An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXV - What The Hell?

I've often noted that The Bible isn't an instruction manual for Christians, nor is it a doctrinal exposition. The Old Testament is a collection of mythological creation stories, legendary ethic history, poems and songs. The New Testament has a few doctrinal treatises, but is many letters to churches and incomplete biographies of Jesus. The Biblical view of the afterlife, or even if there is one, is unclear. The description of an afterlife for those who are outside God's eternal rewards even less so. 

Here are a few verses in the New Testament:

(I did not include verses from Revelation, since they are describing events in the future, and generally refer to Satan, The Beast and the False Prophet; I also excluded Old Testament verses)

Matthew 10:28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 13:42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:50 and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Matthew 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

There is some scholarship that maintains that the word translated "Hell" is translated from hades, which could be translated "the grave". In the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures it translates sheol, which is simply the place or realm of the dead.  There is some reference to a blazing furnace and eternal punishment. 

Mark 9:43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.

Acts 2:27 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay.

II Thessalonians 1:9 They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Jude 1:7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

In these other verses there are a few references to eternal fire. Acts 2:27 is an Old Testament quote. I'm sure there are others, but this sets the template: if you're not a beneficiary of eternal life, you're getting eternal punishment, described as eternal fire. One verse refers to everlasting destruction and shut out from The Lord's presence. I have seen scholarship that suggests that being thrown into a figurative furnace equals utter destruction, as being thrown into a physical furnace doesn't leave you alive, but obliterates you. 

So, with such a paucity of information in The Bible regarding an afterlife away from God and Jesus, where do we get the idea that Hell is a place of organized torment, let alone the domain of Satan/The Devil? Not from The Bible. 

Hell as the place of eternal punishment for the evil, presided over by The Devil and his demons, was a concept that evolved over time. One of the contributing factors was the desire for retribution against evil doers who had apparently escaped consequences in life. Some of the details were posited by theologians, others by popular imagination. When you think about it for a nanosecond, does it make sense that the place of punishment for rejecting God is presided over by the entity who is God's enemy, who would presumably be punished as well? 

One of the weird things I see culturally regarding Hell is when people imagine that Hell is a place where all the cool people hang out. I guess they look at how religious people act and figure the alternate must be okay, despite the popular imagery of what Hell is like. Another weird cultural thing is when people who reject organized religion proudly state that they're going to Hell, in all it's cultural imagery. I'm of the opinion that if you really believed in the popular concept of Hell, you would do everything you could to avoid ending up there. It's kind of a reverse Pascal's Wager. The person who says that is placing a bet that whatever benefits they're accruing by acting in an ungodly way is worth rolling the dice that they won't end up in what they imagine hell is. 

Hell, not even a real thing in The Bible.

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Managers - Part XXV - You're Not Royalty

Lately I've been listening to a podcast about the history of Rome. The last few episodes have been about the early empire period and contrast has been drawn between the emperors who wanted power in order to accomplish something, run things more efficiently, build up the army, building projects, etc, and those who wanted power just so that they could be the guy who could tell everyone else what to do. It got me thinking how people who aspire to management positions could be compared to these two types of leaders way. 

I remember when I was a Store Director for a local grocery store and having a discussion with one of my department managers about holiday scheduling. His position was that once you have attained a certain position you were entitled to certain perks, when it came to holidays, you had earned, due to your position, the best schedule, holidays off, etc. I took a different position. As a leader, you should be leading, and part of leading was being there during the busy times. As Uncle Ben said, with great power comes great responsibility. Now this didn't mean that I scheduled myself all the "bad" shifts, or worked all day, every holiday, but that I led by example. 

Store Directors with whom I worked over the years were all over the map on this. I worked with one boss who worked six 12-hours days and a half day on Sunday, and who never took a holiday off. I knew of other managers who would take every holiday off, leave early on busy days like Christmas Eve or the days before Independence Day or Thanksgiving, leaving it to subordinates to run the show. I tried to take a middle path, spreading out the tough shifts and late nights among not only the "new guys", but requiring that the veterans, including myself would share in the responsibility of covering the store during the busy times. Holidays like Thanksgiving Day or July Fourth, which were fairly slow on the holiday itself, generally saw all the managers working a quarter shift to allow everybody to enjoy at least part of the day. 

Those of you who have slogged through all two dozen of these blog posts know that I don't view "good management" as being "one of the boys" or "doing things" rather than "getting things done" by way of training, supervision and delegation, but that you can't be an effective leader if you are absent. 

Start at the beginning: Part I
 

Antisemitism

If you're engaging in antisemitism, cut that shit out!

Bigotry against Jews never really goes away. It sinks into the mud and shoots up regularly for the ignorant and the hateful to engage in anew. 

Opposition to how Israel treats the Palestinians is not antisemitism. It's not even remotely arguable that the bombing of Gaza back to the Stone Age, or the stealing of Palestinian land by Settlers in the West Bank is defensible. But pro-Palestinian protests over the last few years have taken a decidedly anti-Jewish tone. As if Jewish people in the United States and worldwide have any influence on what the government of Israel does. I don't recall any widespread prejudice against WASPs when the U.K. was committing atrocities in Northern Ireland; Russian-Americans aren't subject to hatred based on what Russia is doing in Ukraine; Chinese-Americans aren't blamed for China's actions in Tibet and against the Uyghurs. But the bigots will make an exception for Jews. (For that matter, there is no suggestion that any other nation on Earth, no matter how terrible it treats its people, should not exist. But some activists make an exception for Israel — but that's a discussion for another time)

Another thread in the tapestry of modern antisemitism is the fact that Jeffrey Epstein, the twenty-first century's devil incarnate, was Jewish. Some of his correspondence speaks disparagingly of non-Jews. The term goy (plural goyim) is used — and people who are inclined to see nefarious Jewish conspiracies see the word as a slur, or a secret code word, when it simply means "non-Jew", or "gentile". The fact that someone named Rothschild appears in the Epstein files numerous times, with the Rothschilds being the favorite bogeymen of antisemitic conspiracies of yore, just adds fuel to the fire. 

Despite the support that many fundamentalists and White Christian Nationalists seem to have for Israel, they mainly do so because they believe the "End Times" that they have decoded from the Biblical Book of Revelation involves a revival of the nation of Israel. They don't like individual Jews, seeing them at best as people who aren't up to date in the religion department, and at worst, anti-Christ and Satanic. 

What is more disturbing than the MAGA crowd and their religious buddies expressing their antisemitism is the number of self-described progressives who buy into it. I have seen rationales for antisemitism, sharing articles that make the Protocols of The Elders of Zion seem reasonable, or quoting Jewish right wing bigots as if they represented all Jews. People need to vet their sources of information more thoroughly. 

Don't buy into the bigots' propaganda.