Saturday, September 25, 2010

"But You Choose Hell"

Recently on a podcast, someone made a statement that I have heard repeatedly from my Christian friends, “God doesn’t send you to Hell; you choose to go”.  To which I respond, “Bullshit”.  I can tell you right now that I do not choose Hell.  Of course, I wouldn’t choose Heaven either if the prick in the Bible is actually in charge as they claim.  Going to Hell is purely the fault of God.

First, God created Hell.  He could have just had us non-believers wink out of existence after we die, but he didn’t.  Instead, he created a place of eternal torment.  God is responsible for the existence and conditions in Hell.

Second, we are all supposedly born sinners and doomed to Hell unless we repent and accept Jesus.  But why are we born sinners?  Because God decided to not just blame Adam and Eve for disobeying him, but to spread the blame around a little and condemn us all because of their actions; another example of good old fashioned biblical justice.  So, from the moment we are conceived, we are already doomed to Hell.  We can avoid it by accepting Jesus, but the default mode for our existence after death is already predetermined: Hell.  Isn’t that good evidence of a loving god?  He creates a very nasty place that no one would want to go to and then blame everyone for something their ancestors did wrong so that from the moment of birth you are doomed to go there.  There is no true choice.  A true choice would allow you to not play the game in the first place, but you can’t opt out of this one. 

Even for Adam and Eve the game was rigged.  The only way that they could know that disobeying God was wrong was to have knowledge of good and evil; however, the only way to gain that knowledge was to disobey God and eat from the Tree of Knowledge.  They were damned from the beginning and due to God’s version of justice, so were we.  So, no, we do not choose Hell.  Hell is the default position established by God.  I use the term “God” lightly because no being worthy of the name would set up such an immoral system and the idea that Jesus suffered for us and offers us salvation is very warped, not generous.
  
By way of analogy, here is what the God/Jesus/Hell scenario boils down to.   Imagine a ship’s captain kidnaps several people, drugs them, takes them to the middle of the ocean and throws them overboard.  That is the situation that God set up by making Hell the default position.  Now imagine the first mate stands at the bow of the ship and offers to sell everyone a life vest and that the cost of the vest is everything the person owns.  This is Jesus offering salvation by giving up your life and your freedom of thought to him.  In the scenario with the ship’s captain, I know of no one, including my Christian friends,  that would disagree with the fact that the captain is an evil ass, but God/Jesus get a pass from the Christians and are considered loving and worthy of praise.

It is an immoral system that is supposedly in place and we most definitely do not choose Hell, we simply do not choose to believe in or follow despicable monsters from a theological version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  Those who do accept this story and consider it good, just, and moral are just as warped as the God their “holy book” describes.

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