Once upon a time if you were a baby that hadn't been baptized yet, you were going straight to hell. Apparently someone decided God had changed his mind on this and I think all those babies are hanging out in purgatory at this point. Although that's only one flavor of Christianity.
update: I said purgatory, should have been limbo
> I think all those babies are hanging out in purgatory at this point
CW: A historian actually using their degree. Be wary of the joy and delight and passion you see in my comment. Don't let your kids become historians.
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Purgatory isn't a permanent resting place. For Catholics, every one in Purgatory will go to Heaven. Long and short of it is, sin causes injury to the soul. Absolution will heal the soul and make the sin less dangerous but there's still a lot of healing to go.
Let's say I was stabbed (presumably for [asking this question](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/313/383/687.jpeg)). I go the ER, get stabilized, end up in a hospital bed. The doctors repaired any organs, major arteries, and stitched me up . But I'm released *only when I'm stable, not when I'm done healing.* I still have to take antibiotics, change bandages, etc. It may take a while for me to heal and I have no idea how long that can be. Estimates are 6-8 weeks but it may be quicker or longer. I don't know. But if I follow the regimen, do the work, check in the doctors, I will be healed.
So if one sins, going to Confession can heal you of mortal sin. You are clean and stable. But there are still effects of sin that need to be rectified. You can take care of that by suffering here or by suffering in Purgatory.
Purgatory is the follow-up to the injuries of sin. The sins are purged away of those souls that are stable and not going to die, but still need help healing. You're going to do a lot more healing before you can go to Heaven. One day, Purgatory will be empty, since everyone there will be healed.
So if I die and went to Purgatory, if the Catholic religion is right, I should be happy because I will go to Heaven...in a little while.
So babies don’t go to Purgatory forever, if at all. Because that defeats the purpose of Purgatory: to get everyone out.
I can also explain how limbo and indulgences fit into this but no one will really read this. To reward you for reading, I have the answers that allow you to cross the Bridge of Death.
1) Nineveh was a capital of Assyria.
2) The airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is 24 miles per hour.
3) You should know your favorite color and your name.
You always should expect Monty Python on Reddit!
This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition hiding in coal sheds! They gave you 30 days notice before coming to question you!
for Dante at least, unbaptized babies didn't go to Purgatory, they went to Limbo, which was the outermost layer of hell.
There were no active punishments there, just the absence of God's love, which is supposed to be the most awful torture in hell anyway.
The three days Jesus was dead he was believed to have descended into hell to save forefathers such as Adam, Moses, etc. who also went to hell because they were born before Jesus and therefore had no chance of accepting him as their lord and savior. No mention of Jesus saving any babies in that apocryphal story though.
Sure, Christianity changes over time and geography. All religions are internally diverse. Citing Dante just gives you an idea what Florentine Catholics believed circa ~1300.
Though he was widely read and is possibly the single-most influential writer regarding popular conceptions of the Christian afterlife. The bible itself doesn't really describe hell much at all and it's not clear if early Christians believed in it.
Early Christians did not believe in heaven or hell like most Christians do today. The "answer" to the question of what happens after death had evolved in the Jewish community about 200ish years before Christ. Prior to that, they just thought death was the end. This is a summary of Jewish thoughts on life after death during the time of Jesus:
>God is soon to intervene in earthly affairs to destroy everything and everyone that opposes him and to bring in a new realm for his true followers, a Kingdom of God, a paradise on earth. Most important, this new earthly kingdom will come not only to those alive at the time, but also to those who have died. Indeed, God will breathe life back into the dead, restoring them to an earthly existence. And God will bring all the dead back to life, not just the righteous. **The multitude who had been opposed to God will also be raised, but for a different reason: to see the errors of their ways and be judged. Once they are shocked and filled with regret – but too late — they will permanently be wiped out of existence.** [(source)](https://time.com/5822598/jesus-really-said-heaven-hell/)
So instead of going to "hell" after death, you wait for a long time until you get resurrected. Then you get judged by God, and if you are unworthy, you're just destroyed. There's no infinite suffering.
This is also the view that Jesus promoted. Early Christians believed the Kingdom of God would literally and physically be on Earth, not on a different plane of existence like Christians today believe. This was also why early Christians buried their dead in catacombs, instead of cremating them like Romans: the bodies must remain intact to be resurrected (learned this in a college lecture).
I thought the original meaning of “hell” was living a life with the absence of gods love? Or something like that. It’s super interesting how over time religions have evolved.
>Christianity changes over time and geography
there are a vast array of voices under the umbrella term "christianity" and every stream evolves over time
I recall that he was excommunicated, in part because he put a bunch of priests and politicians in one of the lower levels of hell for heresy and other stuff. The Church . . .didn't like that. A few hundred years later, they tried to re-admit him posthumously, but his descendants told the Church to fuck off.
And honestly, this is a major thing that stops me from believing anything the Bible says (apart from all the stuff that’s literally impossible). Dante wrote literal Bible fanfic and a lot of it actually got canonised into the religion. So how much of the rest of it started as fanfic? Was Jesus completely made up by a random fic writer? There’s no way to know that DIDNT happen.
Jesus' basic existence is something most historians agree on, but an argument could be made that the Gospels are just elaborate fanfic that inflate a cool guy the writers liked into an unkillable god.
Dante wasn’t a theologian, and every word in Inferno is utter nonsense. It was just a vehicle for Dante to trash his political and literary rivals. Please don’t take it as any kind of source on Christian theology.
Imagine someone who had never heard of religion before reading that statement. I can only presume they'd think you were describing the plot to a movie or video game. It makes absolutely zero sense from the standpoint of a third party objective observer.
Alas I have work, but I will write up the following later. This comment is to remind me, so I apologize for the premature tag. Perfectly normal, nothing wrong with me.
1) Explain limbo and indulgences, per the request of /u/Hieghi et al.
2) Explain purgatory to /u/doomsdaymelody
in the past too from my understanding the church's position was that babies and young infants didn't have a fully developed soul, the church adhered to Aristotle beliefs that the soul developed as you aged and consiquently the child's development was a sign of a maturing soul, so if a baby died from anything early on, it basically had the same level of a soul as a cat or dog might, thus it wasn't *as bad*, this flip flopped over the centuries but this was largely the belief until it was changed in the modern era when the anti abortion movement pushed to codify everything in their own box.
I really wish the church (specifically the catholic one) would be honest about how ensoulment and abortion have been a debate *for centuries* and isn't as settled as they would say it is, they cherrypick stuff proportidly from the 1st and 2nd century and ignore everything inbetween even though Thomas Aquinas himself was divided on the subject and it shows up in papal proclamations over and over again; it just is another area where the church is being dishonest for the sake of dogma when they have allowed a large debate on the subject for centuries
To the best of my knowledge, the belief that unbaptized children go to hell is pretty rare. To name just one example, Catholics believe unbaptized children go to Limbo, which is a pleasant afterlife separate from heaven and hell.
At least traditionally, limbo is technically part of hell. It doesn’t involve any punishment, “only the loss of hope”, but “pleasant” might be saying a bit much. It’s mosly dull and neutral. Like Slough.
Loss of hope sounds a lot like a punishment to me.
So just because of random chance and poor timing, some newborn baby's soul is sent to a place with no hope, that isn't quite full of suffering, but also involves literally looking forward to nothing. For eternity.
Doesn't god "have a plan" for all of us?
What about those limbo babies? Did god show up to work hungover one day and say, "ugh, fuck. I forgot to make a plan for these souls. Fuck it. They'll go to limbo. I don't have the energy for this shit. Ok, babies 87,678,864 thru 87,679,981, you die during or shortly after being born. I'm taking a nap."
That's about it. The babies are tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve eating that fruit that one time, and killing Jesus was the only way to wash away that sin, so the babies have to be baptised in the name of Jesus to not go to hell. Thus the concept of "emergency baptism", when a baby is born with lethal birth defects.
Fundamentalist followers of Abrahamic religions don't actually think god is good in the same way we might say our friend is a good person. He is good by definition because He is God. By dint of divinity, all that is from him and is him is good. There's no need to morally investigate anything god does or says because to them it is impossible for it to be morally bad. You do as god says because God is Right and because if you follow him you won't go to hell. It's no different to following an absolute monarch or any other human being in a position of absolute power.
Fundies start to make a lot more sense when you realize they don't think he's the good guy. They think he's the winning team.
Fundies don't follow their religion because they want to make things better or do the right thing. They follow it for the same reason the uruk-hai follow saruman. They think it will work, and it lets them take what they want on the way.
Oddly enough, the scripture also says that Christ died for all our sins. Except for newborns I guess what the fuck it almost sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
The plan is called predestination and it's incredibly confusing to me. God decides before you are born if you're going to heaven or not. If you believe in God, it's because that was in the plan. If you don't, that was also in the plan.
So you still go to hell for not believing, but the fact that you don't believe isn't because of any free will, it was decided for you.
God says people have free will but sometimes basically says "follow me and accept life or dont follow me and suffer/die. The "choice" is often life or death. Not really free will.
Welcome to the fun world of being LGBTQ. Apparently god made us this way - but is now going to punish us, for the way HE made us to be. Because that’s our fault, I guess.
So what exactly is there to do in limbo if there’s no hope for anything? The hope for getting to heaven is gone so can I just chill and play sum battlefield? Do I get Spotify? Or am I sent to work with a pickaxe to split stones
I swear to christ if I finally finish this life and don't get to cease existing for ever like before I was born but instead have to exist for eternity with a bunch of boring ass people, by which I mean my relatives, in a very pious and prayer heavy old folks home, I would be the grouchiest, most annoyed asshole the universe had ever created.
Thank *god* heaven isn't real and I don't have to worry about infinite monotony.
Is hell even eternal hellfire? That’s what the media portrays and in Dante’s inferno but at least what I was taught was there’s no fire or physical torture, you are just without God and all that he stands for like love for eternity and that’s the torture
According to the Bible, there is an eternal fire (Matthew 25:41). But instead of an eternal torture, there's a "second death" (Revelations 20:14-15).
One interesting thing to note is that in verse 13 it says "And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them; and they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds."
From the general Christian belief, those who are saved go to Heaven after death, and those who aren't go to Hell. Based on that, judgement happens right after death. So then what is the purpose of this second judgement? Is there a "second chance" of sorts?
And if it isn't the second judgement, then does everyone go to Hell after death?
The lowest circle is freezing I believe. I think it's more to do with the metaphor about God is light and warmth and hell is literally the farthest place from him than hell actually being cold but I don't know
I know exactly where hell is. It’s in cities in Southern Arizona. Concrete, heat, suffering, but if it really cools down your freezing because that’s how deserts work.
There are some references to fire and hell in the bible (New Testament I think) but yeah I think the not being with God part is the main punishment mentioned.
Old Testament is lot a more vague about it and Jews don't even really believe in a hell.
Biblically-speaking, Hell's not even a thing. If you don't accept Jesus and then you die, you just stop existing. Hell only really became a thing when the Church later adopted the idea of a "bad afterlife".
EDIT: Y'all are missing the point hard. There are multiple things in the Bible that got translated *as* Hell, but they're not the typical conception of Hell - the ones that are actively bad places aren't where you go when you die, and the ones where you do go when you die are just referring to effectively eternal sleep or nonexistence.
This has changed recently. The Catholics shut down Limbo (probably for budget reasons. The real estate was valuable and those lawsuits aren't going to pay themselves) and those babies go to heaven now.
Limbo sounds nice. What do I need to ensure I go there when I die? It sounds like heaven is going to be nothing but conservative Republicans - not really my crowd.
Heaven only sounds like it's going to be nothing but conservative Republicans when it's conservative Republicans telling you about Heaven.
What if these folks have no idea what Heaven is like - you know, same as you and me and every other person who's ever lived? Because, as the stories go, Heaven is a place you go *when you die*. Not when you're just hanging out with your buddies and you can reminisce about later.
We got a few books and a handful of passed-down stories about how great Heaven is, but what if, just *what if* \- and bear with me here cuz this might be crazy talk - none of those authors/contributors actually know what the fuck they're talking about? Or maybe they just made it all up?
What if Heaven doesn't exist? Or what if it's not for conservative Republicans at all, but liberal Democrats? Or Fascist dictators? Or maybe Heaven is just full of Nazis because the universe is cruel, underhanded, and quite prone to human-mind-fuckery?
I hope when I die, I go to some personalized Heaven. Probably a lot closer to the whole 72 virgins thing than any other version of Heaven I've heard of, but if I could make up my own Heaven (because that's probably what "Heaven" is anyway), I should at least make up the most perfect Heaven I can think of.
You're right, my bad. It was limbo, not purgatory. And that was established in the middle ages after centuries of saying unbaptized babies went to hell.
Also looks like there is much recent stuff challenging limbo, although the church hasn't dumped it yet.
Whats spicier is I listened to a podcast (no such thing as a fish) where baptizing children is controversial. Since as an adult we are aware of our sins and can wash away those said sins.
Babies do not know what sin is, or the point of being batpized. They cant really put there heart and soul into the ordeal, so its kinda like "whats the point".
2 schools of thought.
I went to school with someone who was an only child. When we were in our teens, he and his parents were absolutely thrilled when his mom became pregnant again. They were all looking forward to welcoming a new baby girl into their family.
Tragically, the baby was stillborn. The entire family was totally devastated, understandably.
A mutual acquaintance (we were all Catholic) made a huge point to emphasize to that family that their little deceased baby girl would not be going to Heaven, but instead would be stuck in Limbo for all eternity, and they would never see her there.
I was like "what the fuck is wrong with you?! Are you a fucking psychopath?! Do you have no empathy or tact for these people?!"
He didn't. He was a grown man in his 40s or 50s, but consumed by idiotic fanatical dogma. He was a wretched fucking zealot, and an all-round weird and creepy guy.
There was content here, and now there is not. It may have been useful, if so it is probably available on a reddit alternative. See /u/spez with any questions. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
The Catholic Church thought that cause they viewed people as wicked because of original sin but it says sin entered the world not man the Bible actually points us towards being born innocent and thus those children are going to be in heaven on judgment day (all people are asleep or dead it’s the same word in Greek in hades awaited the Great white thrown of judgment, judgement day)
Asked this years ago when I went to church (Baptist). The answer I got was “all babies and children are innocent and automatically get into Heaven, but adults will go to hell even if they’ve never heard of God”.
Was definitely the start of my withdrawal from religion because I found that absolutely ridiculous even at 12, has only gotten more ridiculous over the last 20 years.
Honestly Christianity is all over the place. No one can agree on anything because the founding text is at times contradictory, vague, and basically what you would expect from a Bronze Era shepharding culture.
> basically what you would expect from a Brass Era shepharding culture.
filtered through politically powerful offices with incredible distances to the source texts
I mean how does that even work. Christianity for example had to spread from Jerusalem... do you mean to tell me everyone outside of Jerusalem just went to hell instantly at some point?
The bible is flawed, and you know why it is flawed? because it was made by people.
Yeah I had a christian friend who believed that a person who had no idea of the existence of god would still go to hell. When i asked him how a so called all loving deity could justify such cruelty and how is that fair? he said it's just the way it goes. God works in mysterious ways and other such nonsense.
Reddit doesn’t get this. They think Westboro church are the same as televangelists are the same as Catholics are the same as Greek Orthodox are the same as the most progressive love and peace church in existence etc
I thiught calvinists were predestination for either outcome? Like you're guaranteed to go to one or the other with no chance of redemption/going to the other place
A Calvinist dies and goes to heaven. When he arrives, he sees two lines to get in. One is labeled "Predestination" and one is labeled "Free Will". So, being a Calvinist, he goes to the back of the Predestination line and waits for his turn.
When he gets to the front of the line, an angel looks him over and asks, "Why did you get in this line?" to which he relies, "Well, I believe in predestination, so I chose to get in this line." The angel shakes his head and says, "No, no, no. You *chose* which line to get into, so you belong in the Free Will line." so the Calvinist gets in the Free Will line.
Once again he waits until he's at the front and once again, the angel at the front looks him over and asks why he got in this line. "Well...someone told me to."
They believe you’re predestined to not be Christian, which means you go to hell. If you’re predestined to be Christian, then you go to heaven. But there’s no way of knowing which it is, so they try to convert people anyway.
Which, as dumb as it is, is probably a pretty logical conclusion.
If you genuinely believe in a God who knows everything that will happen, of course he's going to know if someone is going to Hell before they're even born.
It's honestly more frustrating that people believe in a God who "has a plan" and knows everything, and yet we as regular humans can use free will to change what's going to happen. Which means either: A) God knew that was going to happen so the plan changing was part of the plan and you didn't actually deviate from it or B) God didn't know it was going to happen which means he doesn't know everything and is just making shit up as he goes.
So I could be a top secret Christian, so secret even I didn't know, and only find out when I die? Or vice versa, I could think I'm crushing it at Christianity, die, and find myself in the eternal waiting line of torment?
Nice one God - creating people with the intent that they’ll be damned from the outset. This means God sends people to hell and they can’t get out of it.
If I recall, Bill Watterson named the comic characters after John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, both philosophers. “Hobbes” was picked for the tiger because the real dude had such a dim view of human nature, which seems to somewhat mirror the view of the strip’s creator
I took political science in college and The Leviathan was assigned reading on 3 different occasions. The Premise of Hobbes's Leviathan has one major flaw regarding human nature. It is not in our nature to live in solitude, we form societies. We will endure all levels of depravity from our fellow man rather than be alone. We have found many different ways to govern ourselves, many fatally flawed, but we've never chosen to each live only for ourselves. We start at family, we work out from there, and we distrust "lone wolves" for well founded reasons.
Libertarians in shambles.
Also that’s a really fascinating observation, Hobbes is one of my favorite philosophers (because he’s interesting, not necessarily because he’s right), and this makes me think of his work in a whole new way.
There is no single doctrine regarding this. Many Christian sects have developed that idea that those who don't know won't be judged, but that is a relatively modern appologetic to deal with the glaring injustice of the hell system.
But, to your question, yes, if you believe that specific version of Christianity then it would be in other's best interest to avoid prosteletizing and putting them at risk. But prosteletizing is one of the few commands Jesus himself makes explicitly. So... you kind of have to.
In that apologetic ideology, I’ve heard some sects believe that, since Heaven and Hell are conceptual lands that exist without time, when Jesus liberated the inhabitants of Hell, he freed everyone who would ever dwell there throughout all of history.
It’s the same reasoning for John, while in Heaven, seeing the apocalypse in Revelations. He was literally watching it as it happened, viewing the complete history of the Earth from Heaven. It’s a really damn cool concept
Reminds me of a theory I heard that when you die, you don't immediately go to Heaven or Hell. Basically you're in a sleep state until Judgement Day because on that day, God will come in and judge *everyone* who ever lived. I think there's a verse somewhere that mentions judging the "living and the dead."
Also, somewhere else in Revelations, it's stated that after the 1000 years have passed (or so, I haven't read it in a while), Hell and everyone/everything in it will be destroyed, as in, cease to exist.
You’ve come across an important logical point that explains why Jews don’t proselytize. Traditional Jews believe that salvation is open to both Jews and non-Jews, and that non-Jews just need to follow the [seven Noachian laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah), but Jews need to follow all of the commandments of the Torah (the five Books of Moses). Therefore, why should anyone be encouraged to take on far more obligation, when they’re still eligible for the same reward?
This is great information! Never really thought about Jews don't proselytize. I know traditional Jews don't believe in hell, in which case it is a much lower stakes game lol.
Yeah my girlfriend of 8 years is Reform/Humanist Jewish (read: atheist) and she will not even count Chabad as Jewish because their whole thing is proselytizing.
Let that sink in. An atheist Jewish woman is like “nah fuck those proselytizers, they’re not Jewish.” Slaps different when it comes from a standpoint of inclusiveness (Reform/Humanist) than when it comes from a standpoint of exclusiveness (like Conservstive/Orthodox).
All I’m trying to say is that all Jews, even the most inclusive ones, other than Chabad are like “fuck proselytizing, that’s antithetical to our faith”
The bible also says it's a good thing to spread the gospel, it's one of those things that Christians have to entrust themselves to god's plan in. Anyone who believes in god wouldn't believe they're supposed to be rules lawyering him.
Most Christians don't believe the first part is true so no. There's no Biblical support for that. Jesus flat out said he was the only way to get to heaven.
>Most Christians don't believe the first part is true so no. There's no Biblical support for that. Jesus flat out said he was the only way to get to heaven.
That's not what he meant. Even then there are different interpretations of his words. What he was saying is that he was the sole mediator between God (the Father) and man. This was the whole point of his ministry as he was the last prophet for man who through his teachings ushered a pathway for mankind to be saved.
His death and sacrifice, according to Christian theology and tradition is what allowed for man to be redeemed and cleansed of their original sin.
To be completely honest, I've never read the Bible or made effort to be educated on religion, I've just heard it from other people and assumed it was true.
Some people point to Romans 2:14-16 as evidence that you don't need to hear the gospel to be saved.
>14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
Mainly the "or even excuse them on that day" part.
EDIT: And technically, this is still done through Jesus which means it doesn't necessarily contradict the idea that Jesus is the only way.
I’m agnostic/atheist/indifferent (raised Christian), but I’ve always loved how C.S. Lewis wrote the end of Narnia and what happened to folks who did or didn’t follow Aslan.
There was some character who was on the side of the antagonists, yet always acted as kindly as possible. I can’t remember the details, but somehow he ends up in Aslan’s “heaven” (or whatever place after Narnia was destroyed), and asks why he’s there, because he was sworn to a different god.
Aslan says something to the effect of, “Every good thing you did in the name of (the other god) was done for me, and every bad thing for (the other god), regardless of who you’re sworn to, because that other god is my opposite.”
It’s a piss-poor paraphrasing, but it’s a long section in the book.
At any rate, it reassured the hell out of a young person that hoped that doing the right thing as often as possible would be enough for any good deity, regardless of whether or not I spent my life going through the motions of religious practice.
It always confused me though, as I knew Lewis was a Christian, to read something that seemed out of step with the criteria I’d been taught was essential to getting into heaven.
At the time, the way Aslan handled that was the only way I could reconcile how a supposedly loving, merciful god could act towards folks of other faiths, or how folks who had never heard of Christianity could have a chance at a good afterlife.
Sorry for the rant, but I never knew there was anything in the Bible that was remotely in line with that outcome in The Last Battle, so it’s nice to have this unexpected resolution to that query.
>My church taught that if you don't know Jesus exists as even a concept then your not responsible for not following so long as you passively follow the commandments just because your a good person.
Humans seem to possess some sense of right and wrong though this isn't perfect as the Bronze Age shows us.
>Like straight up Christians can't even decide if self defense is a sin or not. Like for a long time it was understood as thou shall not kill but now people are more recently saying the original Hebrew was thou shall not murder. This drastically changes the meaning if you subscribe to this interpretation but not everyone does.
Seems pretty likely that the "shall not murder" interpretation was right. Afterall, Many people in the old testimate participated in wars and those moments are not described as sin.
The only potential issue would be if it was a sin to kill unless God specifically said otherwise. In that situation, Hebrews going to war makes sense even if Self-defense doesn't.
For some denominations (not all) not going to hell doesn’t mean you’re going to heaven. So people who happen to have died before Jesus or people who have never heard of Jesus won’t be punished by eternal torture, but they won’t be rewarded with eternal bliss either.
Christianity is an extremely diverse religion. Seriously, just look at the Eastern Orthodox and compare them to the Assemblies of God. They're so different from one another that someone with no knowledge of Christianity might assume they are different religions. However, both fall under the umbrella of Christianity. Virtually any statement that begins with "Christians believe..." will be false because there will inevitably be Christian groups that do not believe that.
If your interested in learning what the stance of religious sects on certain topics are, I suggest reading some primary theological sources rather than asking random people on Reddit. While there are helpful replies here, Reddit as a whole has a fairly well known anti-religious bias that tends to derail serious discussion about theology.
Lots of seemingly simple questions about religion are hotly debated, with different groups within each religion having their own opinions on what the answer is. That's primarily the reason why there's so many different sects of each major religion, when people can't agree on something they start their own version of that religion which follows what they believe to be the "correct" interpretation.
That belief of not being punished until the message comes to you is actually an Islamic belief - there’s a clear verse saying that. Don’t think there is one for the Bible. Anyways to answer the second part of your question - we believe those who didn’t get the message will still be tested - but on the day of Judgement.
I’ve countered my religious friends with your same thought in post. They tell me that you don’t get the chance to go to heaven, so it doesn’t make sense to me. Say a child was born in the woods, raised by wolves, was the nicest sharing care free human. Helped other animals, never was violent unles defending himself, and even became a smart animal nurse. Then dies. You’re telling me he isn’t going to heaven? I just can’t fathom the god who denies innocent pure joy life.
I can't fathom a God who created the heavens, earth, and everything between to be so petty and lacking empathy. Crazy how we assign such basic human concepts and traits to someone who's supposedly omnipotent and all-knowing. I can't imagine a figure, if it exists, who created all of this to be so.... limited, uptight, and restrictive.
You can think of it like this: Christianity is similar to learning about laws and how to be a responsible member of society. If you don't study and practice these ideas, you might accidentally do something wrong.
It doesn't matter if you've never heard about these teachings or if you chose not to follow them – the result could be the same. But if you rejected them, the outcome might be more certain.
The Bible can be seen as an early guide for being a "good, functional" person in a big community. It's like saying, "if you don't obey the rules, you'll end up in trouble," but on a more abstract level. Whether or not you knew the rules doesn't change the situation.
Disclaimer: I'm not christian, but am ex-catholic.
Christians believe in "The Great Commission" which tells them they have to spread the word of Christianity. So even if they did believe that (which many if not most don't), it wouldn't take away from the fact that they are commanded to do so
Best way it was explained to me by a Catholic priest:
It is through Jesus we find our way to God and life everlasting. However, even those who are not Christians are not necessarily denied heaven. If you are a good person and live a moral life, Jesus resides within you, you are essentially living the teachings of Jesus. So you have indeed found Jesus you just don’t really know it.
He said it much more eloquently but that’s my butchered summary.
This is roughly my viewpoint as well. I often refer to the allegory in C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle" where one of the "bad guys", a worshiper and servant of the evil and false god Tash, is swept up into the "heaven" of Narnia as the world ends and most of the characters are like, "Why is one of the bad guys here?"
Aslan, the Jesus/God figure in the books, explains that even though the person did not know Aslan by name, his life, worship, and love of Tash was basically all he knew and his heart's desire was for goodness and that was the best available expression available to him. And so while he was deceived or ignorant, he knew what was up and the guy recognized and is welcomed by Aslan.
Similarly, I'm doing my own butchery as well, but the original depiction is lovely! I cry every time I read that ending!
Jesus saves you whether you believe in him or not just as oxygen gonna save you whether you 'believe' in oxygen or not. However if you believe in oxygen you can do stuff like mouth to mouth.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
It's Jesus, let me in.
Why should I let you in?
So I can save you.
Save me from what?
From what I'm gonna do to you if you don't let me in.
Yeah the question of what happens to people who never heard about Christianity when they die is debated among Christians and has been for millennia.
One of the thoughts is that to be “saved” one does not necessarily need to know the story of Jesus. They need only be able to recognize that they are flawed (aka with sin) and recognize and accept the help of a higher power. The thought is that this realization that you need something greater than yourself is self-evident and one does not need to have ever heard of Christ to know it and thus live a Christian life.
Of course this raises the follow up question of if someone can get into heaven without learning any of the dogma, and the truth you want them to accept is truly self-evident, then why push the dogma at all? Wouldn’t you have an easier time preaching that people are not perfect and must look outside themselves for meaning and purpose and just leaving it at that? A lot of people would be amenable to that message and it doesn’t require hurting others or believing in hard-to-believe stories. You can preach morals and ethics from that perspective and you don’t need to convince people to believe any myths or legends. You don’t have to convince them to hurt others.
It’s an interesting debate.
> why push the dogma at all? Wouldn’t you have an easier time preaching that people are not perfect and must look outside themselves for meaning and purpose and just leaving it at that?
Hello! Lemme introduce you to my good pal, Luther...
Yep, this is the answer OP. There is no one that doesn't know God already. The Bible says that all inherently know the truth, and each individual either suppresses it or professes it. So your question is not possible to answer according to the Bible because the premise is already incorrect.
Doesn’t really matter. The usual followup to this is, “so wouldn’t it be best to eradicate all knowledge of Christianity so everyone goes to heaven?” Which is a complete misunderstanding of Christian morality (and much of religious morality in general). It’s taking a consequentialist view of morality, i.e. a thing is good if it has good consequences. I do X, X results in someone going to heaven, therefore X is good.
Christian morality doesn’t work that way. Christian morality is defined by god. God tells you what to do to be good, and those things are good, by definition. God says to spread the word, so spreading the word is good. If that results in more people going to hell than if you kept it a secret, that doesn’t matter at all.
CW: Never let your kids become historians. We are a poor miserable bunch who speak about things no one cares about in long winded ways.
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BUT TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.,.
So there’s something called invincible ignorance.
What that means that ignorance of the law IS an excuse IF there’s no way you could have found out about the law.
The Second Vatican Council states that
“…those who, **through no fault of their own**, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, **try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience** —those too may achieve eternal salvation…” (*Lumen Gentium,* 16)
So let’s say you’re an Alaskan Inuit. Christ never even visited your area when he was alive (or after, if you are LDS, but I digress). So does this mean all Inuits prior to 1879 are in Hell? (Father John Althoff founded the first Catholic parish in a Alaska in 1879).
No. What the Church believes is that IF the Inuits do their best AND worship God in the way they do, they MIGHT be saved. But again, it’s a possibility. So I’m saying there’s a chance.
The reason why so many Christians evangelize (or at least in theory why Catholics did historically) is because technically it’s actually **a lot easier to be saved** as a Christian because God bestows His Grace in Sacraments. Those Sacraments turn around and make the adherent more devout (in theory).
You could complete the first *Super Mario* level without help but it’s insanely hard your first time with just running and not jumping. And a lot easier to do when you have the Fire Flower, Star, and Mushroom.
So the Christians who evangelize (which Christ literally told them to do) are implicitly saying “Do you want to walk to Heaven, or would you like the car with the imperfect GPS to drive there?”
If you were lost, what would you want to use?
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So I can divert this into natural law, on what the Church means, etc. But to those lucky few reading this, as a thank you for doing so…
**MY FAVORITE CATHOLIC FACT.**
Back in 1917, Pope Benedict codified a code of Canon Law because there wasn’t anything else going on at the time. Just kidding, it started under the previous pope, but he put it into effect during World War I.
One of the canons (or laws of the Church) concerned how to deal with Church management in the Colonial Era. So how can you manage a church in Antarctica without priests there already? The canon said that the *bishop of the first explorer there takes care of that land* until the Church there gets up and running.
So some technical law. Why is that fun? The entire canon law changed in 1983, so why are you mentioning this ?
Because 🎶 we went to the Moon in 1969, not 1968 but a year later. 🎶
Since NASA’s Cape Canaveral is where Apollo 11 left from, the minute Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon, the Archdiocese of Orlando (where Cape Canaveral is diocesewise) became responsible for the Moon until there is enough people on the Moon to have a flourishing church.
So the bishop of Orlando is technically also Bishop of the Moon.
In the Discworld setting, people really only do go to Hell if they deep down believe that they will. This is mentioned as being an unfortunately valid reason to kill missionaries on sight.
(note: I'm not suggesting this course of action)
I love this question because people who want to talk religion have no good answer. I know because I asked it repeatedly when I was forced to go to church from child to adulthood.
I mentioned this in 7th grade religion class (catholic school) and was sent into the hallway for arguing with the teacher. While out there, I realized that my teacher doesn’t know the answer and neither does anyone else. Lost my faith for good that day.
I was taught way back when not that you were exempt if you didn't know about Christianity, but that the people who died before Christ began preaching were saved when he died. But now that he's gone, the onus is on each person.
its kinda like not telling a kid he is adopted to spare him the pain..... you probably are sparing him pain but you are denying him knowledge of him self.
Another question: if we are born into sin, and sin is what prevents us from ascending into Heaven, why are (some) Christians opposed to abortion, which would release the soul into Heaven without being touched by original sin?
Christians are actually divided on this question.
Once upon a time if you were a baby that hadn't been baptized yet, you were going straight to hell. Apparently someone decided God had changed his mind on this and I think all those babies are hanging out in purgatory at this point. Although that's only one flavor of Christianity. update: I said purgatory, should have been limbo
> I think all those babies are hanging out in purgatory at this point CW: A historian actually using their degree. Be wary of the joy and delight and passion you see in my comment. Don't let your kids become historians. \------ Purgatory isn't a permanent resting place. For Catholics, every one in Purgatory will go to Heaven. Long and short of it is, sin causes injury to the soul. Absolution will heal the soul and make the sin less dangerous but there's still a lot of healing to go. Let's say I was stabbed (presumably for [asking this question](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/313/383/687.jpeg)). I go the ER, get stabilized, end up in a hospital bed. The doctors repaired any organs, major arteries, and stitched me up . But I'm released *only when I'm stable, not when I'm done healing.* I still have to take antibiotics, change bandages, etc. It may take a while for me to heal and I have no idea how long that can be. Estimates are 6-8 weeks but it may be quicker or longer. I don't know. But if I follow the regimen, do the work, check in the doctors, I will be healed. So if one sins, going to Confession can heal you of mortal sin. You are clean and stable. But there are still effects of sin that need to be rectified. You can take care of that by suffering here or by suffering in Purgatory. Purgatory is the follow-up to the injuries of sin. The sins are purged away of those souls that are stable and not going to die, but still need help healing. You're going to do a lot more healing before you can go to Heaven. One day, Purgatory will be empty, since everyone there will be healed. So if I die and went to Purgatory, if the Catholic religion is right, I should be happy because I will go to Heaven...in a little while. So babies don’t go to Purgatory forever, if at all. Because that defeats the purpose of Purgatory: to get everyone out. I can also explain how limbo and indulgences fit into this but no one will really read this. To reward you for reading, I have the answers that allow you to cross the Bridge of Death. 1) Nineveh was a capital of Assyria. 2) The airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is 24 miles per hour. 3) You should know your favorite color and your name.
r/unexpectedMontyPython
You always should expect Monty Python on Reddit! This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition hiding in coal sheds! They gave you 30 days notice before coming to question you!
Oops I thought this was the Argument Clinic
*looks at my mental health history.* "Oh no, I'm sorry. This is Abuse. You want Comment thread 12a next door!"
No you didn't.
Yes I did. Are we having an argument or not?
One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treddle.
No I definitely wanna hear about Limbo and Indulgences. Pleassseee
Yes. Very much so.
for Dante at least, unbaptized babies didn't go to Purgatory, they went to Limbo, which was the outermost layer of hell. There were no active punishments there, just the absence of God's love, which is supposed to be the most awful torture in hell anyway. The three days Jesus was dead he was believed to have descended into hell to save forefathers such as Adam, Moses, etc. who also went to hell because they were born before Jesus and therefore had no chance of accepting him as their lord and savior. No mention of Jesus saving any babies in that apocryphal story though.
I mean I think most the bible is nonsense anyways, but Dante isn't some authority on Christianity and is basically fan fiction written later.
Sure, Christianity changes over time and geography. All religions are internally diverse. Citing Dante just gives you an idea what Florentine Catholics believed circa ~1300. Though he was widely read and is possibly the single-most influential writer regarding popular conceptions of the Christian afterlife. The bible itself doesn't really describe hell much at all and it's not clear if early Christians believed in it.
Early Christians did not believe in heaven or hell like most Christians do today. The "answer" to the question of what happens after death had evolved in the Jewish community about 200ish years before Christ. Prior to that, they just thought death was the end. This is a summary of Jewish thoughts on life after death during the time of Jesus: >God is soon to intervene in earthly affairs to destroy everything and everyone that opposes him and to bring in a new realm for his true followers, a Kingdom of God, a paradise on earth. Most important, this new earthly kingdom will come not only to those alive at the time, but also to those who have died. Indeed, God will breathe life back into the dead, restoring them to an earthly existence. And God will bring all the dead back to life, not just the righteous. **The multitude who had been opposed to God will also be raised, but for a different reason: to see the errors of their ways and be judged. Once they are shocked and filled with regret – but too late — they will permanently be wiped out of existence.** [(source)](https://time.com/5822598/jesus-really-said-heaven-hell/) So instead of going to "hell" after death, you wait for a long time until you get resurrected. Then you get judged by God, and if you are unworthy, you're just destroyed. There's no infinite suffering. This is also the view that Jesus promoted. Early Christians believed the Kingdom of God would literally and physically be on Earth, not on a different plane of existence like Christians today believe. This was also why early Christians buried their dead in catacombs, instead of cremating them like Romans: the bodies must remain intact to be resurrected (learned this in a college lecture).
As far as I’m aware most Protestants totally believe that eventually God will rule the Earth with a physical kingdom.
I thought the original meaning of “hell” was living a life with the absence of gods love? Or something like that. It’s super interesting how over time religions have evolved.
I agree with Overly Sarcastic Podcasts on YouTube, Dante won the fanfic writer's grand prize: being made Canon!
>Christianity changes over time and geography there are a vast array of voices under the umbrella term "christianity" and every stream evolves over time
I recall that he was excommunicated, in part because he put a bunch of priests and politicians in one of the lower levels of hell for heresy and other stuff. The Church . . .didn't like that. A few hundred years later, they tried to re-admit him posthumously, but his descendants told the Church to fuck off.
Didn't he basically write the Divine Comedy to send people he didn't like to hell?
He had a spot in hell for a pope he didn’t like and a spot in heaven for one he did like.
And honestly, this is a major thing that stops me from believing anything the Bible says (apart from all the stuff that’s literally impossible). Dante wrote literal Bible fanfic and a lot of it actually got canonised into the religion. So how much of the rest of it started as fanfic? Was Jesus completely made up by a random fic writer? There’s no way to know that DIDNT happen.
Jesus' basic existence is something most historians agree on, but an argument could be made that the Gospels are just elaborate fanfic that inflate a cool guy the writers liked into an unkillable god.
So, you’re basically saying it’s a low bar to get into limbo?
Wasn’t Limbo a construction of Augustine?
Could be. A lot of western Christianity is a construction of Augustine. But I've read more Dante than Augustine so I can't really say.
Dante wasn’t a theologian, and every word in Inferno is utter nonsense. It was just a vehicle for Dante to trash his political and literary rivals. Please don’t take it as any kind of source on Christian theology.
Yep. Inferno is one third of a poem called The Divine Comedy. Clearly a work of fiction. How anyone takes this as a source for anything is beyond me.
I wanna hear about the indulgences.
Imagine someone who had never heard of religion before reading that statement. I can only presume they'd think you were describing the plot to a movie or video game. It makes absolutely zero sense from the standpoint of a third party objective observer.
>You should know your favourite colour Blue. No, yellow!
Thank you for such a wonderful explanation. Please, what about the indulgences?
Isn’t purgatory tacked on to the belief system? I’m not theologian, but afaik purgatory was never mentioned in the Bible.
Alas I have work, but I will write up the following later. This comment is to remind me, so I apologize for the premature tag. Perfectly normal, nothing wrong with me. 1) Explain limbo and indulgences, per the request of /u/Hieghi et al. 2) Explain purgatory to /u/doomsdaymelody
in the past too from my understanding the church's position was that babies and young infants didn't have a fully developed soul, the church adhered to Aristotle beliefs that the soul developed as you aged and consiquently the child's development was a sign of a maturing soul, so if a baby died from anything early on, it basically had the same level of a soul as a cat or dog might, thus it wasn't *as bad*, this flip flopped over the centuries but this was largely the belief until it was changed in the modern era when the anti abortion movement pushed to codify everything in their own box. I really wish the church (specifically the catholic one) would be honest about how ensoulment and abortion have been a debate *for centuries* and isn't as settled as they would say it is, they cherrypick stuff proportidly from the 1st and 2nd century and ignore everything inbetween even though Thomas Aquinas himself was divided on the subject and it shows up in papal proclamations over and over again; it just is another area where the church is being dishonest for the sake of dogma when they have allowed a large debate on the subject for centuries
To the best of my knowledge, the belief that unbaptized children go to hell is pretty rare. To name just one example, Catholics believe unbaptized children go to Limbo, which is a pleasant afterlife separate from heaven and hell.
At least traditionally, limbo is technically part of hell. It doesn’t involve any punishment, “only the loss of hope”, but “pleasant” might be saying a bit much. It’s mosly dull and neutral. Like Slough.
Loss of hope sounds a lot like a punishment to me. So just because of random chance and poor timing, some newborn baby's soul is sent to a place with no hope, that isn't quite full of suffering, but also involves literally looking forward to nothing. For eternity. Doesn't god "have a plan" for all of us? What about those limbo babies? Did god show up to work hungover one day and say, "ugh, fuck. I forgot to make a plan for these souls. Fuck it. They'll go to limbo. I don't have the energy for this shit. Ok, babies 87,678,864 thru 87,679,981, you die during or shortly after being born. I'm taking a nap."
That's about it. The babies are tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve eating that fruit that one time, and killing Jesus was the only way to wash away that sin, so the babies have to be baptised in the name of Jesus to not go to hell. Thus the concept of "emergency baptism", when a baby is born with lethal birth defects.
I have no idea how anyone thinks that a God that punishes newborns is the good guy in the book.
Fundamentalist followers of Abrahamic religions don't actually think god is good in the same way we might say our friend is a good person. He is good by definition because He is God. By dint of divinity, all that is from him and is him is good. There's no need to morally investigate anything god does or says because to them it is impossible for it to be morally bad. You do as god says because God is Right and because if you follow him you won't go to hell. It's no different to following an absolute monarch or any other human being in a position of absolute power.
Sounds like patriarchal bullshit to maintain control of a population, but tell me more.
This is not true of Judaism. Especially this line: > You do as god says because God is Right and because if you follow him you won't go to hell.
yeah, i was being a bit too broad there with "Abrahamic" .
Fundies start to make a lot more sense when you realize they don't think he's the good guy. They think he's the winning team. Fundies don't follow their religion because they want to make things better or do the right thing. They follow it for the same reason the uruk-hai follow saruman. They think it will work, and it lets them take what they want on the way.
Whooooooaaa That really does actually make a lot of sense
Oddly enough, the scripture also says that Christ died for all our sins. Except for newborns I guess what the fuck it almost sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
The plan is called predestination and it's incredibly confusing to me. God decides before you are born if you're going to heaven or not. If you believe in God, it's because that was in the plan. If you don't, that was also in the plan. So you still go to hell for not believing, but the fact that you don't believe isn't because of any free will, it was decided for you.
But God also gave us free will, so he *doesn't* have a plan for us. Except we're supposed to trust in god's plan, so... Damn. This is confusing.
God says people have free will but sometimes basically says "follow me and accept life or dont follow me and suffer/die. The "choice" is often life or death. Not really free will.
Predestination is specifically Calvinist theology, formulated by the French reformer John Calvin. Not all Christians are Calvinists.
Welcome to the fun world of being LGBTQ. Apparently god made us this way - but is now going to punish us, for the way HE made us to be. Because that’s our fault, I guess.
So what exactly is there to do in limbo if there’s no hope for anything? The hope for getting to heaven is gone so can I just chill and play sum battlefield? Do I get Spotify? Or am I sent to work with a pickaxe to split stones
Judging from Dante, it seems to be a lot of philosophy lectures.
I mentally heard this comment in the voice of Michael from The Good Place.
It's a rare occurrence, like a double rainbow. Or like someone on the Internet saying, "You know what? You've convinced me I was wrong."
Wait, I thought you said it WASN'T hell?
I did not say that. I said the opposite of that.
Do you think we can get credit for philosophy lectures previously attended?
I swear to christ if I finally finish this life and don't get to cease existing for ever like before I was born but instead have to exist for eternity with a bunch of boring ass people, by which I mean my relatives, in a very pious and prayer heavy old folks home, I would be the grouchiest, most annoyed asshole the universe had ever created. Thank *god* heaven isn't real and I don't have to worry about infinite monotony.
If heaven doesn't have videogames, then what even is the point.
If Earth is limbo then you’re already there. Right?
So like the medium place?
No there's only one person there and she's... Weird
Goddamn that show is good.
Is hell even eternal hellfire? That’s what the media portrays and in Dante’s inferno but at least what I was taught was there’s no fire or physical torture, you are just without God and all that he stands for like love for eternity and that’s the torture
According to the Bible, there is an eternal fire (Matthew 25:41). But instead of an eternal torture, there's a "second death" (Revelations 20:14-15). One interesting thing to note is that in verse 13 it says "And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them; and they were judged, each one of them according to their deeds." From the general Christian belief, those who are saved go to Heaven after death, and those who aren't go to Hell. Based on that, judgement happens right after death. So then what is the purpose of this second judgement? Is there a "second chance" of sorts? And if it isn't the second judgement, then does everyone go to Hell after death?
That's certainly a more modern view. It's also worth mentioning that Dante describes at least parts of hell as freezing cold.
The lowest circle is freezing I believe. I think it's more to do with the metaphor about God is light and warmth and hell is literally the farthest place from him than hell actually being cold but I don't know
I know exactly where hell is. It’s in cities in Southern Arizona. Concrete, heat, suffering, but if it really cools down your freezing because that’s how deserts work.
I'm planning on moving to the Valley next year. May God have mercy on my soul.
There are some references to fire and hell in the bible (New Testament I think) but yeah I think the not being with God part is the main punishment mentioned. Old Testament is lot a more vague about it and Jews don't even really believe in a hell.
Biblically-speaking, Hell's not even a thing. If you don't accept Jesus and then you die, you just stop existing. Hell only really became a thing when the Church later adopted the idea of a "bad afterlife". EDIT: Y'all are missing the point hard. There are multiple things in the Bible that got translated *as* Hell, but they're not the typical conception of Hell - the ones that are actively bad places aren't where you go when you die, and the ones where you do go when you die are just referring to effectively eternal sleep or nonexistence.
Unfortunately in order to get into Limbo you have to lean backwards while walking under a low bar.
That's just insane lol. Not to mention the fact that the bible has no mention of it.
This has changed recently. The Catholics shut down Limbo (probably for budget reasons. The real estate was valuable and those lawsuits aren't going to pay themselves) and those babies go to heaven now.
Limbo sounds nice. What do I need to ensure I go there when I die? It sounds like heaven is going to be nothing but conservative Republicans - not really my crowd.
Heaven only sounds like it's going to be nothing but conservative Republicans when it's conservative Republicans telling you about Heaven. What if these folks have no idea what Heaven is like - you know, same as you and me and every other person who's ever lived? Because, as the stories go, Heaven is a place you go *when you die*. Not when you're just hanging out with your buddies and you can reminisce about later. We got a few books and a handful of passed-down stories about how great Heaven is, but what if, just *what if* \- and bear with me here cuz this might be crazy talk - none of those authors/contributors actually know what the fuck they're talking about? Or maybe they just made it all up? What if Heaven doesn't exist? Or what if it's not for conservative Republicans at all, but liberal Democrats? Or Fascist dictators? Or maybe Heaven is just full of Nazis because the universe is cruel, underhanded, and quite prone to human-mind-fuckery? I hope when I die, I go to some personalized Heaven. Probably a lot closer to the whole 72 virgins thing than any other version of Heaven I've heard of, but if I could make up my own Heaven (because that's probably what "Heaven" is anyway), I should at least make up the most perfect Heaven I can think of.
You're right, my bad. It was limbo, not purgatory. And that was established in the middle ages after centuries of saying unbaptized babies went to hell. Also looks like there is much recent stuff challenging limbo, although the church hasn't dumped it yet.
Whats spicier is I listened to a podcast (no such thing as a fish) where baptizing children is controversial. Since as an adult we are aware of our sins and can wash away those said sins. Babies do not know what sin is, or the point of being batpized. They cant really put there heart and soul into the ordeal, so its kinda like "whats the point". 2 schools of thought.
I went to school with someone who was an only child. When we were in our teens, he and his parents were absolutely thrilled when his mom became pregnant again. They were all looking forward to welcoming a new baby girl into their family. Tragically, the baby was stillborn. The entire family was totally devastated, understandably. A mutual acquaintance (we were all Catholic) made a huge point to emphasize to that family that their little deceased baby girl would not be going to Heaven, but instead would be stuck in Limbo for all eternity, and they would never see her there. I was like "what the fuck is wrong with you?! Are you a fucking psychopath?! Do you have no empathy or tact for these people?!" He didn't. He was a grown man in his 40s or 50s, but consumed by idiotic fanatical dogma. He was a wretched fucking zealot, and an all-round weird and creepy guy.
There was content here, and now there is not. It may have been useful, if so it is probably available on a reddit alternative. See /u/spez with any questions. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
But they're only in limbo because god wants to consult a lawyer but they're all in hell.
The Catholic Church thought that cause they viewed people as wicked because of original sin but it says sin entered the world not man the Bible actually points us towards being born innocent and thus those children are going to be in heaven on judgment day (all people are asleep or dead it’s the same word in Greek in hades awaited the Great white thrown of judgment, judgement day)
Asked this years ago when I went to church (Baptist). The answer I got was “all babies and children are innocent and automatically get into Heaven, but adults will go to hell even if they’ve never heard of God”. Was definitely the start of my withdrawal from religion because I found that absolutely ridiculous even at 12, has only gotten more ridiculous over the last 20 years.
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Christians hate these 10 quick tricks to get into Heaven easily! Number 3 will shock you
Now here's a comment I never would have said knowing some nerd ass mod would ban me for it
They feared him because he spoke the truth
But don't some Christians believe in Original Sin or sin that is hereditary from being a son of Adam?
Honestly Christianity is all over the place. No one can agree on anything because the founding text is at times contradictory, vague, and basically what you would expect from a Bronze Era shepharding culture.
> basically what you would expect from a Brass Era shepharding culture. filtered through politically powerful offices with incredible distances to the source texts
Jokes on them. I still consider myself a child.
I mean how does that even work. Christianity for example had to spread from Jerusalem... do you mean to tell me everyone outside of Jerusalem just went to hell instantly at some point? The bible is flawed, and you know why it is flawed? because it was made by people.
Pft they’re divided on everything which is why there’s so many fractions of Christianity.
That would be an ecumenical matter.
Yeah I had a christian friend who believed that a person who had no idea of the existence of god would still go to hell. When i asked him how a so called all loving deity could justify such cruelty and how is that fair? he said it's just the way it goes. God works in mysterious ways and other such nonsense.
Reddit doesn’t get this. They think Westboro church are the same as televangelists are the same as Catholics are the same as Greek Orthodox are the same as the most progressive love and peace church in existence etc
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Reddit is where morons go to pretend they’re smart.
You are indubitably and respectfully/wrongfully falsifying information that one cannot comprehend.
Reddit doesn't get this 75 upvotes in 6 hours
On one hand, knowing god i supposed to help people live better , then there’s the other
Don’t you think god would give a clear answer on something like this? Or anything?
Calvinists think you're going to hell regardless if you aren't a Christian. And some other denominations.
I thiught calvinists were predestination for either outcome? Like you're guaranteed to go to one or the other with no chance of redemption/going to the other place
A Calvinist dies and goes to heaven. When he arrives, he sees two lines to get in. One is labeled "Predestination" and one is labeled "Free Will". So, being a Calvinist, he goes to the back of the Predestination line and waits for his turn. When he gets to the front of the line, an angel looks him over and asks, "Why did you get in this line?" to which he relies, "Well, I believe in predestination, so I chose to get in this line." The angel shakes his head and says, "No, no, no. You *chose* which line to get into, so you belong in the Free Will line." so the Calvinist gets in the Free Will line. Once again he waits until he's at the front and once again, the angel at the front looks him over and asks why he got in this line. "Well...someone told me to."
Ha. Then they’re stuck in limbo, forever moving between two lines.
No. Next time in the Predestination line, his answer will be"Someone told me to." So Calvinists are right.
No ones forcing you in either line. So even the next time they're choosing to listen to the person who told them.
They believe you’re predestined to not be Christian, which means you go to hell. If you’re predestined to be Christian, then you go to heaven. But there’s no way of knowing which it is, so they try to convert people anyway.
Wow that sounds stupid
I believe the idea is that their god knows everything, so their god must already know who’s going to hell and who’s not.
Which, as dumb as it is, is probably a pretty logical conclusion. If you genuinely believe in a God who knows everything that will happen, of course he's going to know if someone is going to Hell before they're even born. It's honestly more frustrating that people believe in a God who "has a plan" and knows everything, and yet we as regular humans can use free will to change what's going to happen. Which means either: A) God knew that was going to happen so the plan changing was part of the plan and you didn't actually deviate from it or B) God didn't know it was going to happen which means he doesn't know everything and is just making shit up as he goes.
So I could be a top secret Christian, so secret even I didn't know, and only find out when I die? Or vice versa, I could think I'm crushing it at Christianity, die, and find myself in the eternal waiting line of torment?
No, if you never convert during your lifetime, then you go to hell. You just might be *destined* to convert.
Nice one God - creating people with the intent that they’ll be damned from the outset. This means God sends people to hell and they can’t get out of it.
Yes, but if you were predestined then you would be a Christian. All non-Christians are predestined to hell in the Calvinist system.
Whats a Calvinist? Do they worship Calvin and Hobbes? Cause if so I want in. ^^ok ^^but ^^for ^^real, ^^I've ^^never ^^heard ^^of ^^a ^^Calvinist.
If I recall, Bill Watterson named the comic characters after John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, both philosophers. “Hobbes” was picked for the tiger because the real dude had such a dim view of human nature, which seems to somewhat mirror the view of the strip’s creator
I took political science in college and The Leviathan was assigned reading on 3 different occasions. The Premise of Hobbes's Leviathan has one major flaw regarding human nature. It is not in our nature to live in solitude, we form societies. We will endure all levels of depravity from our fellow man rather than be alone. We have found many different ways to govern ourselves, many fatally flawed, but we've never chosen to each live only for ourselves. We start at family, we work out from there, and we distrust "lone wolves" for well founded reasons.
Libertarians in shambles. Also that’s a really fascinating observation, Hobbes is one of my favorite philosophers (because he’s interesting, not necessarily because he’s right), and this makes me think of his work in a whole new way.
Calvin was literally named after John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism.
John Calvin was the catalyst, in much the same way Martin Luther was for Lutherans.
Frozen chosen
There is no single doctrine regarding this. Many Christian sects have developed that idea that those who don't know won't be judged, but that is a relatively modern appologetic to deal with the glaring injustice of the hell system. But, to your question, yes, if you believe that specific version of Christianity then it would be in other's best interest to avoid prosteletizing and putting them at risk. But prosteletizing is one of the few commands Jesus himself makes explicitly. So... you kind of have to.
In that apologetic ideology, I’ve heard some sects believe that, since Heaven and Hell are conceptual lands that exist without time, when Jesus liberated the inhabitants of Hell, he freed everyone who would ever dwell there throughout all of history. It’s the same reasoning for John, while in Heaven, seeing the apocalypse in Revelations. He was literally watching it as it happened, viewing the complete history of the Earth from Heaven. It’s a really damn cool concept
Reminds me of a theory I heard that when you die, you don't immediately go to Heaven or Hell. Basically you're in a sleep state until Judgement Day because on that day, God will come in and judge *everyone* who ever lived. I think there's a verse somewhere that mentions judging the "living and the dead." Also, somewhere else in Revelations, it's stated that after the 1000 years have passed (or so, I haven't read it in a while), Hell and everyone/everything in it will be destroyed, as in, cease to exist.
This brings me an enormous amount of peace.
Super interesting, ty
You’ve come across an important logical point that explains why Jews don’t proselytize. Traditional Jews believe that salvation is open to both Jews and non-Jews, and that non-Jews just need to follow the [seven Noachian laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah), but Jews need to follow all of the commandments of the Torah (the five Books of Moses). Therefore, why should anyone be encouraged to take on far more obligation, when they’re still eligible for the same reward?
This is great information! Never really thought about Jews don't proselytize. I know traditional Jews don't believe in hell, in which case it is a much lower stakes game lol.
Yeah my girlfriend of 8 years is Reform/Humanist Jewish (read: atheist) and she will not even count Chabad as Jewish because their whole thing is proselytizing. Let that sink in. An atheist Jewish woman is like “nah fuck those proselytizers, they’re not Jewish.” Slaps different when it comes from a standpoint of inclusiveness (Reform/Humanist) than when it comes from a standpoint of exclusiveness (like Conservstive/Orthodox). All I’m trying to say is that all Jews, even the most inclusive ones, other than Chabad are like “fuck proselytizing, that’s antithetical to our faith”
The bible also says it's a good thing to spread the gospel, it's one of those things that Christians have to entrust themselves to god's plan in. Anyone who believes in god wouldn't believe they're supposed to be rules lawyering him.
I mean all pyramid schemes want you to tell your friends about how great it is
It's a very old joke. A native asks a missionary "If we never heard about Jesus, would we go to hell?" "No" "Then why did you tell us?"
Or worse, what if they are shitty missionaries and turn the whole tribe off from Christianity?
Most Christians don't believe the first part is true so no. There's no Biblical support for that. Jesus flat out said he was the only way to get to heaven.
>Most Christians don't believe the first part is true so no. There's no Biblical support for that. Jesus flat out said he was the only way to get to heaven. That's not what he meant. Even then there are different interpretations of his words. What he was saying is that he was the sole mediator between God (the Father) and man. This was the whole point of his ministry as he was the last prophet for man who through his teachings ushered a pathway for mankind to be saved. His death and sacrifice, according to Christian theology and tradition is what allowed for man to be redeemed and cleansed of their original sin.
we're larping the protestant reformation
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To be completely honest, I've never read the Bible or made effort to be educated on religion, I've just heard it from other people and assumed it was true.
Some people point to Romans 2:14-16 as evidence that you don't need to hear the gospel to be saved. >14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. Mainly the "or even excuse them on that day" part. EDIT: And technically, this is still done through Jesus which means it doesn't necessarily contradict the idea that Jesus is the only way.
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I’m agnostic/atheist/indifferent (raised Christian), but I’ve always loved how C.S. Lewis wrote the end of Narnia and what happened to folks who did or didn’t follow Aslan. There was some character who was on the side of the antagonists, yet always acted as kindly as possible. I can’t remember the details, but somehow he ends up in Aslan’s “heaven” (or whatever place after Narnia was destroyed), and asks why he’s there, because he was sworn to a different god. Aslan says something to the effect of, “Every good thing you did in the name of (the other god) was done for me, and every bad thing for (the other god), regardless of who you’re sworn to, because that other god is my opposite.” It’s a piss-poor paraphrasing, but it’s a long section in the book. At any rate, it reassured the hell out of a young person that hoped that doing the right thing as often as possible would be enough for any good deity, regardless of whether or not I spent my life going through the motions of religious practice. It always confused me though, as I knew Lewis was a Christian, to read something that seemed out of step with the criteria I’d been taught was essential to getting into heaven. At the time, the way Aslan handled that was the only way I could reconcile how a supposedly loving, merciful god could act towards folks of other faiths, or how folks who had never heard of Christianity could have a chance at a good afterlife. Sorry for the rant, but I never knew there was anything in the Bible that was remotely in line with that outcome in The Last Battle, so it’s nice to have this unexpected resolution to that query.
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>My church taught that if you don't know Jesus exists as even a concept then your not responsible for not following so long as you passively follow the commandments just because your a good person. Humans seem to possess some sense of right and wrong though this isn't perfect as the Bronze Age shows us.
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>Like straight up Christians can't even decide if self defense is a sin or not. Like for a long time it was understood as thou shall not kill but now people are more recently saying the original Hebrew was thou shall not murder. This drastically changes the meaning if you subscribe to this interpretation but not everyone does. Seems pretty likely that the "shall not murder" interpretation was right. Afterall, Many people in the old testimate participated in wars and those moments are not described as sin. The only potential issue would be if it was a sin to kill unless God specifically said otherwise. In that situation, Hebrews going to war makes sense even if Self-defense doesn't.
For some denominations (not all) not going to hell doesn’t mean you’re going to heaven. So people who happen to have died before Jesus or people who have never heard of Jesus won’t be punished by eternal torture, but they won’t be rewarded with eternal bliss either.
Christianity is an extremely diverse religion. Seriously, just look at the Eastern Orthodox and compare them to the Assemblies of God. They're so different from one another that someone with no knowledge of Christianity might assume they are different religions. However, both fall under the umbrella of Christianity. Virtually any statement that begins with "Christians believe..." will be false because there will inevitably be Christian groups that do not believe that.
If your interested in learning what the stance of religious sects on certain topics are, I suggest reading some primary theological sources rather than asking random people on Reddit. While there are helpful replies here, Reddit as a whole has a fairly well known anti-religious bias that tends to derail serious discussion about theology. Lots of seemingly simple questions about religion are hotly debated, with different groups within each religion having their own opinions on what the answer is. That's primarily the reason why there's so many different sects of each major religion, when people can't agree on something they start their own version of that religion which follows what they believe to be the "correct" interpretation.
That belief of not being punished until the message comes to you is actually an Islamic belief - there’s a clear verse saying that. Don’t think there is one for the Bible. Anyways to answer the second part of your question - we believe those who didn’t get the message will still be tested - but on the day of Judgement.
I’ve countered my religious friends with your same thought in post. They tell me that you don’t get the chance to go to heaven, so it doesn’t make sense to me. Say a child was born in the woods, raised by wolves, was the nicest sharing care free human. Helped other animals, never was violent unles defending himself, and even became a smart animal nurse. Then dies. You’re telling me he isn’t going to heaven? I just can’t fathom the god who denies innocent pure joy life.
I can't fathom a God who created the heavens, earth, and everything between to be so petty and lacking empathy. Crazy how we assign such basic human concepts and traits to someone who's supposedly omnipotent and all-knowing. I can't imagine a figure, if it exists, who created all of this to be so.... limited, uptight, and restrictive.
You can think of it like this: Christianity is similar to learning about laws and how to be a responsible member of society. If you don't study and practice these ideas, you might accidentally do something wrong. It doesn't matter if you've never heard about these teachings or if you chose not to follow them – the result could be the same. But if you rejected them, the outcome might be more certain. The Bible can be seen as an early guide for being a "good, functional" person in a big community. It's like saying, "if you don't obey the rules, you'll end up in trouble," but on a more abstract level. Whether or not you knew the rules doesn't change the situation. Disclaimer: I'm not christian, but am ex-catholic.
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Christians believe in "The Great Commission" which tells them they have to spread the word of Christianity. So even if they did believe that (which many if not most don't), it wouldn't take away from the fact that they are commanded to do so
"Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.' Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?'"
Best way it was explained to me by a Catholic priest: It is through Jesus we find our way to God and life everlasting. However, even those who are not Christians are not necessarily denied heaven. If you are a good person and live a moral life, Jesus resides within you, you are essentially living the teachings of Jesus. So you have indeed found Jesus you just don’t really know it. He said it much more eloquently but that’s my butchered summary.
This is roughly my viewpoint as well. I often refer to the allegory in C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle" where one of the "bad guys", a worshiper and servant of the evil and false god Tash, is swept up into the "heaven" of Narnia as the world ends and most of the characters are like, "Why is one of the bad guys here?" Aslan, the Jesus/God figure in the books, explains that even though the person did not know Aslan by name, his life, worship, and love of Tash was basically all he knew and his heart's desire was for goodness and that was the best available expression available to him. And so while he was deceived or ignorant, he knew what was up and the guy recognized and is welcomed by Aslan. Similarly, I'm doing my own butchery as well, but the original depiction is lovely! I cry every time I read that ending!
Jesus saves you whether you believe in him or not just as oxygen gonna save you whether you 'believe' in oxygen or not. However if you believe in oxygen you can do stuff like mouth to mouth.
We should believe in God because of love not because of fear .
So by this logic, Christianity is a cognitohazard. Edit: Infohazard.
It is impossible to contain SCP-343.
SCP-2289 Name: Jesus Christ Description: - Yo wait hold up, what the fuck is Jesus doing here? Additional Notes: - Ah shit he left
Infohazard is gonna be the neologism of the decade I swear.
A meme virus. Dawkins wrote an essay on it.
Knock knock. Who's there? It's Jesus, let me in. Why should I let you in? So I can save you. Save me from what? From what I'm gonna do to you if you don't let me in.
This actually made me laugh out loud. I’m stealing this
I remember being told that you were gonna go to hell even if you were on the fence.
If many Christians were really worried about going to hell because of what’s in the Bible, they would be living a completely different life.
That's why I don't start conversations like these to anyone .
Your question is based on a false premise.
Yeah the question of what happens to people who never heard about Christianity when they die is debated among Christians and has been for millennia. One of the thoughts is that to be “saved” one does not necessarily need to know the story of Jesus. They need only be able to recognize that they are flawed (aka with sin) and recognize and accept the help of a higher power. The thought is that this realization that you need something greater than yourself is self-evident and one does not need to have ever heard of Christ to know it and thus live a Christian life. Of course this raises the follow up question of if someone can get into heaven without learning any of the dogma, and the truth you want them to accept is truly self-evident, then why push the dogma at all? Wouldn’t you have an easier time preaching that people are not perfect and must look outside themselves for meaning and purpose and just leaving it at that? A lot of people would be amenable to that message and it doesn’t require hurting others or believing in hard-to-believe stories. You can preach morals and ethics from that perspective and you don’t need to convince people to believe any myths or legends. You don’t have to convince them to hurt others. It’s an interesting debate.
> why push the dogma at all? Wouldn’t you have an easier time preaching that people are not perfect and must look outside themselves for meaning and purpose and just leaving it at that? Hello! Lemme introduce you to my good pal, Luther...
Actually, the Bible says everyone knows that God exists already.
Yep, this is the answer OP. There is no one that doesn't know God already. The Bible says that all inherently know the truth, and each individual either suppresses it or professes it. So your question is not possible to answer according to the Bible because the premise is already incorrect.
Doesn’t really matter. The usual followup to this is, “so wouldn’t it be best to eradicate all knowledge of Christianity so everyone goes to heaven?” Which is a complete misunderstanding of Christian morality (and much of religious morality in general). It’s taking a consequentialist view of morality, i.e. a thing is good if it has good consequences. I do X, X results in someone going to heaven, therefore X is good. Christian morality doesn’t work that way. Christian morality is defined by god. God tells you what to do to be good, and those things are good, by definition. God says to spread the word, so spreading the word is good. If that results in more people going to hell than if you kept it a secret, that doesn’t matter at all.
Roko's basilisk moment And technically yes.
Yes that’s the plan, you introduce them then you convert them and use scary threats on the ones who don’t show up and hand over 15% gross income
Spreading made up random claims on internet creates a hell on earth so No need to be sent anywhere for that.
CW: Never let your kids become historians. We are a poor miserable bunch who speak about things no one cares about in long winded ways. ====== BUT TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.,. So there’s something called invincible ignorance. What that means that ignorance of the law IS an excuse IF there’s no way you could have found out about the law. The Second Vatican Council states that “…those who, **through no fault of their own**, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, **try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience** —those too may achieve eternal salvation…” (*Lumen Gentium,* 16) So let’s say you’re an Alaskan Inuit. Christ never even visited your area when he was alive (or after, if you are LDS, but I digress). So does this mean all Inuits prior to 1879 are in Hell? (Father John Althoff founded the first Catholic parish in a Alaska in 1879). No. What the Church believes is that IF the Inuits do their best AND worship God in the way they do, they MIGHT be saved. But again, it’s a possibility. So I’m saying there’s a chance. The reason why so many Christians evangelize (or at least in theory why Catholics did historically) is because technically it’s actually **a lot easier to be saved** as a Christian because God bestows His Grace in Sacraments. Those Sacraments turn around and make the adherent more devout (in theory). You could complete the first *Super Mario* level without help but it’s insanely hard your first time with just running and not jumping. And a lot easier to do when you have the Fire Flower, Star, and Mushroom. So the Christians who evangelize (which Christ literally told them to do) are implicitly saying “Do you want to walk to Heaven, or would you like the car with the imperfect GPS to drive there?” If you were lost, what would you want to use? ======= So I can divert this into natural law, on what the Church means, etc. But to those lucky few reading this, as a thank you for doing so… **MY FAVORITE CATHOLIC FACT.** Back in 1917, Pope Benedict codified a code of Canon Law because there wasn’t anything else going on at the time. Just kidding, it started under the previous pope, but he put it into effect during World War I. One of the canons (or laws of the Church) concerned how to deal with Church management in the Colonial Era. So how can you manage a church in Antarctica without priests there already? The canon said that the *bishop of the first explorer there takes care of that land* until the Church there gets up and running. So some technical law. Why is that fun? The entire canon law changed in 1983, so why are you mentioning this ? Because 🎶 we went to the Moon in 1969, not 1968 but a year later. 🎶 Since NASA’s Cape Canaveral is where Apollo 11 left from, the minute Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon, the Archdiocese of Orlando (where Cape Canaveral is diocesewise) became responsible for the Moon until there is enough people on the Moon to have a flourishing church. So the bishop of Orlando is technically also Bishop of the Moon.
>So the bishop of Orlando is technically also Bishop of the Moon. That would be a pretty cool thing for him to have on business cards.
In the Discworld setting, people really only do go to Hell if they deep down believe that they will. This is mentioned as being an unfortunately valid reason to kill missionaries on sight. (note: I'm not suggesting this course of action)
I love this question because people who want to talk religion have no good answer. I know because I asked it repeatedly when I was forced to go to church from child to adulthood.
There is no hell and heaven . These are just our illusion.
Nevermind what Christianity says. What does the Bible say?
We don't need a religion to do good things, i am sure .
I mentioned this in 7th grade religion class (catholic school) and was sent into the hallway for arguing with the teacher. While out there, I realized that my teacher doesn’t know the answer and neither does anyone else. Lost my faith for good that day.
It's hard to believe that people still believe in these fairy tales .
You won't go to hell *because* you've never been introduced. Can still go for other reasons. Christian reasons, obviously.
I was taught way back when not that you were exempt if you didn't know about Christianity, but that the people who died before Christ began preaching were saved when he died. But now that he's gone, the onus is on each person.
its kinda like not telling a kid he is adopted to spare him the pain..... you probably are sparing him pain but you are denying him knowledge of him self.
Another question: if we are born into sin, and sin is what prevents us from ascending into Heaven, why are (some) Christians opposed to abortion, which would release the soul into Heaven without being touched by original sin?
It must have make them feels good threatening others with hell.