A few decades ago, I learned from two Latter Day Saints missionaries that their church’s doctrine teaches that the biblical ‘lake of fire’ meant for the truly wicked actually represents an eternal spiritual burning of guilt over one’s corporeal misdeeds. Bemused, I thought and said: “That’s it? Our punishment is our afterlife guilty conscience?”
During the many years since then, however, I’ve discovered just how formidable burning guilt can be. I’ve also considered and decided that our brain's structural/chemical flaws are what we basically are while our soul is confined within our physical, bodily form. The human soul may be inherently good, on its own; but trapped within the physical body, notably the corruptible brain, oftentimes the soul’s purity may not be able to shine through.
Thus, upon the multi-murderer's physical death, not only would he (or she) be 100 percent liberated from the anger and hate that blighted his physical life; his spirit or consciousness would also be forced to exist with the presumably unwanted awareness of the immense amount of needless suffering he personally had caused.
Then again, maybe the human soul goes where it belongs or where it feels comfortable and right — be it hell’, ‘heaven’, somewhere in between, etcetera. This concept was suggested in a very interesting 1987 radio-broadcast sermon titled “A Bird’s Eye View of Hell”, given by a renowned preacher. I wrote a piece of fiction titled Not What It Was Supposed To Be [originally called That Other Place] that's largely themed on this premise.
Hi all, I am a lapsed Catholic and an atheist. But the question – What Would Jesus Do? – is still one I ask myself. And he would not be standing with the fist and the boot as they arrest the old, the infirm, the blind and the lame. He would weep for the people of Palestine. And any Christian who says otherwise, betrays the words of Christ.
We’ve started Sing Palestine Vivra to encourage people to make public demonstrations of support for the people of Palestine. Eventually, we hope to be able to use Sing Palestine Vivra to organize large scale campaigns of public demonstrations of support for Palestinians.
The substack Sing Palestine Vivra will never accept donations or paid subscriptions.
In Solidarity and with Hand to Heart, Palestine Vivra
A few decades ago, I learned from two Latter Day Saints missionaries that their church’s doctrine teaches that the biblical ‘lake of fire’ meant for the truly wicked actually represents an eternal spiritual burning of guilt over one’s corporeal misdeeds. Bemused, I thought and said: “That’s it? Our punishment is our afterlife guilty conscience?”
During the many years since then, however, I’ve discovered just how formidable burning guilt can be. I’ve also considered and decided that our brain's structural/chemical flaws are what we basically are while our soul is confined within our physical, bodily form. The human soul may be inherently good, on its own; but trapped within the physical body, notably the corruptible brain, oftentimes the soul’s purity may not be able to shine through.
Thus, upon the multi-murderer's physical death, not only would he (or she) be 100 percent liberated from the anger and hate that blighted his physical life; his spirit or consciousness would also be forced to exist with the presumably unwanted awareness of the immense amount of needless suffering he personally had caused.
Then again, maybe the human soul goes where it belongs or where it feels comfortable and right — be it hell’, ‘heaven’, somewhere in between, etcetera. This concept was suggested in a very interesting 1987 radio-broadcast sermon titled “A Bird’s Eye View of Hell”, given by a renowned preacher. I wrote a piece of fiction titled Not What It Was Supposed To Be [originally called That Other Place] that's largely themed on this premise.
Hi all, I am a lapsed Catholic and an atheist. But the question – What Would Jesus Do? – is still one I ask myself. And he would not be standing with the fist and the boot as they arrest the old, the infirm, the blind and the lame. He would weep for the people of Palestine. And any Christian who says otherwise, betrays the words of Christ.
https://open.substack.com/pub/houlahanjeff/p/sounds-for-paletine-day-34?r=604ds6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
We’ve started Sing Palestine Vivra to encourage people to make public demonstrations of support for the people of Palestine. Eventually, we hope to be able to use Sing Palestine Vivra to organize large scale campaigns of public demonstrations of support for Palestinians.
The substack Sing Palestine Vivra will never accept donations or paid subscriptions.
In Solidarity and with Hand to Heart, Palestine Vivra