I have viewed the United States’ economic system with suspicion for quite some time now; but this has gotten worse recently. I was particularly struck by the corrupt nature of our economic system this last March, while watching a movie called The Big Short. This film documents the collapse of the housing market in 2008 […]

Read more "Mark of the Beast? Global Capitalism and Idolatry in the 21st Century"

Religion can be a funny thing. Indeed, the difference between different religions, or even different sects within the same religion, can be quite amusing if seen in the right way. With that in mind, I offer this list of religious light bulb jokes. Please don’t take offense if I seem to be mocking your faith; […]

Read more "Religious Light Bulbs"

If hell exists only in our minds (as I argued in the last post), then it would seem like it should be easy to get out of hell. All we have to do is think differently, and hell will simply vanish from our consciousness. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as that. Beliefs and concepts […]

Read more "Jesus and Hell, the Conclusion: Getting the Hell Out"

  So far I have argued that hell, while painful, is meant for our purification; and that it has a limit – that hell is not, in other words, eternal. To understand the limits of hell, we need to see it from God’s perspective. This raises an important theological question: Is God present in hell? […]

Read more "Jesus and Hell, Part Four: Where the Hell? (Gehenna’s “Place” in Eternity)"

In my last post, I showed how hell can be understood both as destruction and as a state of conscious suffering, but that its ultimate purpose is rehabilitation. I showed how the concept of everlasting conscious torment (ECT) is an aberration from what Jesus really taught, and how hell, while very real, is probably not […]

Read more "Jesus and Hell, Part Three: Why the Hell? (The Reasons for Jesus’ Warnings)"