You can buy an affordable fine art print of this cartoon HERE.
You can buy my fine art HERE.
cartoon: Jesus likes fire
Leave a Reply
-
My name is David Hayward, and I am the nakedpastor. I am a graffiti artist on the walls of religion.
-
-
The Fundamentalist version I suppose. LOL
Definitely my fav so far.
Yeah, cause if Jesus wants to save people from hell, why did he invent it in the first place?
And when exactly did he invent it? I don’t think it’s even mentioned in the entire OT. Weird.
And on a side note, this one struck me as very funny for some reason. Maybe it’s like if you imagine that the God who made this earth was just some bored, kinda goofed-up teenager, and here we are taking it all so seriously.
Our Concept of “Hell” comes mostly from Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The “hell” of Scripture resembles very little of what is taught in most Fundie Circles today.
OT, “unquenchable fire” were references to National Judgment.
Jesus spoke of “Gehenna”…a specific place…a “name” of a place that the Jewish People He was rebuking and speaking to would understand. And, BTW, the Jews of “this generation” who didn’t heed his words were “burned with an unquenchable fire” in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.
Paul the Apostle didn’t teach of “hell”…yet Paul proclaims that he spoke of the “whole counsel of God”.
The Bulk of “hell” as the Fundamentalist Construct goes is derived from “the Lake of Fire” or “the River of Fire” from Revelation.
Still studying the implications of “the Lake of Fire” and John’s Prophetic word. Is it “literal”? Is it “figurative”/”metaphorical”/”allegorical”?
If “Scripture is to interpret Scripture” and all the other references to an “unquenchable fire” in the OT and NT are fiery judgments on the Nations/Peoples…either Israel or the Enemies of Israel…does that mean “the Lake of Fire” is to be interpreted likewise?
Is God’s Final Judgment one of “eternal” hell for mankind who didn’t repent while here on earth…despite the fact that Jesus said, “It is finished”…and Jesus “wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth”…and Jesus is “our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.” And, “Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”…and “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Is “hell” God’s way of “purifying with fire” mankind to reconcile with Jesus their Savior?
Or, does Scripture clearly teach that you must Repent and Believe before you physically die…though we are eternal beings and our soul/spirit live on…or face Eternal Everlasting Judgment in a fiery hell? Does this mesh with the Redemptive Power of Jesus Christ on the Cross and God’s Nature and Teaching of “Love your Enemies, Bless those who curse you” etc etc?
Interesting to ponder…
oh no! don’t like this one at all. i don’t think someone who would lay down his own life for us (in a horrible way as one of the worst criminals at that) would take pleasure in other’s suffering. even an ant or a cat.
and if it weren’t for satan rebelling, there wouldn’t be a hell.
just my 2 cents. happy thursday everyone!
Interesting: Revelation 20:10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Scripture says the devil and “the beast” and the “false prophet” will be “tormented day and night for ever and ever”. It doesn’t say that mankind who hasn’t repented while physically alive will. It says specifically that they will be “thrown into the lake of fire”…but not that they will be tormented forever. That inference is drawn from the verses about the devil, the best and false prophet.
So, if one takes Revelation as “literal” and uses Scripture to interpret Scripture using Matt. 10:28 above…then the Fundamentalists should change their view on “hell” to be a “destruction” of the body and soul in hell for those who are unbelievers…in other words, annihilation…not eternal torment.
LOL … my four year old wondered why I was laughing so hard at breakfast so I had to think up a sanitized version … don’t want her to think Jesus really likes launching people into the fiery deep.
ha! that’s cool. or hot.
HA HA!!!! Awesome! I LMAO’ed.
I really would like an explanation from some well-meaning, Bible-believing evangelical as to why God would allow good people to be tormented forever in hell…or, rather, why hell was created (for people) in the first place.
@ Believe: I like your interpretation
Believe,
Thanks for your clear way of presenting the info on hell. Very helpful.
Hell was not created for people, it was created by people. it was part of a dualistic reward punishment scheme. if you were good and followed authority properly you went to heaven. if you were bad and didn’t listen to the priests, you went to hell. It only has traction if you subscribe to the three tiered universe of the Middle Ages and fundamental biblical literalism.
zach: i agree to a great extent. i think it goes even further back in history. your theory is a huge factor in the theology of hell.
Fascinating. So with the 3 tiers, you have heaven as the top layer; earth; then hell is the bottom layer of the cake? I never connected all this. You’ve made it clearer, Zack. “turn or burn”
Wow Dave. How to you come up with these?
ya, i don’t know. my mind i guess. people wonder.
@Trey “I really would like an explanation from some well-meaning, Bible-believing evangelical as to why God would allow good people to be tormented forever in hell…or, rather, why hell was created (for people) in the first place.”
Answer: For his Glooooory!
@ annette: of course, why didn’t I think of that?! You are truly operating under the annointing
David, I’d like to throw something out here for what it’s worth. You can give it some thought or dump it. It’s your blog after all.
On the “thought” posts, would it be helpful to like have a theme for the week so that all us confused people could get a handle on an issue and talk it to death, so to speak? We probably do that anyway, but for me, I start to feel bogged down with all the issues that are raised. I want to read and comment and learn from every post because I’m addicted now (oops!) to everything you put out. It’s all good, but sometimes I feel as if I’m at church every day of the week listening to a different sermon and having to digest it all so rapidly I can barely keep up.
Believe me when I say that that is a compliment for you, not a put down. You are a typical creative person. Indulging in your creativity brings forth ideas so fast you have to spill them out or they will disappear into space. I imagine your artwork is like that, too. You probably stay up late at night doing it.(Creative people love the quietness at night when everybody in their family is tucked up into bed and they can let their artistic gifts flow without interruption.)
Okay, back to my question. Perhaps others out there feel the way I do, perhaps they don’t. You have much to teach us from your years of experience being a pastor, and likewise we as your readers have our own wisdom and experiences to add from our spiritual journeys. Most of us don’t have the time to put out our own blogs as it’s a lot of work so the last thing we would want would be for you to shut this one down.
This is just a thought on my part( the theme thing) so simply ignore it if it doesn’t jell with you. I will still keep checking in…Crystal.
Crystal: I understand your concern. I have a full-time job though, so I have to squeeze these little moments on my blog out of any spare time I can find. They have to be creatively spawned or they wouldn’t happen at all. I know the blog is all over the place. But they rotate, hopefully, around the central theme of spirituality, religion and religious institutionalism. I encourage others to treat them as a kind of daily devotional
It isn’t really a concern, David, only a thought I had, ( probably not in your best interests, considering you have to work for a living ) and I am sorry to have even written it now I think about it. Here I am, at home, all my physical needs taken care of, and I fit in my housework around my writing and other pursuits as I see fit. None of my activities have to bring in money. I am fortunate there,and truly blessed to be in that situation. Thanks for replying so promptly…Crystal.
i wasn’t at all offended or challenged by your question. it is a valid one. thanks for sharing it though.
Whoa..Dave pushing the envelope and pushing buttons yet again.
@Zack
“Hell was not created for people, it was created by people.”
Yeah, imagine that, authoritarian types controlling others through fear.
Some “free will”, eh?
I don’t know if hell, as it has been described here, would even be a sufficient punishment. To completely correct or repair the damage done at the moment in time that the evil deed was done, would take a divine altering of history and the destruction of every human.
To me, a perfect judgement and sentence of the evil person would require more than just a punishment in eternal flame, since he would still be capable of cursing God, fostering hatred and perversion and all sorts of other humanly sinful ways while he was being eternally tormented.
It would seem that the only proper sentence for the man would be to wipe him from existence. That would ensure that he would commit no more evil. So, though we think that eternal flame would constitute an abusive God, it may not be sufficient by itself.
I don’t really know these things. I’m just thinking out loud.
Daniel,
I think that history tells us that we humans have done a pretty decent job of creating a hell right here on earth. The gruesome ways in which we have tortured people to death (slowly) are laid out in our history books for all to read. Even crucifixion has nothing on what some societies in our not so distant past dished out as capital punishment.I don’t wish to depict those methods here because if you desire you can look them up for yourself and be sick as a dog if you want.
What kind of god would wish to repeat what we have done to our fellow humans over the course of our existence?
I wouldn’t wish any of those on my worst enemy…Crystal.
Crystal,
To give God an attribute like that is creating a god that no one would want to believe in, and one that has human sinful ways. This is painting God with a human brush and hating what you see.
The only God worth believing in is one that is infinitely greater than any good that humans could produce. As such, he would defy all human description. Yet, the question of a just sentence for evil man is still on all of our hearts. We want mercy. We want understanding. We want love and grace. And we want forgiveness. But, we see only hints of these things in mankind when he loves and forgives, and we see these traits are not perfect in us. They are either temporary or mixed with corruption. Should we desire a God to be so? I know you don’t. Yet, when we question, “Who is God?”, He does not answer our question(As Peter Kreeft puts it) until we first answer His question, “Who are you? What do you want?” We come to Him hoping He is the answer to our question, and we find Him asking us whether we are the question to His answer. This is not a trick,… It is an ontological inevitability, because of Who He is. He is God. God is not our Answer Man, our servant, the means to our end. No, God is the End. He is the Absolute; He is not relative to us, but we to Him.
To avoid hell and achieve heaven is not the purpose of man. We aren’t a bunch of molecules playing out a game of cause and effect. Man fully realized is man fully lost in intimacy with God. It is not in questions that we are made whole, but in the full being of God.
Daniel,
I guess I thought that you were inferring that even the everlasting fires of hell would not be enough for some people. In your first sentence you said “I don’t know if hell…would even be a sufficient punishment.” I was thinking of how much pain is inflicted on a human body by burning, and wondering if a loving god would really allow that to happen to anyone, regardless of what they had done on earth. Perhaps I misconstrued what you meant to say? Do you believe that our God would allow people to go to hell? or are you undecided on that one?
I think that the cartoon was not meaning that Jesus sends anyone to hell, but we (mankind) certainly preach that message, which is contradictory to how we see Jesus in other ways. Hellfire preaching is making a comeback in some churches, and that scares me. Some preachers believe that the only way people of today are going to come to God is if they fear eternal punishment in the afterlife. I thought we’d got past that, but obviously not. Just questions. Don’t wish to offend…Crystal.
Thank you so much for this discussion. The whole hell thing was the main reason I stopped going to church a long time ago. I didn’t know until recently that other people who although drawn to Jesus and his teachings were asking many of the same questions as well. I really appreciate all of your thoughtful comments, great food for thought.
Crystal,
I suspect your motive for asking is congruity, to see if I am a like minded person such as yourself. In this I can provide no guarantee, but I will provide you with what I think and you can compare it at your leisure. Maybe the two will meet.
I do not pretend to know even one percent of the infinite mind of God. After all, 1% of infinity is an unknowable number. Concerning hell, in my opinion, I do not think justice is served in eternal tortures. However, I do not think that God is extremely concerned with avoiding all suffering of mankind. To quote one DC talk song, “Some people gotta learn the hard way.” Suffering in this world is a valuable tool that even humans use for the betterment of their children. For example, a timeout or forced room cleaning can be categorized as suffering in a way. God himself is not above allowing suffering or even creating suffering for his own purposes of bringing us closer to him or simply to mold us into a better person.
However, there is a certain point when time ends and all men have finally decided either to love God or reject him, when every knee will bow either because of love or because they are forced, that eternal suffering as a sentence on mankind is questionable in my mind. What would be the point? It does not hinder the evil man from continuing in his ways. Even if it was to make him more moral, it would be no advantage to him. There is no future point of salvation and all hope is lost. Justice itself is not completely served because evil still exists although tormented. The only suffering after death that holds any purpose for men who choose to reject God is the suffering that it takes for the soul and body to be wiped from existence. It may very well be the intent of God to wipe all existence of evil from reality, even if that evil is man. The man who murdered or lied for the brief moment that encompassed his life is no more. All that is left is a faint memory of evil actions with no being to have caused them, and even that memory may be wiped away. It is a terrifying thought to imagine that the love that I held in my life, the things I cherished, and the things I built are all for nothing. They might as well be empty unrealities initiated by nonexistence. All meaning and purpose that might have been is wiped away with the closing of a book by the hands of God. The story is over. The actors are finished. The stage is destroyed.
(I paused for a long while here contemplating the dark unseen terror that I just wrote.)
My God! I don’t know what to say after that. That I can even call upon him still is a great mercy to me. Crystal, may you know him as I do and even more so.
Daniel,
I don’t profess to yet understand where you are coming from on this question of hell,( I cannot imagine a god who allows anyone to go there, even if they choose too, for I would fight for every one of my children not to enter such a place) but your last sentence tells me that we are one, you and I. We surrender to our God and we know the mercy he has shown to us by simply being available for us to call on. That’s probably good enough, for as you say, you do not profess to know even one percent of the infinite mind of God. Neither do I.
Let’s just say that I hope upon hope that there is not such a terrible place as hell. I hope upon hope that the god I call upon loves me so much that he will forgive everything I have ever done to hurt others. I want to know and understand this true god. Is this true god the fickle god of the old testament? And why does Jesus come out with such sayings about hell? Did the writers of the gospels put that stuff in themselves? Who really knows what Jesus said? He’s supposed to have said a lot more than what we have in the gospels so why don’t we have access to all that? I’m on this blog daily trying to sort it all out.
I’ve also ordered Darin Hufford’s book “The Misunderstood God.” Someone on this site recommended it. Can’t wait to read it. Take care…Crystal.
The crimes committed by those who would then need to be wiped out would also have been committed by those who did not need to be wiped out. By what means are those who love God but have inevitably also sinned made to no longer have any evil in them? Does their continued existence still serve to multiply the injustices they once committed? If yes, by that reasoning, how are they suffered to exist? If not, then by the same token how can the past infractions of those not accepting God make in insufferable that they continue to exist? And could not the same methods of purification be used if we are indeed at the end of time?
So, there is either a total end, contrary to all the is taught, or a partitial end, or no end. But the partial end, the end of only some, would be a great injustice to those who remain, who loved and were formed by those who are gone. Even in the memory being erased, the great forming people and moments of life, great swaths of the essence of the remaining, as you say, formed by suffering, erased from existence. There is no perfect justice by such standards.
But justice has in any case become a meaningless word. Human justice could never suffer eternal punishment for finite sin, however grave. And so, if the suffering of hell as typically characterized is real, the idea of a “just” God becomes non-sensical, as “justice” would have to mean something completely foreign to our understanding. And what point is there thenin rejoicing in a God who is “just”, if “just” is meaningless.
Rob ZionFreak
Hmmm… These new post-modernists must think God doesnt literally mean everlasting when he says EVERLASTING! Mat 25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into EVERLASTING FIRE, prepared for the devil and his angels:
What part of forever dont people understand? I guess God didn’t mean forever when he said forever. Rev 14:11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for EVER and EVER: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
Hell IS eternal and is for the unrighteous, not just Satan and his angels. For example, read Jesus’ own words in Matthew 25: 46: ‘Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life’.