Religion has actually convinced people that there?s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ?til the end of time. But He loves you.? ? George Carlin
And that, in a nutshell, is the paradox of Hellbound?, a documentary investigation of the idea of eternal damnation ? metaphor or actual place of brimstone? ? in modern Christian thought.
Actually, ?thought? is a pretty big word for some of those included in Kevin Miller?s wide-ranging exegesis. For instance, the movie is bookended by a group of people gathered outside a 9/11 memorial who carry signs reading ?God?s Wrath? or ?Soldiers Die, God Laughs.? Miller talks to them at length, and what we get are some aggressive and angry assurances that amount to the fact that everyone but them will burn forever.
Others take a more measured approach to what we can learn from the Bible, or from earlier religious ideas. There seems to be scriptural evidence to support many points of view: the idea that some will be damned to suffer eternal conscious torment; that those who are not saved will instead be annihilated; or the tenets of ?universalism? that proclaim that even those who go to hell retain some chance of salvation.
That?s the view of Rob Bell, whose book Love Wins caused an uproar in the Christian community ? Bell was labelled a heretic for even raising the question ? and provides a kind of subtext for Hellbound? The concept of hell is central to religion: Trying to eliminate it, in the words of screenwriter Robert McKee (an atheist, but an expert in the idea of ?narrative?), is ?a wussy effort by some people to make God a nice guy.?
Miller talks to a dizzying array of experts ? as well as some heavy-metal musicians who sport Satanic artifacts and one of whom says ?All the fun stuff is in hell? ? and uncovers some convincing historical evidence that ?hell? is a relatively recent construct that perhaps owes some of its lore to the valley of Gehenna, near Jerusalem, where the bodies of children were burned. One theologian points out that ?hell? is not mentioned at all in the Old Testament.
Lazar Puhalo, a hierarch in the Orthodox Church in Canada, postulates that hell is the fire of malice that we feel here on Earth, and that we are at our most human when we respond to the suffering of others. A Catholic theorist, Peter Keeft, says ?there?s a surprising amount of wiggle room? for the damned who want a second chance.
A U.S. pastor named Chad Hurtz, who was fired from his post for questioning hell, rejects the idea that a loving God does not condemn people to hell but rather than they choose it themselves. He calls it ?the C.S. Lewis move,? referring to the author and Christian apologist who said that if there is a hell, the lock is on the inside.
It?s a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate that nonetheless seems to be taking part in a closed circle of believers, some compassionate and some vengeful. Like most things in religion, those who are surest of God?s word seem to be those who are the most frightening and the least in touch with the putative principles of their beliefs. You may not get the answer to the existence of hell, but you?ll learn to beware of those who start sentences with, ?The Bible is very clear ??
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/10/12/eds-embargo-no-webtvprint-until-1800-et-on-thursday-oct-11-5/
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