We Need Hell To Keep Folks In Line

I can't take it with these guys trying to rewrite the rules. They don't like the religion so they'll just modify it a little.

It may be true that love has a role in Christianity, but come on, HELL is a powerhouse in there. Why do you behave yourself? Sure love may have something to do with it, but it's also the fear of hellfire (and also getting caught) that keeps you in line. When an actor asks "what's my motivation?" the answer is "shut up and read your line you dunce." But when a Christian asks "what's my motivation?" the answer is "shut up or you'll go to HELL." Come on.

Look, there's no place in religion for change and these guys should just knock it off. It's all about clinging to traditional values even when they are a waste of time. Like rooting for a lousy baseball team. They are lousy, but they are YOUR team. If you don't root for them when they're lousy you can't really celebrate when they win.

If these guys keep pushing it, with these newfangled ideas, I don't need to tell you what will happen. Losing a job is easy compared to an eternity in flames. Or so I've heard. I mean read. Nobody I know personally has been in hell.

When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.

The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.

Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.

"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."

The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.

Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.

He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."

"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.

In the book, Bell criticizes the belief that a select number of Christians will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven while everyone else is tormented forever in hell.

"This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear," he writes in the book.

For many traditional Christians, though, Bell's new book sounds a lot like the old theological position of universalism — a heresy for many churches, teaching that everyone, regardless of religious belief, will ultimately be saved by God. And that, they argue, dangerously misleads people about the reality of the Christian faith.

The near-relish with which some Christians stress the torments of hell, Bell argues, keep many believers needlessly afraid of a loving God, and repel potential Christians who might otherwise be curious about the faith's teachings.

"The heart of the Christian story is that God is love," he said. "But when you hear the word 'Christian,' you don't necessarily think 'Oh, sure, those are the people who don't stop talking about God's love.' Some other things would come to mind."

[Associated Press]