Why Are We Afraid?

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BetteTheRed

Resident Heretic
Pronouns
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Don't entirely get this.

If we are a conventional Christian, death holds no fear. We will be in a better place, etc.

If not, then presumably, we believe in being reabsorbed into the great Nothingness, a drop of water into the eternal Sea.

Either way, don't be afraid. Love is stronger than fear?
 
People are probably most afraid of the process of dying . . . the possibility of experiencing pain and losing their dignity. As you say, there is nothing to fear about either an afterlife or nothingness. Although I guess if you are inclined to believe in Hell as a physical reality, this could change things quite a bit.
 
I am currently kind of waffling between two Hellenistic philosophies, Epicureanism and Stoicism.

The Epicureans teach that death is the final release, that we can suffer no more (because we feel no more), so why fear it? We should welcome it.

The Stoics teach that we cannot prevent our Death, it is the inevitable and natural end of life. We should accept that and get on with living our life the best we can. Fearing death, trying to stave it off, won't stop it in the end. Sure, we should do what is right in a situation like this and not be foolish. There is no use dying before we need to. But we can't control life 100% and no matter how hard we try, we might still get covid or cancer or get hit by a car or whatever. Control what we can but accept the limits on our power to control our "Fate".
 
I am currently kind of waffling between two Hellenistic philosophies, Epicureanism and Stoicism.

The Epicureans teach that death is the final release, that we can suffer no more (because we feel no more), so why fear it? We should welcome it.

The Stoics teach that we cannot prevent our Death, it is the inevitable and natural end of life. We should accept that and get on with living our life the best we can. Fearing death, trying to stave it off, won't stop it in the end. Sure, we should do what is right in a situation like this and not be foolish. There is no use dying before we need to. But we can't control life 100% and no matter how hard we try, we might still get covid or cancer or get hit by a car or whatever. Control what we can but accept the limits on our power to control our "Fate".

Yet, fear and anger are great tools used by the powerful to drive the proletariat to work endlessly for tyrannical desires for more and more, etc. ad infinitum! Balanced indoctrination (endocrine oester) may assist passing through this driven hell by those that insist in their personal righteousness is unchangeable. The sublime alternately learns about such god syndromes ... when the essence of god is beyond either side!

Scales of balance? What an odd thought to those driven to be winners over the entire thing ... allowing us nothing in the end. Some say the soul/mind/psyche complex is nothing ... others disclaim emotions as nothing ... inclusive to my resident grandfather. I tend towards means and mediums ... hated by both extremes ... and thus the battleground earth. We are the enemy of every last piece of creation ... as we'd blow the wholly thing to achieve personal ends ... that's avarice and control theory (about something we haven't a clue about, especially confining and wasting our emotional baggage adequately). Go waste your energy deconstructing a dead tree ... nature does this with bacterial and fungal aids ... producing some interesting psychotic and antipsychotic pharmaceuticals ... that drug companies abuse ...

That's my biggest gripe being the receiver of some of these excesses ... moderation have been my observations of the value of allotropic and homeopathic medicine! They are complementary ... and yet parties fight over who should have control of input-output of such intangibles!

Laws of mortal nature demand that this stuff remain ineffable so as to control knowledge ... until gathered in the beyond! Imagine the shocking choque hitting the unprepared ... such is the mire in another realm of conception ... MIR in still another for those that enjoy polytechnical intelligence with care (wee emotions). Multi*etudes?
 
Fear comes from knowing that what lies we choose to tell ourselves to comfort ourselves about what lies beyond death are going to mean nothing when they slam into reality.

 
Hell; normal lives of militant industrialism to roll the alternate under foot ...

Books and tomes are sometimes found in the digging and spading ... those believing in surety can't grasp the extent of what is unknown! Positive vs the alternate ... so as to ensure you don't face the great unknown? Blind Eire Sae!
 
Apparently I am a solid Stoic. I have been aware that death was coming to everyone since I was tiny. Christian teaching about Heaven and Hell bothered me until I was a teen. The people I know who are most terrified of illness and death are 'Bible Thumping Christians'
I do what I can to share loving kindness (fail a lot), avoid foolish accidents and unnecessary exposure to disease. I am still alive. I trust I will remain alive until I die!
 
Fear comes from knowing that what lies we choose to tell ourselves to comfort ourselves about what lies beyond death are going to mean nothing when they slam into reality.


Hell is never mentioned in the Bible, no, not even once. What is mentioned are terms like Sheol, Hades, Ghenna, Tartarus, Abaddon and Lake of Fire. None of these terms fits the modern Christian understanding of Hell. Hell is actually derived from the Anglo-Saxon (Old German) and is a conflation of the various meanings of the words mentioned above plus a boatload of lurid medieval fiction particularly Dante's "Inferno".
 
I am not afraid of dying. Or dying before my time. It I am afraid of unknowingly spreading a deadly disease

cautious? Maybe instead of afraid
 
Hell is never mentioned in the Bible, no, not even once. What is mentioned are terms like Sheol, Hades, Ghenna, Tartarus, Abaddon and Lake of Fire. None of these terms fits the modern Christian understanding of Hell. Hell is actually derived from the Anglo-Saxon (Old German) and is a conflation of the various meanings of the words mentioned above plus a boatload of lurid medieval fiction particularly Dante's "Inferno".
Well it might be mentioned in the KJV Bible and less in other translations......but I think that is slowly changing as it becomes recognized that using the word "hell" was actually a mistranslation for the words you mentioned above. I think 40 translations have discontinued using the word hell at all, but eventually we will see all translations will also not include it.
 
JRT ----your statement ------Hell is never mentioned in the Bible, no, not even once

I SAY ----Oh Yes it is -----I totally and completely disagree with your statement here -----and it says it is a real place and tells us where it is located is described in detail if you really read the scriptures ---

I say ----- you may not believe that these words are used to refer to hell --and you may not believe there is such a place but that does not mean that this Place does not exist or that these words don't refer to this place -----

I say ----So Lets look at Psalms 89:48

Berean Study Bible
What man can live and never see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah

I say -----you see the word soul here --our soul lives -----the body is in the ground and remains there to go back to dust but the soul leaves the body and goes where ?----

What you believe is how your perceive yourself ----if you believe you are just a bunch of particles that created you then Sheol would be the ground you go in ---If you believe your a tri -part being -which the Bibles says we are made in God's image ---then you believe that you are First --a Spirit being ---you possess a soul and your spirit and soul reside in a physical body -----so when you die your spirit and soul leave the body and go somewhere ------

I say -----Lets have a look at what Strong's Concordance says about Sheol and Tartaros

Strong's Concordance
sheol: underworld (place to which people descend at death)
, Psalm 89:49;-the underworld---- whither men descend at death,


I say -----Lets look at---2Peter 2:4

New International Version
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;

I say -----So what is the word here for Hell in this scripture -----

Strong's Concordance
tartaroó: to cast into hell
I thrust down to Tartarus or Gehenna.

HELPS Word-studies
5020 tartaróō – properly, send to Tartarus ("Tartaros"). The NT uses 5020 (tartaróō) for the netherworld the place of punishment fit only for demons. Later, Tartaros came to represent eternal punishment for wicked people.

the name of a subterranean region, doleful and dark, regarded by the ancient Greeks as the abode of the wicked dead, where they suffer punishment for their evil deeds; it answers to the Gehenna of the Jews, see γηννα); to thrust down to Tartarus (sometimes in the Scholiasts) (cf. Winers Grammar, 25 (24) n.); to hold captive in Tartarus: τινα σειραῖς (which see) σοφοῦ, 2 Peter 2:4 (A. V. cast down to hell (making the dative depend on παρέδωκεν)).
 
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Ah, yes. Pots of food around and people have only spoons longer than their arms to use. In Hell, they bitch and moan and starve. In Heaven, they feed each other.
 
My view on----- why we are afraid

We are afraid of the unknown -----that is true of death ---disease and illness that come upon us that there is not much known about it -----you have no control over what happens or what takes place --so feelings of helplessness and anxiety and fear creep in ---

This Virus is a perfect example -----Many People everywhere are in Fear right now ------this virus kills --it has taken away peoples jobs which takes away their pay which causes big fear of not enough --losing everything ----- etc ---even the most highest educated science people and health people are in fear of the unknown of this virus ---scrambling to fight the unknown in any way they can ----
 
JRT ----your statement ------Hell is never mentioned in the Bible, no, not even once

I SAY ----Oh Yes it is -----I totally and completely disagree with your statement here -----and it says it is a real place and tells us where it is located is described in detail if you really read the scriptures ---

I say ----- you may not believe that these words are used to refer to hell --and you may not believe there is such a place but that does not mean that this Place does not exist or that these words don't refer to this place -----

I say ----So Lets look at Psalms 89:48

Berean Study Bible
What man can live and never see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah

I say -----you see the word soul here --our soul lives -----the body is in the ground and remains there to go back to dust but the soul leaves the body and goes where ?----

What you believe is how your perceive yourself ----if you believe you are just a bunch of particles that created you then Sheol would be the ground you go in ---If you believe your a tri -part being -which the Bibles says we are made in God's image ---then you believe that you are First --a Spirit being ---you possess a soul and your spirit and soul reside in a physical body -----so when you die your spirit and soul leave the body and go somewhere ------

I say -----Lets have a look at what Strong's Concordance says about Sheol and Tartaros

Strong's Concordance
sheol: underworld (place to which people descend at death)
, Psalm 89:49;-the underworld---- whither men descend at death,


I say -----Lets look at---2Peter 2:4

New International Version
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;

I say -----So what is the word here for Hell in this scripture -----

Strong's Concordance
tartaroó: to cast into hell
I thrust down to Tartarus or Gehenna.

HELPS Word-studies
5020 tartaróō – properly, send to Tartarus ("Tartaros"). The NT uses 5020 (tartaróō) for the netherworld the place of punishment fit only for demons. Later, Tartaros came to represent eternal punishment for wicked people.

the name of a subterranean region, doleful and dark, regarded by the ancient Greeks as the abode of the wicked dead, where they suffer punishment for their evil deeds; it answers to the Gehenna of the Jews, see γηννα); to thrust down to Tartarus (sometimes in the Scholiasts) (cf. Winers Grammar, 25 (24) n.); to hold captive in Tartarus: τινα σειραῖς (which see) σοφοῦ, 2 Peter 2:4 (A. V. cast down to hell (making the dative depend on παρέδωκεν)).

Here are a few questions about the common Orthodoxy of Eternal Damnation.

• If some people will end up in eternal torment, is God unable or unwilling to save them? Logically, it must be one or the other. No tricky appeal to free-will can alleviate the tension of the question.

• If we determine our destiny by our free will, then is not our will stronger than God’s will? How do we deal with passages as in Romans 9 that says we cannot resist His will?

• If some people will be tortured eternally, which is apparently the will of Satan, how is Satan a defeated foe? Doesn’t eternal torment make Satan a partial victor?

• How can there be “no more tears” if some people will be tormented forever?

• How can we say that “His mercy endures forever!” if His mercy for us, in the most practical and real terms, ends if we do not choose to follow Christ before we die?

• Given the Bible’s revealed standards of righteous and justice (which are clear and not mysterious at all), how is unending punishment just reward for temporary sin? Again, the Bible is clear on standards so saying “God’s ways are not our ways” or “It’s a mystery with God” is only an avoidance of a hard question. The question must be Biblically answered with justification from Scripture.

• If God “gives up” on those who do not choose Jesus before death, how does the parable of the 100 Sheep, with 99 found and the master leaving the 99 to find the one lost one, make any sense?

• Why does God give up on people after death?

• If eternal Hell is the price for disobeying God and living in Sin, why did God hide that from Adam and Eve and promise a different penalty? Why did God hide the most horrific fate possible, torture in Hell forever, from mankind for entire Old Testament period (probably 4,000 years)?

• How does the idea of Col 1:15-20 “restore All Things” make any sense if some things are permanently and irrevocably isolated from and unrestored to God forever?

• Why must an omnipotent, omniscient God, who describes Himself as “Love”, settle for not having everything that has ever been made love and worship Him? Why must He settle for a divided creation in which some live in abundant joy and others live in mind-numbing torture? Is God really that weak or does He want that kind of reality?

• Why do we think that our “will” is so absolutely free, when it is affected by every little thing around us and we rarely respond from thought alone, but often from instinct built in us from birth?

• How can God be “All in All” as Revelation states He will be in the end if All is not in complete harmony with Him and His character of love, joy, peace, etc.?

• Why did God create a place of unending torture in the first place?

• How is God glorified in unending pain that does not lead to being restored to righteousness and a loving relationship to Christ?
 
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