Which is it? All of sudden nowadays I've heard a toned down version of hell from theists where a just God doesn't deservedly send you there to punish you for your sins but you send yourself there by rejecting God's love apparently, and He isn't punishing you but you're punishing yourself. All of sudden it's toned down from version that takes responsibility away from God and places it in our hands, I guess as another way to get God off the hook for anything. So which is it: does God punish us or do we punish ourselves?
I have to side with you on this one Jos.
I think what we have on our hands is a simple case of
expounding on a lie.
As we know, there can be only one truth, but a lie.... why, you can get thousands, even billions, and from just one.
So what has happened imv, is that a lie was started - not from the Bible, but from people's ideas - whether intentional, or mistaken.
The lie - God torments the wicked in an eternal fire?
Wait! But how?
Another lie - We don't really die, because we are really immortal souls wearing a shell, called a body.
Now... because this don't sit right with some folk, they form their own idea, or version of it, while holding the original concept.
So we get hundreds, even thousands of splinters, from just one.
From one lie, we get thousands of lies, because it's impossible to build truth from a lie.
The same thing happened with the Trinity.
It started with a lie - God the father. God the son. God the holy ghost. Yet not three Gods, but one. Co-eternal. Co-equal.
Again, this was not settling with some, so again there were breakaways, and forming of new sects - different versions, but the same concept.
From the root lie, came hundreds of branches. Well maybe not so much, but you get the idea.
Isn't the Devil a sweet guy.
No. Jesus calls him a liar, and the father of the lie, and through his servant John, he said, the Devil is misleading the entire inhabited earth. - John 8:44; Revelation 12:9
...and yes, he hides in the shadows, so people don't think he is there. Besides, he is invisible.
So when people find pleasure in stabbing someone 73 times less one, and cutting off their head with a knife, or cutting them into pieces, people say, "Oh, he just has a mental problem" or, "Oh, it's just the animal in him - just being what he is."
Really?