Religion
Related: About this forumA Bishop Describes How The Church Invented Hell To Control People
I don't agree with him because when you die you're just dead. I just thought some of you might find his opinion interesting. I think he's a retired Episcopal bishop.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)We just should go by to treating others as we would like to be treated.
no_hypocrisy
(45,770 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)But they both seem to be someone's wishful thinking.
On the matter of the church creating Hell for control, I'm quite sure he's right.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)So glad to be episcopalian.
Raster
(20,996 posts)SarahM32
(270 posts)John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, wrote: "In time, the virgin birth account will join Adam and Eve and the story of the cosmic ascension as clearly recognized mythological elements in our faith tradition, whose purpose was not to describe a literal event but to capture the transcendent dimensions of God in the earthbound words and concepts of first-century human beings."
That's somewhat similar to what Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
However, when Spong says people don't need to be "reborn," he's talking about those who claim to be "born again," as so many theocratic fundamentalist conservative Christians do, and he's reacting to them. Actual spiritual rebirth is actually something else that has to do with transcending ego so that our higher self can emerge.
Relevant articles: Abaout Christianity, The Virgin Birth Story, Spiritual Rebirth, and The Nature of God
.