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I do think religion was created for us to understand a higher being.
Considering how simple people were in the period of Jesus Christ.
How else can people in that time learn to accept what God and Jesus was. I think religion continues because what else would help humans feel a connection to this world and the afterlife. So many different religions but similar beliefs. How is this possible? Because they are all built off the same mold. Only that different cultures have changed the meanings.
from the clip…
“Religion is always in the control business.”
He certainly knows how to hit the nail on the head.
Moses discovered that if you can convince people that you are the sole oracle able to communicate with the Creator of the Universe, you can literally get away with murder. It was a control issue.
You kids get off my lawn!
Taxed Enough go clean up all that crap they left here in hell so we can get back to that eternity suffering and punishment you have earned
Hell is not mentioned in the Bible. Dante’s Inferno was written, and the churches thought it would help their bottom line.
Hence, Hell. Before Dante, there were other fictions floated, but it Hell really took shape in the Middle Ages, in Europe.
A first rate scare tactic to insure the solvency of the Catholic Church.
Satan? How could an “angel” go bad? That’s like saying a Twinkie would go stale.
“Hell is not mentioned in the Bible”
Really. I just Googled that question and many sites came up with lines from the a bible, or some version of a bible, that mention it.
Yeah, but were the lines from Bibles written BEFORE the Middle Ages, or after?
Yahweh/The Great Buffalo Spirit/Providence/Whatever-You-Call-“God” does not come down from above to ensure that Bibles are printed correctly. I posit that the Bible has long been a tool for the Power Elite to insert bits of their own agenda as it suits them.
God doesn’t need to “come down from above”. I realize it must be difficult to conceptualize what God is capable of, especially if you simply refuse to think about it deeply.
Thinking deeply is the tool of Satan! Listen to your pastor instead. If you find yourself drifting into deep thought or analysis, simply pray for deliverance and ask the elders of the church to pray with you.
He doesn’t come down from above, but he does ensure that the Bible is worded EXACTLY like he wants it, every time it’s copied/published?
Thinking deeply is what makes me laugh at the idea of following the legends started by people thousands of years ago. If we want to be a Christian Nation, I’m down with that as long as we have to follow ALL the Commandments, which would mean no more commerce on Sundays (Observe the Sabbath and Keep It Holy)… No more Sunday NFL games, since that means work, which is forbidden on the Sabbath.
When people of faith stop picking and choosing which book to follow (Old or New Testament) and display some consistency, i.e. You Shall Not Eat Scavengers Of The Deep, along with Man Shall Not Lie With Another Man As He Lies With A Woman, then I think I can get on-board.
Perhaps if there were a fiery hell for drug abusers and sex offenders, there’d be a lot less abusing and offending. But instead it’s just a legal issue. And maybe a little jail time, at worst. And these offenders never get the message that its time to “grow up” and stop doing that. If anything, they think that’s what being a grown up is all about. So whether Hell is an invention or not, isn’t really the point. It’s what is there to motivate humans to reform their lives, if some ultimate punishment isn’t in store for them? It’s more difficult to relay the positive benefit of “growing up”, over “doing whatever you want to”, to one’s mental health. Especially when there are those in the entertainment media that profit from promoting the latter behavior. Hollywood has spun its own version of an anti-Hell for the hedonists and amoralists. And it makes all the wife swapping and divorces go down easier with the general public. Not to mention a wacko cult or two, being more prominent in that town, that revels in trashing mainstream religions.
That this Tv interview chooses this season, along with the latest Ron Howard “Code” movie, to take Christianity down a notch. Doesn’t really surprise me. Tis the season for the bastardizers of what the season really stands for, to corrupt it for their own gain. The news and entertainment industry is ruled and influenced by some of the most amoral men on the planet. Naturally the idea of “hell” tends to get in their way. But they don’t shirk from exploiting it in fiction, when the promise of profits warrants it.
I’m disappointed.
I thought for sure the beltway crowd were all going.
I guess it is up to us to bring justice to them?
So is “Heaven” !!! It’s all MADE UP, from “In the Begininng … ” all the way to the end !!!
like Duh?
“Hell” was made up to fear people to behave, and “Heaven” was made up to encourage good behavior. but you’d think these religious leaders who apparently truly believe this would stop raping little boys.
The concept of hell and “the Devil” wasn’t created until after Christians were pilfering and forcing druids and wiccans to convert. By clamming these old earth religions were “satan worshipers.”
Uncle Davie Stalin is up to his campaign for the political clowns of the Globalist Bankers, leading us into the new Dard Ages with the glib piece of junk.
This is a fraud, he probably advertises himself as a Christian taking money from Christians when he’s just a Humanist in Sherpard clothing. You can read more about this “LIBERAL Demoncrat” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong.
It’s sad someone would try and mislead the flock, but then Jesus said they would wish they have a milstone around their and were cast into the sea than fasc the pusnishment he will receive. If you dont’ believe in Hell or a place where His Father, God the Father, has many rooms then you don’t accept the bible as the word of God. If you sit there and decide which parts of the Bible mean what it says and which parts are false then you make yourself God and are a humanist, just like the Communist/NAZIs and every other Totalitarian ruler to stride the earth.
Read the Bible, the inspired word of God, not of man.
Seek salvation throught my Lord Christ Jesus of the God the Father and the help of the Holy Spirit, don’t listen to someone that’s taken money from people under false pretenses his entire life and now seeks to make political point upon you soul and eternal life.
Whatever……………………………………………………………………………
Traaxx
Does anyone here actually read the Bible, or did anyone bother to check it out before posting all of this blather? Luke 16:19-39 clearly talks about a man in hell, tormented by flames, asking Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool his tongue.
Some argue that this is not a parable like the rest because in every other parable Jesus does not use names. He uses descriptions like ‘a farmer’ ‘a poor man’ ‘the manager’. Here in Luke Jesus uses a name….Lazarus. In verse 31 Jesus actually says, “They will no be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”. While some will argue that this Lazarus and the Lazarus raised from the dead are two different people, it’s still something to consider.
Even so, Jesus referenced “hell” and torment of the unbeliever. I can’t believe out of 75 posts no one even bothered to crack a Bible open.
Before you get too carried away with your direct quotations by Luke of Jesus’ own words, keep one thing in mind… Luke never even met Jesus. He was simply retelling stories that he had heard and read, with less fact-checking than Fox News. Luke’s stories were ultimately chosen by the Church council to be included in the compilation of writings you know as “The Holy Bible” to support their teachings.
Without Luke, how else would we have such a wonderful quotation of what the angels said to the shepherds who were in the fields near Bethlehem on the night that Jesus was born? Our Christmas carols might be considerably less colorful without the story of the angels, but quoting Luke is the equivalent of quoting unnamed sources, because that’s where he got his stories.
Before you get too carried away with your Red Herring, keep in mind the premise of Uncle Dave’s post. I understand that catching the church in a ‘gotcha moment’ makes a lot of people feel better about the decisions they’ve made. In this instance, the statement that the church invented hell as a control tactic is simply false. It’s like saying the church invented communion, or Paul the apostle.
Your premise that the authorship of the Bible is questionable would make for a good debate, but it’s not relevant here.
I disagree concerning the relevance. You suggested we crack the Bible to see what Luke quoted Jesus as saying, and my reply was that Luke never even met Jesus (writing his gospel well after Jesus died) so the quotation in the book of Luke about Lazarus and Hell is meaningless for your purpose of establishing what Jesus really said.
You seem to separate the Church from the authorship of the Bible, specifically the New Testament, in making the point that references to Hell in the Bible prove that the Church didn’t invent it. However, the authors of those scriptures, including Luke and Paul, were a part of the early Christian community and Church, and just because it had less organization then than it has now doesn’t mean it wasn’t still the Church.
Your argument only holds up among believers that the Bible is divinely inspired throughout, not instead written by members of the Church community and compiled in a process that was at times contentious. For many of the rest of us, the only issue up for debate isn’t whether, but WHY they included this notion of a place called “Hell.” The priest in the video posits that it was a deterent to assert greater control, which seems plausible for an organization that seems to crave control.
Hell seems to me to be a sort of middle ground — worse than the lump of coal from Santa, but not nearly as horrific as the agony of being stoned to death by the early Jews.
This wasn’t a red herring. If you’ve quoted the Bible as evidence, authorship is not at all irrelevant.
Jack: I haven’t seen the cat all day!
Jill: It’s in the box over there.
Jack: Well I think Schrodinger would have a few thoughts on that….
Dude, we’re not trying to split the atom here. Sometimes it’s just a cat in a box. If you want to go down the rabbit hole…..what “church” is Spong referring to? Is it the early church or the church from the 5th to the 16th century? Maybe it’s the Protestant church (which he is a part of), or maybe it’s the post reformation Catholic church; you don’t know and neither do I. The argument that ‘the church’ is the early chuch simply because you want it to be does not work. If we are speaking Gary language then ‘The Church’ invented Jesus, miracles, and the antichrist; the revelation that hell was invented by the church wouldn’t be that big of a deal, would it?
Instead we have a Bishop speaking bishop language. Using the term ‘invented’ to implying ‘of whole cloth’, ‘not Biblical’, ‘made up’. Inventions of the church fall under indulgences, the deity of Mary, stuff like that. In reality there are tons of Biblical references to hell, and just because they don’t quote Dante verbatim does not mean they aren’t there.
Let’s tackle the control tactic thing. The early church (30-100AD) was trying to get a foot hold, not control. Ask any dictator or authoritarian how it works; you are sugar and spice and everything nice until you have majority, THEN you assert control.
Or I could just remind readers that everything Spong had to say was not just ambiguous, but in direct contradiction to literal passages from the Bible…..the guy has created his own theology and simply borrowed some buzz words from the Bible. The only reason this video made the rounds (2 years ago!) was because atheists get all excited when a guy with a white collar starts speaking their language.
So Gary, back to rabbit holes. If you don’t like Luke then let’s go with Matthew, or Mark, or Thessalonians, or, or, or….. I didn’t list every Biblical reference because I didn’t want to Bible thump the audience; I figured the closest thing to a Hollywood hell-scape would suffice.
Do you see what happens when you stray from the premise? We now have about 30 different holes we could go down.
I apologize for alleging that the Bible is a product of the church.