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RE: Eternity: A Mind-Numbingly Powerful Perspective
i was taught a different metaphor for eternity, when i was a small child but it was to describe how long i would be in hell, grinding my teeth from the pain, screaming unceasingly, dissolving in fire, over and over and over again.
Greetings! Thank you for your substantive comment here. I'm so glad to "meet" you, @lifeworship.
Simultaneously, I'm appalled to hear of what you were taught as a child. If you check out my writing, you'll see that I am a Christian who follows the scriptures. The very destructive doctrine of eternal, conscious torment of the damned is a hideous aberration that is not biblical, but was introduced later in history.
The one true living God, most widely known as Jesus Christ, is not a sadistic torturer. There is no place in the New Heavens and New Earth for a perpetual hell. God is merciful, and will simply punish and destroy those who do not come to know and enjoy His forgiveness.
The far better news, a.k.a. the "gospel" or good news, of course, is that there is still an open invitation to all men to come and find forgiveness, freely given, and to be welcomed into an authentic eternity. Scripture describes it thusly:
I'm so glad that you've raised this issue, because it reminds me that I want to write some posts on the topic.
Please come back to my blog, early and often!
only some people believe in fear as a motivator in the vein of "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6. i think they believed that a child frightened into heaven, as though the devil were snapping at his heels, is better than the destruction of the alternatives.
Ah, I suppose that might be true in the final analysis... and I hope that insight at least allows you to have some compassion for your folks...
I look back with sorrow at the mistakes I made raising my own children... I have tried very hard to encourage young parents not to abandon firmness, but to always accompany it with profuse expressions of love.
Romans 13:10
i think it is the difference between, beating them to make them harden up and teaching them the self defense, of all kinds, to allow them to be resilient. i see what my parents did right but i'm sure to do differently myself.