I always felt it would be intellectually dishonest of me to stop believing in hell if I believed in heaven. I accused myself (and others) of choosing the passages I liked and leaving out the ones I didn't. I would be guilty of highlighter Christianity. 

Then, over time and study, I discovered that the traditional notion of heaven is not the hope of the Church. I stopped believing in my childhood heaven.  Which then revealed the faults in my childhood hell, and the ultimate freedom to walk. through. that. door. 

..and let it go. 

Not because I wanted to mind you...there is a great amount of fear and uncertainty surrendering this idea, even when all the arrows point in that direction. 

What if the scholarship is wrong?  

Also, it's just too damn good to be true. Could it really be? 

But I am going here because that's where studying Jesus and the character of Yahweh takes me. Takes any who dares to walk along softly trodden paths.  I don't go willingly. I take one step in Their direction, and then look back at the safety of tradition... and then look back at Them again "really, is this safe? Are you safe?" Like a baby taking their first steps not quite sure if their parents will catch them. 

And here I am. No longer anxious if I am wrong because of my newfound depth of intimacy with Them. Their kindness, their unconditional love, not just for me and those I love and struggle to love, but also Their unconditional love for this world. The one they stamped good.  It is this that forces my arms unconsciously upwards while I sing, yes. You. 

Parenting experts refer to this as secure attachment. It's an intimacy that has allowed me to be ok with being wrong. To be ok with mystery. 

The opposite of faith, Richard Rohr reminds us, is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. 

So, it's a combination of my current study, as well as my lived experience with the Holy Three that nudges me, indeed inspires me, to announce in faith that Israel's God; Abba Yahweh Father, Mother Spirit Wisdom, and our Human, Risen, Brother Jesus, are not punisher's of perpetual torment to those who don't get the mystery right.  

We do a very good job of creating our own hell, here on earth, by our own choices and actions. War, climate degradation, disease... it's all on us, and on our ancestors and, also, on those few who choose destruction on a scale so evil, generations suffer and carry the trauma to their children's children. 

To those my own ego and inner violence would wish a special place in the inferno, I explicitly trust the judgment of the Holy Three: Alexander the Great, Caesar (s), Hitler, Putin, Stalin, Mao, Rupert Murdoch, ISIS, the Boko Haram or Shell and ExxonMobil... all those who produce hell and destruction here on earth for others and for their own selfish gain, ought to be punished, say I, I who am not Yahweh, and thank God I am not. Grace, even for them? I don't know...I don't pretend to understand the retributive justice of the Holy Three.

I do know that it will be right. Just right. 

I know that a central part of Jesus' mission was to teach us how to be human. Being human involves choosing to search for and reveal the humanity in everyone, even in the list above. Yes, even in them. When this is done by a gathered people, creatively and non-violently, it often works. 

I know from experience that relationships with the Holy Three that are established and built on fear; are the main producers of toxic religion. 

I know that in releasing hell, I have begun to experience Wisdom's fruit. The most noticeable changes: 

Judgment of others

Superiority

Self-righteousness

The need to be right 

Striving

Fear-based control 

Fear in general

...each in its time becoming the slow shedding of dead religion. Like serpents who slither out of their skin when it's time to grow. 

The religious trauma of fear begins to heal and for the first time, I begin to feel truly born again. 

Happy Easter everyone. 

Hell was in turmoil having been eclipsed.

Hell was in turmoil having been mocked.

Hell was in turmoil having been destroyed.

Hell was in turmoil having been abolished.

Hell was in turmoil having been made captive.

Hell grasped a corpse, and met God.

Hell seized earth, and encountered heaven.

Hell took what it saw, and was overcome by what it could not see.

O death, where is your sting?

O hell, where is your victory?

-John Chrystostom, An Easter Story

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