You Are More Loving Than Your God
I rarely reblog other posts. But when I saw this on my “Follow” board, I found it to be one that cuts to the chase about the deep and often anguished emotion people tend to carry, tied to their belief systems about God. I don’t end up where Nathan does, disbelieving in ANY kind of God. But the weighty matter (to many) of going to heaven or hell tends to be a major distraction from what Jesus was actually about and taught. It comes out of a lower stage of spiritual development that unfortunately many people do not move beyond.
There I sat in a booth at Panda Express as a very old friend of mine, with tears in his eyes, tells me how much he loves me and that he doesn’t want me to burn in hell. He quotes to me John 3:36 and assures me that if I die on this “journey” that I’m destined for hell. God won’t look at my heart and allow me passage into heaven. I’ll be cast from his sight and tortured for all eternity.
My friend’s concerns and pleas have been echoed in the faces, letters and discussions of a large percentage of my believing friends and family.
This rouses several feelings in me, not the least of which is pity. For one thing I’m touched that they care enough to voice their concerns for my well being. I know it can’t be easy to be so direct as to tell someone…
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Natural Spirituality - Loving Forum for Spiritual Harmony & Growth 
Those who believe in a literal burning Hell of infinite, irredeemable duration, tend also to believe in a literal, inerrant Bible.
Growing up in rural Georgia, a high percentage of my childhood friends and families believe in a monstrously unforgiving God and an infinitely forgiving Jesus (who are one and the same).
They believe in an unchanging God who nevertheless thought it appropriate in the time of Leviticus to make capital punishment for disobedient children or fornicators the law of the land. God somehow evolved on His thinking, though in a universe where evolution does not exist. Testosterone laden males overwhelming predominate in our maximum security prisons, while “spiritually subordinate” women are on average less violent, more concerned about current and future generations, more cooperative, and more emotionally intelligent.
The incongruities are only exceeded by the rampant hypocrisy in the “hate tempered gospel of love”. Concern for fetuses dissipates remarkably the minute another impoverished child exits the womb. Gays and “illegal” immigrants are treated as less deserving than those who had the good sense to choose hetero genes and American parents.
I truly do not understand the psychodynamics behind the cultural persistence of this thoroughly uncritical worldview. All that I can tell my childhood friends is that, for followers of Christ, the words of Jesus should count for more than the words uttered elsewhere; and when there is a contradiction between quotes, perhaps the benefit of the doubt could be given to Jesus.
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