Is it any coincidence that the latest war of religion that started on September 11, 2001, is being fought primarily between the United States and the Islamic world?\u00a0It just so happens that no two groups of humanity are more ingrained with the doctrine of literal fundamentalist religion \u2014 including a retributive view of God best expressed by a belief in a Hell \u2014 than conservative Muslims and conservative Christians. American fundamentalists and Islamic\u00a0fundamentalists\u00a0deserve\u00a0each other.<\/p>\n
And nowhere on earth have conservative Christians been closer to controlling foreign policy than here in the United States and\/or the Islamic cleric-controlled\u00a0strict conservative countries like Saudi Arabia\u2013 home to so much worldwide funding of terror groups. Nowhere on earth have conservative Muslims been more dominant than in the countries from which the 9\/11 extremists originated \u2013 Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
What ties the fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist American Christians together?<\/strong> A literal belief in a\u00a0judgmental\u00a0angry God who desires to punish unbelievers for eternity. If we serve an angry killer \u201cgod\u201d why not imitate him and kill each other? Why not \u201cpunish\u201d each other for wrong beliefs as W Bush did\u00a0attacking\u00a0Iraq for no reason and bin Laden did in attacking us on 9\/11? After all bin Laden is mild and kind compared to a god who would send anyone to Hell for believing wrong. Bin Laden only killed people once, not for\u00a0eternity.<\/p>\n What a pair George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden made. On the one hand, an American president who was a born-again evangelical with a special \u201cheart\u201d for the state of Israel and its importance to the so-called end times, and on the other hand a terrorist leader who believed that he was serving God by ridding the Arabian Peninsula of an American presence and cleansing the \u201cdefiled\u201d land of Palestine of what he believed were \u201cinvader Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n So whether you\u2019re an atheist or not, the issue of who\u2019s going to Hell or not matters because there are a lot of folks on this planet \u2013 many of them extraordinarily well-armed \u2013 from born-again American military personnel to Muslim fanatics, who seriously believe that God smiles upon them when they send their enemies to Hell.<\/p>\n And so my view of \u201cHell\u201d encompasses two things: First, the theological question about whether a land of eternal suffering exists as God\u2019s \u201cgreat plan\u201d for most of humanity.<\/p>\n Second, the question of the political implications of having a huge chunk of humanity believe in damnation for those who disagree with their theology, politics and culture, as if somehow simply killing one\u2019s enemies is not enough.<\/p>\n What most people don\u2019t know is that there\u2019s another thread running through both Christianity and Islam that is far more merciful than the fundamentalists\u2019 take on salvation, judgment and damnation.<\/p>\n Paradise, which Muslims believe is the final destination of the society of God\u2019s choice, is referred to in the Quran as \u201cthe home of peace\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur God,\u201d Muslims are asked to recite, \u201cYou are peace, and peace is from You.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Christianity is my tradition, I can say more about it.<\/strong> One view of God \u2013 the more fundamentalist view \u2013 is of a retributive God just itching to punish those who \u201cstray.\u201d In that view Jesus\u2019 death was all about satisfying an angry \u201cgod\u201d who needed a blood offering to make him change his mind about damning everyone and entice him to save a few the \u201celect.\u201d<\/p>\n The other equally ancient view, going right back into the New Testament era, is of an all-forgiving God who in the person of Jesus Christ ended the era of scapegoat sacrifice, retribution and punishment forever.<\/p>\n As Jesus said on the cross: \u201cForgive them for they know not what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n That redemptive view holds that far from God being a retributive God seeking justice, God is a merciful father who loves all his children equally. This is the less-known view today because fundamentalists \u2013 through televangelists and others \u2013 have been so loud and dominant in North American culture.<\/p>\n But for all that, this redemptive view is no less real.<\/p>\n Why does our view of Hell matter?<\/strong> Because believers in Hell believe in revenge. And according to brain chemistry studies, taking revenge and nurturing resentment is a major source of life-destroying stress.<\/p>\n For a profound exploration of the madness caused by embracing the \u201cjustice\u201d of \u201cgodly\u201d revenge and retribution, watch the film \u201cHellbound?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n The film shows how the \u201cHell\u201d of revenge thinking, and the resulting unhinging of some people\u2019s brains through their denial of human empathy, leads them to relish the violent future of suffering that they predict awaits the \u201clost\u201d in Hell.<\/p>\n Do we really want to go back to a time of literal religion.\u00a0Wasn\u2019t\u00a09\/11 enough of an argument against retributive religion?<\/p>\n We need a concept of \u201cHell\u201d like a hole in the head. It\u2019s time for the alternative of empathetic merciful religion to be understood.<\/p>\n Watch the \u201cHellbound?\u201d trailer here<\/a>\u00a0and also get addresses of\u00a0theaters\u00a0showing the film.<\/p>\n