread. I will be curious to see where it goes.

I was raised in my mother's Southern Baptist church, where hell was a frequent topic. Summers there were esp. interesting because they would do revival weeks and invariably bring in fire and brimstone preachers who thundered on about malicious demons and eternal torture and pain and darkness and damnation and wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

I dropped out of organized religion as a teen, and it took a long time to deprogram from the fear and anxiety that sort of preaching brought on. I used to despair that i wasn't truly saved, or I had somehow voided that salvation by the inevitable sinning, or (and this was the worst) that I had committed the "unpardonable sin" and was therefore irrevocably damned. Maturity and experience allowed for a more nuanced understanding of religion and theology as human inventions (and therefore flawed). I am no longer held in fear of a "Jack Chick" conception of hell - it falls under the umbrella of theodicy to me. The concept of Hell and what supposedly goes on there is outside the boundaries of an all loving, all powerful god. Either some Christian denominations are mistaken in putting justice and wrath above Christ's message of forgiveness and goodness, or the divine is not truly all loving and/or all powerful and therefore one wonders if it is worthy of adoration.

Hell seems to be one of the hardest of the conservative Christian beliefs to deprogram from. It's the ultimate threat that they make. Without it, their dogma has no power.

 

[Revelation]

Hell seems to be one of the hardest of the conservative Christian beliefs to deprogram from. It's the ultimate threat that they make. Without it, their dogma has no power.

since i found Faith in God. it is good in the Life and the next.

i program my Life for Faith and not the reverse. Faith heals and can move mountains.

what does the Lack of Faith give you? a life of shifting sand.

no thanks.

i found a Solid Rock to stand on. all other ground is Sinking Sand.


blessings Phys.

.

 

[Grand Mal]

God let my father know in a powerful way, every atheist is unique my friend.

i don't write anyone's story; God treats you like a friend and touches the hurt in your life........if you want him to.

every day i wake up and pray for God to take over, help me in my weakness.......lots of them.

some days on this forum are good too, hopefully i do better responses as time goes by.

but i like some of the people here who take time to help others, even if it is to vent concerning this sorry world.

wish i could fix this world, doesn't look good to me most days concerning what we fuss politically about. i really fear what the military is up to..........nuff said.

.

Who's going to hell? Sinners, according to what some Protestant preacher calls sin? Sinners according to the old testament, Leviticus version of sin? Sinners according to Jesus who called on he who is without sin to cast the first stone?
Hell doesn't exist. Not hell created by God. It's a fantasy, like a Nordic myth.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Hell seems to be one of the hardest of the conservative Christian beliefs to deprogram from. It's the ultimate threat that they make. Without it, their dogma has no power.

It took me decades. Hell (pun intended) it still rears its ugly head now and again. But in the end, the god presented by the Southern Baptists of my youth isn't worthy of worship. And I don't say that lightly, because I saw some truly holy work that took place in that setting.

 

[Parker_Chess]

Let me rephrase that if there is a hell I belong there.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Let me rephrase that if there is a hell I belong there.

Well to be fair, by Christian standards you are in universal company.

 

[Daisy]

Sure, everyone who dies goes to hell/sheol/hades/the grave...

Hell

Hebrew:
Sheol: This is often translated as "grave" or "the abode of the dead." It can also be interpreted as a subterranean "land of gloom and deep darkness," according to Britannica.

Greek:
Hades: This is the Greek word for the underworld, often translated as "the grave."
Google

 

[Noodlegawd]

I've done far too many bad things. And burned too many bridges. I don't even try to live a Christian life. I never repent or say sorry. Hell is appropriate punishment for my actions.

No. The entire concept of "hell" is absurd.

 

[Noodlegawd]

Let me rephrase that if there is a hell I belong there.

Don't worry. Confess your sins and accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, and you definitely won't go to hell. Or don't do any of that, and you still won't go to hell.