I agree. However, this is what most elements in Christianity assume to be true. If you postulate the assumption, then the priest should have been able to answer your question thus.

Teaching about Hell is not cruel, for do we not teach about the dangers that exsits on earth and what type of life or acts could make us fall into such danger?; is this done out of cruelty or is this done out of love and care?; it's obviously the latter, for we warn people in order that they may beware and stay on the straight and narrow and thus not fall into danger.

It is only right that there should be punishment for the evildoers in the hereafter and that there should be reward for the good people, so God has prewarned us about the hell-fire, and pointed out the path that leads to it [via Prophets and heavenly revelations], and it is our duty to pass on this message to all mankind.

Peace.

Don't most religions teach love? So if one has love, does that necessarily mean they have Jesus in their life?

__________________
"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."-- Mahatma Gandhi

I'm not sure, to be honest. At Judgment it is my expectation that God will recognize those who live righteous lives even though they are outside the biblical faiths. Or as apostle Paul said of these religionists who were not part of Israel:

A "terrifying idea" of hell came out from an inflamed brain of a primitive man way back, so far back that today it could even sound like a sick fairytale.

I would say, it has to be a very, very sick fairytale, if you wish to know my opinion.

Since then "Hell" became an infectious disease starting its development in a human brain and expressing itself in self destructive emotions of acute fear of death and torture.

And those of us who teaches about hell, in the reality consciously or unconsciously spreads infectious disease, therefore they are dangerous especially for undeveloped minds of our children.

A.P.

When we think of hell and heaven in terms of mental states, it's easier to see how both could exist. Might they take on physical form for some? Who knows? Some who've had NDE's have reported such things, yet learned that it was as easy to change as introducing a new thought.

The Bible is filled with metaphors and drama, and perhaps people of that day expressed the truths of life in such a manner. Perhaps their fear and guilt were projected onto Jesus' words, or got twisted in the Old Testament. After all, even the word "judgement" is presumed by most of us to have a negative meaning, when it may not. It might mean "to see the truth." All I know is that my Catholic friends today don't think Protestants are all going to hell, as many did many decades ago. Perhaps we're making progress, EH!

Our fears often get the best of us still, and who among us hasn't been superstitious at times? Some may be still stuck in that mindset, but for others, such a contradiction is a very important doorway to questions.

Even in the corrupted gospels of the church, from which true gnosis has been largely expurgated, the text still stands: "I said: ye are gods (john 10:34)" and millions of the simple gape at the page and have not the wit not courage to understand. For the most diabolical of all the gods is the one who invented guilt. Human beings then learned to judge and despise themselves, an uncomfortable state, from which they chronically sought to escape by judging and despising one another.

Of all creations, this is the hardest to uncreate as it leaves the deepest wounds; it left, in fact, that festering suppuration that is normal consciousness in our species today. For once evil and bad conscience were invented, "the one became two" - the mind was split against itself, the cosmos was split into fictitious and antagonistic oppositions; everything was turned upside-down and backward and the world became populated with the hallucinations of mania. This raving lunacy, this hatred of self and others, is the "sleep" and "dream" and "illusion" against which the sages warn us; it is the "drunkenness" against which jesus rails in the Gnostic gospels; it is coded into the parable of the fall in Genesis. And all this suited the first priest-swindler very well as it has suited all other priest-swindlers ever since; it made them rich; it gave them that which, for small souls, is sweeter than than wealth- the power to control others; and they have been most industrious, ever since, in inventing new "sins" so that more gloom and horror and despair will be spread over life.

For the sake of clarity: the god-power, the creative faculty, is not used with anything less than total literalness. When beauty was created by a godly mind, beauty existed. When mercy was created, mercy existed. When guilt was created, guilt existed. Out of a meaningless and pointless existence, we have made meaning and purpose; but since this creative act happens only when we relax after great strain, we feel it as "pouring into us" from elsewhere. Thus we do not know our own godhood and we are then perpetually swindled by those who assure us that it is indeed elsewhere, but "they" can give us access to it, for a reasonable fee (and our loyalty). And when weas a species were ignorant enough to be duped in that way, the swindlers went one step further, inventing "original sin" and other horrors of that sort (like the MYTH of an eternal hell), making us even more "dependent" upon them.

The results have been an armed madhouse; one might go further and call it an abattoir in which the cattle have been persuaded to slaughter one another.
"I have come to put an end to revenge," said Jesus, but revenge is the obsession, the compulsion, of all those who, having been told they are guilty, have become guilty. The criminal is not the exceptional type, but the normal type in a world in which evil has been invented; as cynics like Shakespeare and Swift and Cervantes have all remarked, the criminals on the bench sentence the criminals who come before the bench. The criminal mind is precisely the average mind in this world, after the priests invented sin.
"He who cries, 'fool, fool!' is already a murderer."
"Judge not."
The illusion of Sin and Guilt, the madness of our species, is the act of cursing the world under the misapprehension that one is cursing only one part of it.
To curse the fig tree, as in the most misunderstood parable of Jesus, is to curse the soil in which it grew, the seed, the rains, the sun; the whole world, eventually - because no part is truly separate from the whole.
The fallacy that one can judge the part in isolation from the whole is "the Lie that all men believe."
Of all lies, this is the hardest to undo: of all creations, the hardest to uncreate. But, it can be done.
We can do it. You can do it. I can do it.
Because we are all gods, we can create our own good and evil, our own beauty and meaning, etc.
All may say, "This is my way, my good, my evil" ;
None may say, "This is the way, this is the good and the evil."
The judge speaks the truth without knowing it, and acknowledges his own divinity without realizing it, when he says, "I find you guilty"; he lies the oldest and most terrible of all lies when he says, "You are guilty."

The god creates meaning and value; the devil is a god asleep who imagines meaning and value exist in themselves elsewhere.
Men and women are the gods they imagine to be elsewhere, the creators of meaning and value.

This is not to say that I don't believe in God, or G-d, I do, but I see that people always strive to humanize things, even God, so that such a being will become more comprehensible to them, but people will not understand God looking through such limiting paradigms as people are wont to do. God is too far beyond our understanding, but in our arrogance as people we assume our second hand knowledge is understanding.

Shaw-N....

thanks for the nice read this am.....i feel after reading your post....I will smile the rest the day....might you and all the rest as well......

If you touch that again, I’m going to chop off your hands and make you eat them!”

This is the worst statement a parent can make on there children and it can only be said by cruel parents.

As far as warning children about hell fire is concerned it is the best way you can dissuade a child from walking on the wrong path.

Just take an example, take a child who is not under observation of his parents and his parents have set him free and compare this child with the one who is under observation of his parents and his parents guide him and even slap him when he insists on doing something wrong.

You will see a hell hell of a difference between both of them.

How does a child get spoiled?

It is true that parents shouldnot scream on the child unless there is a reason for it others wise it has negative impact on childs mind and it can create a fear in his heart which can remove confidence from him.

But it doesnot mean that you should leave a child on his own and let him do what ever he wants.

Liberating a child is the best way to spoil the child

Evengli,

What other option do you want the parents and churches to teach the kids inorder to stop them from doing wrong?

For example If I teach my child that please donot steal anything from a shop or market because if the police sees you ,he will put you in jail or punish you.

do you think that the child will obey? What if the child after growing up finds out that the police itself takes bribes and is not sincere in its work. Will the child still be on the right path?

That is the difference between seculars and theists, theists guide there children according to the teachings of there religion and this is what makes difference between the bringing up of an atheist and a theist.