Where Does Hell Come From?

Growing up Christian, I was always taught that Hell was real and was meant for bad people. Then, later, I learned that it wasn’t just for bad people; it was also for good people who didn’t believe in the “right” way. That started me on the journey to find out what was up. After years of study and insight, I gave up my belief in a literal hell. Here’s just one reason:

Jesus was a Jew. He spoke as a Jew, not a Christian. Jews do not believe in a literal hell. Jesus, being Jewish, did not believe in a literal hell. His followers, also Jewish, believed he was the Messiah of the Hebrew Bible, not a Christian founder. That was Paul, some 20-40 years later, who, by the way, was also Jewish. In fact, he had persecuted the early Christians.

Point? None of the followers of Jesus or the founders of Christianity believed in a literal hell. It probably never even occurred to them to throw that into their spiritual mix. That was a concept introduced into the new religion a few centuries later by a church hierarchy that wanted to control the faithful. It worked. Here we are, 1800 years later, still arguing about a myth called hell.

And this, my readers, is only one of the many good reasons not to believe in a literal hell.

Give it up, people. Hell is a myth and those who teach its reality are mythologists, not truth bearers.

So, is there any eternal punishment? No. The only real power is Love. When we accept that, we step out of the need to see “non-believers” punished, not for being nasty people, but simply for not believing the way we do.

Such arrogance, the hell believers!