Fun article in this mornings paper by a Reverend Donald Jordan. He attempts to make the case that there is an eternal hell based of course, on the bible. I learned a long time ago that I cannot argue the validity of the bible with those who accept it as Gods word for the simple reason that I don't know the bible as well as a believer does. I do however find it interesting that literally ALL believers cherry pick from the bible what they want to believe in, and ignore the rest. If Christians accepted literally everything written in the bible, there would be little difference between Christian belief and Sharia law.

Bible stuff aside, I think there are several reasons why people are attracted to a particular religion or spiritual belief. Most people that follow a particular spiritual path will say that they believe the way they do because they found the 'truth'. And people who know the 'truth' tend to see the world as 'black and white', 'right and wrong', and 'good and bad', versus others who see everything as 'relative'. And it is this black and white view that allows for belief in things like 'eternal damnation'.

I have made the point before that belief in eternal damnation and 'free will' cannot coexist. You cannot say that you have free will to make a choice if the consequences of making the wrong choice are an unacceptable consequence. If you truly believe in Hell, then you have no choice but to go with whatever will keep you out of hell. If you choose Hell, then you are either crazy or incredibly stupid, and either of those should be a reason to be forgiven by an all loving God. And if you are just plain evil (which to me falls under "crazy), wouldn't a perfect all loving God pick a punishment to fit the crime? And if that's true, is there anything we could do in this world during the course of a lifetime that would merit 'eternal damnation'? The answer is no.

Nobody likes pain. Every creature on this planet is driven by our deepest primal instincts to avoid pain, which is how we survive. The concept of Hell was created to strike fear to that deepest primal level. The only problem is, it doesn't work. If it worked, nobody (except for the crazy, the stupid, and the evil), would do anything that would possibly put them in Hell. But we all do! Why? Because we all carry the truth inside of us. All living creatures come into this world with the innate knowledge of who we are, why we're here, and where we're going. We innately understand that we are all one and that all life, as well as everything that exists, is connected. Hell can only exist as a 'separate place' and separation simply does not exist. There is nothing in Gods creation that is separate from anything else. So concepts like 'eternal damnation' are in direct conflict with our innate understanding of life.

The problem is, so many of us are willing to ignore what we know deep inside to be true. We ignore it because we are distracted by the circumstances of the world around us. In order to be in touch with that inner knowledge, we have to understand that everything going on in our outer world is circumstantial, conditional, and therefore relative. In a world of relativity, 'right and wrong' and 'good and bad' become judgement calls. If we were a 'judgment call' based society the only way that we could exist without turmoil is if we make our judgement calls based on our innate understanding of the principals of connection. But this requires being in touch those inner principals. We could all do this but we don't because it's easier to let people like the Reverend Donald Jordan make those judgement calls for us. When we turn our power of critical thinking over to others, when we ignore the truth that is inside of us, we do not have to wrestle with the complicated concepts of relativity. It's so much easier to see the world as black and white but in order to do so, we need to agree on what is right and what is wrong. The only way we can all agree on right and wrong is to allow others to make the rules for us. And the rule makers understand that in order for rules to work, there has to be consequences.

So you can see, it's a short leap from 'knowing in our hearts' what is true to people like the Reverend Donald Jordan telling us that if we don't subscribe to his 'truth', we are headed to eternal damnation.