Gene's Blog

Hell? Says who?

Today I want to talk about the idea, which is sort of New Agey, that hell does not exist, That when we are done with this life, we all go back where we came from, home, or as religions put it, heaven, nirvana, etc. Some folks of conservative bent challenge this idea, saying things like, well, then what is to stop anyone from doing whatever they want, if there is no punishment for what we do here? What prevents moral decay, moral confusion, moral anarchy?

Well, first, who said those are bad things? giggle. Second though, who prevents those things is us. It is true that we are here as individuals, but we certainly have the right, and the ability, to choose to live together in communities and to make rules that allow us to do so safely. The simple fact is that regardless what some religions, or traditions, teach about punishment in the hereafter, that really hasn’t seemed to prevent anyone from doing pretty much whatever they want anyway, has it? I mean from heads of state right on down to the guy who robs the local 7-11, or steals lunch money from his classmates. Yes, I did say guy, because, the truth of it is, women are much more law-abiding than men to begin with. Most crime, and certainly most violent crime, is committed by men. This may be by nature of size and strength to some extent, but it is more than that, not all murderer’s are 6’7″ and 250 pounds. In fact most aren’t. Perhaps it is something in the male dna, or in our socialization, or lack thereof, that creates human monsters. Maybe those human monsters are here simply to show the rest of us what we are not, by showing us what we can be at our worst.

Morality, well, that is trickier because there are various moral standards in place, not only in communities, but in cultures and countries too. I said the other day that the only rule we have ever needed is the Golden Rule, modified slightly, to “do unto others as they would have you do unto them”. The original version is good too, but I think allowing others to choose how they wish to be treated is more respectful than insisting they allow you to treat them as you wish to be treated. It is okay for us to be different. What point to come here to have the same experience? We come as individuals to have individual experiences. And so we do.

I think we have to “lose” our sense of “right and wrong” in order to create our sense of “right and wrong”. We define ourselves in the way we do this, in the way we determine, for ourselves, what is right and what is wrong for ourselves. This gets a little more complicated, but not all that much when we move from recognizing what we do and do not want to do in our lives. Those who say we are not to judge each other are, for instance, right AND wrong. Right in that it is never appropriate to interfere in anothers choices, wrong in that we have every right to care about what those choices might be. Choices that affect no one but oneself, are best left to oneself. Choices that affect others, may still be made with impunity, in so far as they do no harm to others. On my main site, I talked a lot about my youngest son’s suicide, 10 years ago, at the age of 21. I’ll use that as an example of what I mean. I hate what he did, that is my judgment, I was not nearly done knowing him, not nearly done having him in my life. Had I the chance, I would have done virtually anything to prevent what he did, the choice he made. But, in the same breath, I believe he had an absolute right to make that choice. I have a right to disagree with it and to judge it immature, irresponsible, impulsive and wrong. But I only get to MAKE choices for myself, no one else. Even when I disagree with their choice. This does not mean I would sit idly by and watch one person do harm to another or take no action to prevent a tragedy I saw coming. It is in what I decide is right and wrong that I define who I am. We come here to do that very thing, define ourselves in relation to the world around us. We do that by deciding what we, individually, and collectively, determine are actions that are permissible within our communities and actions which are not.

Those who would argue that without hell, without fear of eternal punishment, this world would be in anarchy, fail to see that human actions are governed by humans. Hell isn’t a place WE send anyone. It is my specific guidance from within, my Jenna, that no such place exists. CWG is quite clear on this too. God, in Book 1 on page 41, says in response to Neale’s question, “But if there is no hell, does that mean, I do what I what I want, act as I wish, commit any act, without fear of retribution.” And, God responds, “Is it FEAR you need in order to be, do, have what is intrinsically right? Must you be “threatened” in order to “be good”? And what is being good? Who gets to have the final say about that? Who sets the guidelines? Who makes the rules? ” I am in that camp too.

But before I go further, I want to talk about Hell itself, how it came to be? A group of men, convened in Nicea, to among other things, decide what went into our bible. They, and they alone, decided what was good for the “people” to know. What parts of what writings would become what we now call the bible, in its many incarnations and interpretations. Hell. Outside of Jerusalem was a massive garbage dump named Gehenna. The name itself translated into Greek, is Hell, it (Hinnom gulch), metaphorically identified with the entrance to the underworld of punishment in the afterlife – from Wikipedia. It was a smoldering fire that never went out and became what is what we now call hell. It was an epithet, to tell someone to go to Gehenna, in our terms, go to hell. And it became what the Christian bible describes as the destination of those who defy God’s will, given to us by those men who decided what got into the bible itself. There is a marvelous book, Who Wrote the New Testament, the Making of the Christian Myth, by a professor of theology at Claremont College, Burton Mack, which describes well how it was put together, and why.

Now, can we create the experience of hell on earth? Oh certainly this happens whenever we separate ourselves from our highest ideal of ourselves. We can live a life bereft of love, bereft of compassion and understanding and in so doing remove ourselves so far from the truth of who we really are, that we experience depression, despair and fear as our daily companions. But those, too, ARE choices we are allowed to make. Do other people have the right then to judge a person in that condition as in need of help and offer that help? Of course, if you see something terrible, be motivated by your own truth, your own highest idea of yourself and do what you feel is “right” for you, intercede, or not. Choice IS what life in the relative universe for humans is all about. There is no situation in which choice is not present, not until we’ve drawn our final breath. There is always an alternative, often more than one, whether we choose to see it or not. Brandon made what I believe a terrible, irreversible choice and I would have done virtually anything to prevent it, but I acknowledge his right to make it. That he was not in his “right” mind is an obvious thing to me. But I would not undo what his choosing – such is what is part of my “complicated bereavement” issue which I describe in “I hope you’ll dance”. As I insist on the right to make my own choices, my own decisions about what I believe, about what I call right and wrong, so then must I allow others the same rights I claim for my own. That isn’t spiritual anarchy, that is spiritual freedom. We can talk about why God would create such a system another time. Because there is reason behind that too. much love, :^) gene