This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
Let’s talk about hell.
Or, more specifically, Christian hell (which I will not bother to try to define or defend), and how a person might or might not qualify to go there.
Growing up in a Christian faith community, I’ve known a lot of people on both sides of what has become a very familiar relationship:
Devout parents of unbelieving children.
Likely you are, have been, or know one or both of these kinds of people.
For most of my life, my sympathies aligned with the children, and how terrible it must be to have parents who think you’re going to hell. I’ve had so many friends who felt that in order to maintain their own integrity, they had to break from the faith traditions of their parents, only to find themselves on the other side of a dogmatic chasm that often ended the relationship.
Curse these close-minded parents, I thought. How can they do this to their own kids?
But now, as a parent myself, I’m discovering more sympathy for the parents. Because as awful as it must feel to have your parents fear for the fate of your soul, how much worse must it feel to believe that your own child, who you love so much more than your own self, might end up being punished for eternity?
Suddenly, all the irrational behavior, all the bad, reactionary decisions of these parents make more sense. Nobody makes *good* decisions when they’re terrified.
This relationship dynamic is profoundly tragic, because neither devout parents nor their agnostic children seem to have much control over what they believe. Much as you’d like to, you can’t just tell someone to stop believing in hell, anymore than you can tell them to start believing in it.
Not that that’s stopped anyone from trying in at least ten thousand years of religious contention. But no matter how ineffective it is, we never seem to get tired to trying to tell people what they ought to believe.
Listen, I know I’m not going to solve the problem with a three minute newsletter slash podcast, but...
To the parents of children who have left the faith, please rest assured that God loves them no less than you do, and if you wouldn’t consign them to eternal suffering in a lake of fire, why would God do it?
(And if you believe in the kind of God who loves your children less than you, may I suggest you find a different one to worship.)
And to those children, please be patient with your poor parents. People do dumb things when they are afraid, and they are only afraid because they love you.
As for the rest of us, lucky enough not to be the victim of such harrowing beliefs, may we reach out to offer words of peace and comfort to anyone in need, regardless of where they stand along the great divide.
Click at least one of these or else…
…you’ll burn forever in a lake of fire.
Your heathen kids aren’t going to hell