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In reply to the discussion: Tea party activist: ‘Jesus Christ is weeping in heaven’ over pope’s criticism of capitalism' [View all]stopbush
(24,392 posts)You think this, you think that, but that's all in your mind, it's not in the Bible.
I agree that one can't buy a stairway to heaven, but you ignore the fact that most Christians do just that mentally, ie: they imagine what THEY think heaven is about and/or what Jesus meant by this or that, or what it means to "be a Christian," but none of it is based on anything but the person's pre-existing biases and life view. Why do you think that there are roughly 33,000 different sects of Christianity in the world? It isn't because there is any one sect that embodies the one TRUE belief, but there are enough sects out there that everyone can find one that conforms to their existing world view.
In the OT, Yahweh's enemies weren't cast into eternal torture. They were sent off to oblivion, where they had no consciousness. So, when Yahweh ordered the Jews to commit genocide, they were "only" wiping out a people (men, women, children and even animals...save for the women who were spared immediate death so they could act as sex slaves and be raped by their conquerers), not condemning them to eternal suffering.
The hell of torture is largely a NT concept offered up by Jesus.