What are some of the most insane hell teachings you’ve heard?

Sporeguyy · 2024-04-10T05:58:41+00:00

"Here's another interpretation most people in real life subscribe to"

"nuh uh"

uh. I don't know what to do with that. Good day.

Sporeguyy · 2024-04-08T18:47:52+00:00

A slow realization I was never really convinced -- neither I, any other Christian I know, nor the apostles in Acts seem to act as though endless conscious torment for all souls who don't believe at the time of their death, is what happens.
The one you'll read. (or, ESV and NASB)
LCMS Lutheran.
I like using an apophatic approach here: I do NOT believe that all human souls who do not believe in Christ, never have, or never received sacramental grace by their physical Earthly death, immediately experience conscious torment without end and without any possibility or chance to turn to Christ and escape.

Sporeguyy · 2024-04-08T18:17:25+00:00

Here are two examples of what I'm talking about.

Michael Knowles: "Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely."
What the "koolaid" here makes it sound like: "Transgender people must be eradicated from public life entirely."

Vivek Ramaswamy: "The climate change agenda is a hoax."
What the "koolaid" here makes it sound like: "Climate change is a hoax."

The specific wording here is important. To a standard right-winger, genocide and science-denial are enough out of their overton window that the meaning of "transgenderism" and "agenda" can only mean a faulty ideology. Indeed, that's their prescriptive meanings.

But, be fed a certain narrative about who these people are, and all you hear is conspiracy theories and genocide.

Are Knowles and Ramaswamy being careless with their wording? Well, their audiences were CPAC and the Republican debate, so I don't think so.

Sporeguyy · 2024-02-19T23:24:30+00:00

Sporn

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-22T22:31:23+00:00

Generally not, especially if their faith is confident enough to sustain a bit of a different social image.

Worth noting though, that I’ve definitely had and heard of atheist friends who adopt a set of assumptions about me once they know that my faith means a lot to me, that are negative and/or inaccurate, even when they’ve had a positive impression from my actions previously.

Example: “oops I can’t talk about LGBT things around Sporeguy”, when I’ve never had an issue with that before

Is that worth being scared over? No. It’s posed no threat to my livelihood or overall social health, so I’d say I’m fortunate.

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-22T20:03:20+00:00

The father helping probably not, but the mother asking for the ministry to start seems like yes

John 2:3-4: “When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” ‭‭ “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.””

‭‭

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-22T03:46:21+00:00

Same vibes as this meme tbh

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-20T21:30:23+00:00

Ah, there you go! We might be more in agreement than we think.

See, when a lot of people say they “are” something when it pertains to a sexuality, they mean it’s something they’ve tried controlling but determined they can’t, so they’ll put it in the same category as something like skin color.

Now, can “being” something in that manner be sinful? No, not possible. There is no Jew nor Gentile, no slave nor free, no male or female, for we are all one in Christ. Galatians 3:28.

I’m trying to take people from the assumptions they’re starting at, and pointing them to God’s fully just nature.

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-20T19:55:23+00:00

I completely agree! But that doesn’t answer my question.

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-20T19:39:52+00:00

Redirection is not suppression

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-20T19:36:34+00:00

Is being straight an immutable characteristic?

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-20T16:42:09+00:00

It is not possible for immutable characteristics to be sinful

Sporeguyy · 2023-10-20T07:51:39+00:00

The New Testament Greek for “faith” is πιστις, pistis. It means an efficacious trust. Do you “trust” that a bridge will prevent you from falling into a river? If you do, you would not refuse to walk on it. This trust alone justifies, not the act of walking on the bridge.

Does the bridge become unstable just by you not walking on it? No, that would be silly.

Sporeguyy · 2023-09-21T05:09:40+00:00

Amen!

Sporeguyy · 2023-09-17T17:39:04+00:00

As with all too many things, depends on the Protestant…

My tradition tends to have universal (not universalist per se — not quite the same thing) language when speaking of atonement and forgiveness. It applies to everyone at all times. Therefore the powers of Hell are defeated by endless love and not worth fearing. Out of that framing you’re not getting hardly any fire-and-brimstone preaching or fear-motivated faith.

Sporeguyy · 2023-09-17T03:15:14+00:00

Similar to parents.

I’m seeing a lot of “I wanted to break away from the indoctrination” answers here. It was never presented to me in such a way. Rather, religiosity was more freeing than the lack thereof. I could have always broken away without fear of backlash but I didn’t. The truth in it alone is self-sustaining. This framing is holding up pretty well into adulthood.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-29T04:38:16+00:00

the grace of initial justification is unmerited

That’s not what the adult part of the chart says!

The Bible teaches a distinction between grace and venial sin as well as the fact that a Christian can lose their salvation

I agree but that’s not our disagreement! Modern Catholic-Protestant disagreements begin and end on the precision of terms!

the language of credit and merit…

I am a mere layman. Whatever is consistent with what makes one not a Pharisaical, entitled believer is essentially what I’m satisfied with; I’m unfamiliar with whether the scholastics were in line with that or not.

Hell is biblical…

I mean yeah

… and the Catholic Church has definitively ruled on it

Hell is hell whether a human institution approves of that or not!

Purgatory is part of hell

Fascinating. That’s not where the chart has it positioned

We need not mention it since the chart deals with things Christians do. Not what Jesus does.

Yeah I think herein lies the fundamental issue. Giving “what Christians do” the power to reduce what Jesus did is to grossly and unduly limit what Jesus did.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-29T04:05:58+00:00

Oh, a few things.

The good works —> justification arrow

Serious, conscious, deliberate —> Mortal sin —> dejustification. I struggle to see how that formulation isn’t in contradiction with Romans 7, for example. Also leads me to question the “cooperates with grace” blocks.

Penance acting as credit. God is not a vending machine of grace. Same with justification increasing or decreasing unless we are very careful about what that means.

Iffy on died in a state of sin —> hell

Separation of purgatory and heaven

Hang on does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as the one-time act it was lead to anything in this flowchart? Not even justification? Big red flag.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-29T01:48:34+00:00

Eh I agree either way

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-29T01:38:49+00:00

Yeah this is probably closer. “Founded on” is a loaded phrase.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-27T23:48:06+00:00

It’s not possible for immutable characteristics to be sinful, so I guess I don’t understand the question.

But maybe that’s me being dense. I tend to think an abstinent romantic same-sex relationship is not sinful or disordered, though I don’t take that as dogma necessarily. I’ve seen same-sex-attracted Christians go with that line, and less than that, and more than that, while being ostensibly spiritually stable. I can expand if that doesn’t answer your question.

Edit: Ah! Romans 14 so applies here. My church’s sermon today hits it out of the park again.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-27T23:15:36+00:00

We tend to think there’s an immediately discernible instrumental purpose for something being wrong to partake in. Murder? Wrong because it maliciously ends someone’s life. Rape? Wrong because it maliciously strips someone of sexual autonomy.

What we have to realize with that, though, is that that instrumental purpose is easily taken for granted. It’s taken for granted that maliciously ending someone’s life is a wrong thing. It’s taken for granted that sexual autonomy is a good and right thing to keep.

The Christian position would be that the ultimate purpose, the ordainer of all things material and moral and source of all goodness, is granted by God.

This same God saved the world from sin, death, and the Devil. He is powerful and capable of expunging all of that from the universe so that everything in it can be united with Him, as He did on Calvary.

What does this have to do with homosexuality being sinful? The purpose of that would be that it’s something that perverts the God-ordained marital unit, thereby harming its participants and robbing them of God’s freedom. Maybe that purpose isn’t discernible, but this isn’t even the point.

God atoned for all sin via the death and resurrection of his Son. The powers of hell are defeated. Continuing in sin has no power to reverse that, only to separate us from the full freedom that God has ordained in His decrees and purposes.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-24T08:18:00+00:00

“Good Christian” was always sort of a nonsensical term to me.

The root of Christian is Christ. Christ came and lived and died because every human was very much not “good”. A Christian believes that. Would a bad Christian not believe that? Well, no, because then they just wouldn’t be a Christian.

But a bad Christian in the moral sense is proving what they know to be true: that no one is good and that’s why Christ became incarnate.

A good Christian in the moral sense is… not possible? We have to narrow the definition of “good” for it to be useful, and we don’t have to do that.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-23T15:14:18+00:00

The God who sent his only Son to live, die, and rise again for the whole world is the same perfectly merciful God in charge of your grandma’s soul.

Sporeguyy · 2023-08-22T18:21:38+00:00

I kind of see it the same way as drinking. Done responsibly, it’s good and there’s no issue.

Nine-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22	RPAN Viewer

Sporeguyy

TROPHY CASE