If God doesn’t punish, what about hell?
I never believed in hell as a physical location. Hell is something you carry inside during your life, rather than a place you go to after you die. Eternal punishment for temporal transgressions made no sense to me — Church teachings and creeds, notwithstanding.
According to Dinty W. Moore, hell is a pure invention of the twisted mind of Italian poet Dante.
The title of is humorous book on the topic says it all: To Hell with it: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno.
It is a great one sit read that will warm your heart, make you laugh out loud, and help you delete hell from your consciousness and discover heaven instead.
I believe in consequences, not punishment. Punishment comes from outside. Consequences mean, I am reaping what I have sowed.
In Hindu religious philosophy, it is called karma, which is a Sanskrit word. Karma is about all that a person has done, is doing, and will do. Karma is not about punishment or reward. It makes a person responsible for his own life and how one treats other people.
The notion of karma removes God as the external punisher and puts the responsibility on us. It makes us co-creators of our life for both good and bad.
According to Neale Donald Walsch, “The chief problem facing humanity today is our absolute refusal to accept responsibility for the experiences that we ourselves are collaboratively creating.”
Most people think that they are at the receiving end of events happening around them without any intention or inclination to check within, to see if they bear any responsibility for the situation. They blame God. They blame people in power. They blame others. But rarely do they blame themselves. It is not my fault is the frequent refrain.
But what if almost everything that is happening in this world is our fault — our collective fault and failure as a species?
In my religious infancy, I used to blame God for tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Now I am convinced that the biggest problem humanity is facing today — the climate crisis — with its terrifying tornadoes, devastating floods, raging wildfires, and melting icecaps, is not an external problem but something we are doing to ourselves. Our exploitation of the Earth and plundering of its resources has brought us to the brink of an ecological abyss.
The insurance industry calls natural disasters “Acts of God.” I think we should delete that phrase from our vocabulary and remove it from insurance contracts. These days, I don’t blame God for anything. We humans are individually and collectively responsible for the state of the world. Pugo was right when he said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
Believing that global warming is a hoax is arrogant ignorance. To deny that human behavior has nothing to do with increasing natural disasters around the world or diseases among people, including the recent pandemic, and the Ukranian war, is denial at its extreme. As Neale Donald Walsch correctly observes, “When an entire culture refuses to believe that it has anything to do with what is occurring, it cannot do anything about what is occurring.”
(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)
