Hey, wait a minute! No place called Hell??

(Part 2 of a 5-part series)

Conversations with God famously said that there is no such place as Hell. Could such a thing be true? According to the late Pope John Paul II, it is. His Holiness John Paul II told a papal audience on July 28, 1999 that there is no such place as Hell.

The pope said people must be very careful in interpreting the biblical descriptions of hell, which he said are symbolic and metaphorical. The “inextinguishable fire” and “the burning oven” which the Bible speaks of “indicate the complete frustration and vacuity of a life without God,” he said. In other words, Hell is a state of mind, or a state of being, not a physical or even metaphysical “place” to which people who are “bad” are sent by God.

And when this state of being is not something to which God sends souls, the Pope declared. Such a state is “self imposed,” the pontiff said. Surprising a worldwide audience, he announced that “Damnation cannot be attributed to an initiative of God, because in his merciful love he cannot want anything but the salvation of the beings he created.”

Eternal damnation “is not a punishment inflicted by God from outside,” the pope went on. “But man, called to respond freely to God, unfortunately can choose to refuse his love and pardon definitively, removing himself forever from joyful communion with God,” the pope said.

Then what is this doctrine of Hell, or Hades, or Damnation that so many religions on earth speak of? Is it real?  To what does it refer? For it is not only Roman Catholics who speak of eternal damnation. This teaching, I want to repeat, is meant to “indicate the complete frustration and vacuity of a life without God,”John Paul declared. I agree with the holy man’s assessment that a life without God can sure seem like hell.

“More than a place, hell is the situation in which one finds himself after freely and definitively withdrawing from God, the source of life and joy,” the pope said.

Interestingly, in none of his remarks did this pontiff assert that any person who did not accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior would be seen by our Deity as “freely and definitively withdrawing from God.” This seemed to leave open the question of whether Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or members of any other religion or belief system can “get into Heaven.” The Pope also said nothing about a person’s behavior while on earth as prohibiting that person from not refusing God’s “love and pardon definitively,” and therefore not “removing himself forever from joyful communion with God.”

In other words, presumably a person could be “bad” while here on Earth and still “get into Heaven” by simply accepting “God’s love and pardon.”

The Pope also strayed from standard Christian theology (and several other major theologies as well) in another shocking way. If you ask any minister, any ulama, any priest whether there is any question that horribly bad people who are not contrite, never ask forgiveness, and remain ugly and cruel to the end, go to hell, they would say, “Well, of course they do! What do you think we’ve been trying to tell you???” But the Pope had a remarkably different response. Said he: Whether or not any human beings are in hell “remains a real possibility, but is not something we can know.”

Not something we can know??? Wow, what a major concession from the spiritual leader of a worldwide church with billions of members that has been teaching just the opposite–that we can be sure of this–for centuries.

In sharing his thoughts about all this in July, 1999, Pope John Paul II—then in failing health—seemed to be having final reflections on the matter of hell and damnation in the final months before his death. In those remarks to a weekly papal audience, his comments came remarkably close to mirroring some of the messages in Conversations with God, which also teaches that there is no such place as hell…and that deep unhappiness can result from a life (on Earth or in the hereafter) without God, but that a life lived within the embrace of God and inside the acceptance of God as a real and authentic Presence in the Universe and in one’s own experience can never produce unhappiness—no matter what such a life holds.

Yet there is one message from Conversations with God that the Pope did not mirror. The Pope did not say what CWG says unequivocally: God will never forgive anyone for anything.

And we will discuss that teaching in our next entry here.

(Neale Donald Walsch is the publisher of The Global Conversation internet newspaper and the author of the Conversations with God series of books. His latest book, The Only Thing That Matters, releases this week from Hay House and is now available in print or audio form from Amazon.com at this link:

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwnealedonal-20)

 

Comments

9 responses to “Hey, wait a minute! No place called Hell??”

  1. mewabe Avatar
    mewabe

    “…and that deep unhappiness can result from a life (on Earth or in the hereafter) without God…”

    Could I offer the suggestion that even in the absence of the definition or conscious knowledge of God, people can still find happiness or “heaven”, here and in the hereafter, because no one can actually be without God, as everyone and everything possesses a divine essence and rests in the divine, whether conscious of it or not?

    Would a severely mentally handicapped person be unable to find happiness or heaven because of an inability to even understand the God concept?

    Would a person who is true to his or her deepest inner self (his or her authentic loving self) but who is not concerned with spirituality or God in any way be unhappy?

    Is the idea of “God” this important? Others may simply call and experience it as life, or truth, love, knowledge…the universe. They may say that they are non believers, and yet display the greatest spiritual qualities without even trying, and without ever showing any interest in spirituality.

    Would they be unhappy, never to find heaven unless they embrace the idea of God? I personally do not think so. People may be too concerned with thoughts and words, with mental definitions…it is what we feel that in the end may be more important.

    An atheist scientist who feels profound awe while contemplating the endless beauty, complexity and interconnectedness of life may be closer to God, without acknowledging it (but does it matter?) than the spiritual seeker who has no love for physical life (as do those who follow a path of renunciation, of punishing the body, etc, as in some eastern religions or spiritual practices).

    It is really nice that the head of the Catholic Church finally caught up with reality…good for him for doing some damage control…better late than never…but who really needs the Pope to state the obvious (or to state anything at all)? Why do people listen to such obsolete individuals in the first place, instead of listening to their own hearts and souls?

  2. Buzz Avatar
    Buzz

    Hell is a state of mind. It is a perceived experience.
    God chose to individuate Godself so that God could experience the many parts of God interacting with each other in the physical diversity of forms. If God could have such experiences without physical form, the physical universe wouldn’t be necessary or relevant. Only in physicality is experience possible. Therefore an experience of hell after death is impossible.
    Concepts like good and evil are judgements we place on events and personalities based on individual perceived understandings of cause and effect. What one person chooses to judge as desirable another can judge as undesirable. God does not judge us, here in life or after we pass on. Concepts like heaven and hell are based on human justice expectations of reward and punishment. Neither exist on the other side. Our entire repertoire of human emotions, including fear , love, pain, peace, freedom, incarceration, friends, enemies, appreciation, solitude and companionship are all impossible on the other side. There is only one thing: the energy of God, accepting you home.

  3. Tom Schoenhofer Avatar
    Tom Schoenhofer

    It only makes sense that there could NOT be a hell. If God is One within Himself, and He is, and we are an extension of God, which we are, and therefore a part of God within the Oneness, we are actually God. The only difference at all is that He created us; we did not, and cannot, create God. He is the Cause, we are the effect. Creation only flows in one direction and cannot be reversed. Therefore our will and God’s will are exactly the same. The thoughts we think, we think with the mind of God, and it is impossible for two minds having the exact same will to be in opposition to each other.

    Also, what god would ever create a world in there was opposition to itself? And how could one even begin to believe that a God of Love with Whom all His creations are One with Him, would , or even could, ever put one of His creations in a state of eternal torture. That is just absurd thinking. It would better to just be destroyed than to be in a state of eternal torture. But this they call hell, and this they call God’s Love. How ludicrous!

    That being said, if there is no difference in our will and God’s will and thus no opposition of any kind, then it logically follows, even to our thinking minds, that there is no such thing as sin. The worst, THE WORST, that we could possibly be, while in the illusory bodies, is to be in ERROR. And that error is simply that we are NOT AWARE of Who and What we are – The Christ – The Son of God. Would God ever punish us just for making an error? I think not.

    And if we are merely unaware of our true nature, that does not diminish or change that nature by any means. For what God creates, He creates as perfect, unchangeable and eternal and as an extension of himself, part of the complete Oneness He is within Himself.

    It then should go without saying that, with no opposition to God of any kind, nor sin, nor a hell, then there is no such thing as the devil. It simply cannot be.

  4. mewabe Avatar
    mewabe

    Perfectly said Tom…

    The original meaning of the word sin was “missing the mark”, in other words making a mistake.

    Religions conceptually removed the divine from the creation and positioned a God/Father/King/Judge somewhere above us in the clouds on a throne, as a separate being.

    By doing this, they left the natural creation in a spiritual void, they literally desecrated it (carving the path for industry and science to later desecrate it further), and filled this void with the opposite idea of a devil, mentally creating this polarity.

    In the 19th century, religious authorities said that the wilderness was “the abode of the devil”. This was a long held belief and one that drove civilization to conquer a wild nature “infested with ugly beasts and devil worshiping savages”.

    Look how many natural places in America are called “devil’s Gulch”, “devil’s tower”, “devil’s canyon”, devil’s this or that….the concept of the devil was and still is an obsession with many of the religious.

    As you point out, when we understand the real meaning and ramifications of oneness, all these primitive myths evaporate, as well as associated fears.

  5. Buzz Avatar
    Buzz

    Thank you Tom and Mewabe. Hopefully mass dissemination of this information will change everything, again.

  6. Vickie Pruitt Avatar
    Vickie Pruitt

    Only because that is what You want to do, You cant live off 1 billion dollars, you cant pay your upper management less than 5 million dollars and you cant get rid of 20,000 dollar dinners, and 1 million dollar trip, sooooooo you have to lay off workers. YOU SIR ARE PROOF THE TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS DO NOT WORK. AND YOUR THE REASON WHY

  7. Denise Avatar
    Denise

    Wow…. never thought I’d hear it from the Pope. Things are changing.

  8. Kyle Avatar
    Kyle

    Dear Neale,

    Firstly I want to say thank you for bringing that message forth in the first 3 books you wrote. I enjoyed them immensely and found myself agreeing with nearly everything in the book, but one thing stood out for me:

    It sounds as if God decided to get to know Himself (which I use loosely), and thus we were all created as a way for Him to come to know Himself as God. Now assuming I have that correct…the easy out here is to say we chose to be here in this life that we chose for ourselves before we were born…but what if we don’t like our life? And are ready to return “home”?

    as I think about it, I know possible answers might be: then change your life to what you wish it to be (since we have the power to do so) OR, you chose this life because you felt it offered you something, that’s why you chose it. But the single problem I have with all three of your initial works is that its easy to say I chose it, but there is nothing there to really back that up…not even in a common sense way. Why would I choose to live a life I am not enjoying or growing from?

    More importantly, if I feel I am done with this life and wish to return “home” how do I do so without taking my own life? I (which I use generally as if I am any human asking the question) still have full respect and for the sanctity of life, so I wish not to take my life, but what do I do when I am done with and wish to return home?

    Thank you in advance,

    Kyle

  9. André Quaas, Germany Avatar
    André Quaas, Germany

    Someone asked me, if I don’t be afraid of hell. I told him, there are no places “heaven” and “hell”. These are emotional experiences and I gived him an simple example:
    If I would go with my mother into an german folklike music-show, she would feel like heaven, but I would not agree.
    The opposite experience would be, if my mother have to go with me to AC-DC 😉

    Thank’s for the CwG!

    Keep rockin’!

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