Christians or Former Christians: Did Hell Influence Your Conversion?

[Buttercup]

As you were contemplating becoming a Christian, did the thought of ending up in Hell influence your decision to become a Christian?

Was part of the reason you converted to Christianity because you were fearful of being sent to Hell if you didnt accept these teachings?

I know for many of you this will be a hard question to answer because youve been a Christian so long you cant remember. All I ask is for you to take a truthful look at your reasons for becoming a Christian and answer if the fear of Hell was one of them.

Poll to follow......Thank you!

 

[dbakerman76]

Hell has never influenced my life as a Christian. My household was a very liberal Christian home and my father believed (and still believes) in hell but always taught us it was empty. I have gone a step further and at this point don't believe in it at all.

It usefulness as a myth has long since past. It is now simply an excuse for people to divide the world into the saved and the damned. And usually the ones doing the dividing perceived themselves as God chosen ones.

I have no doubt that we all meet the same end regardless of what our beliefs may be.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Being a former Christian, the thought of Hell never scared me, because I was raised as a Christian, so I never really converted to it.

 

[sparkyluv]

No. I didn't really comprehend hell until after I became a Christian and it still doesn't affect me.

 

[standing_alone]

As a former Christian, the concept of Hell had some influence (but not sole influence) on my decision to reject the Christian faith, but it wasn't a fear of Hell so much as it was a dislike of the concept of Hell - that those that never heard and accepted God's word would be damned, that a so-called loving God would damn any of his creation when he created the world in the way he did, etc. However, what made me ultimately reject the Christian faith was looking at it with a more critical eye.

 

[Buttercup]

First of all.....just cuz you're my friend, Alyssa I gotta give you the smack down for your answer in the poll. :slap: Ok, I feel better now.

The fear of hell had some influence in my decision to become a Christian all those years ago. I can distinctly remember worrying about it prior to accepting Christ.

 

[standing_alone]

First of all.....just cuz you're my friend, Alyssa I gotta give you the smack down for your answer in the poll. :slap:

Well, of the options provided, it was the closest representative of my actual opinion on the topic...

 

[Buttercup]

Well, of the options provided, it was the closest representative of my actual opinion on the topic...

Oh man, you're in trouble now.

Yeah, like we haven't discussed violence within Islam enough on RF.

I'm thinking this thread may not get the responses I've had in my recent other threads.

 

[standing_alone]

Oh man, you're in trouble now.

Oh, like I'm scared...

 

[Green Gaia]

I was raised a Christian and the fear of Hell was probably the only thing that kept me a Christian for as long as I was one. Once I rejected the notion of Hell and therefore the fear of it, I shed the Christian label because there was no other reason for me to stay.

 

[Katzpur]

As you were contemplating becoming a Christian, did the thought of ending up in Hell influence your decision to become a Christian?

Was part of the reason you converted to Christianity because you were fearful of being sent to Hell if you didnt accept these teachings?

I know for many of you this will be a hard question to answer because youve been a Christian so long you cant remember. All I ask is for you to take a truthful look at your reasons for becoming a Christian and answer if the fear of Hell was one of them.

Poll to follow......Thank you!

Would you get over this hell thing already Buttercup!?! You're driving me freakin nuts!

Now that that's out of the way...

I was raised a Christian (at least I was raised believing I was a Christian; I've recently learned I'm just a Mormon. ), but I cannot remember ever once hearing the threat of hell preached in church. For Latter-day Saints, hell is not a big issue since we believe that so few will end up going there. According to LDS doctrine, people who lived their lives as Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Baha'is, Wiccans, athiests, and anybody else I've forgotten can all plan on going to heaven.

The only people who will not go to heaven are those who have been given a perfect, abolutely knowledge of Christ and then willfully deny the witness of the Holy Ghost as to that fact. I don't know how to explain this exactly, but there are very few people who are ever given that knowledge. The rest of us, the vast, vast majority of all who have ever lived, accept Jesus Christ on faith. We have not personally seen Him, been surrounded by His glory, felt the wounds in His hands, or actually heard His voice. Simon Peter, on the other hand, did, in my opinion, have this knowledge. He would be a potential candidate for hell on the basis of His perfect knowledge -- that is, if he were to now deny Christ. (And just in case the subject comes up, in the Biblical account of the events surrounding Christ's arrest, trial and crucifixion, Peter denied knowing the man Jesus. He never did at any time deny His divinity or that He was his Lord and Savior.)

I'm really glad that's not an issue for me. I think it would be the one thing that would force me to give up Christianity and join the Baha'i Faith.

 

[Buttercup]

Would you get over this hell thing already Buttercup!?! You're driving me freakin nuts!

Do I need to give you the smack down too? :kat:

The only people who will not go to heaven are those who have been given a perfect, abolutely knowledge of Christ and then willfully deny the witness of the Holy Ghost as to that fact.

I don't get it.....How could a Buddhist accept a perfect, absolute knowledge of Christ?

 

[Katzpur]

Do I need to give you the smack down too? :kat:[/size]

I don't get it.....How could a Buddhist accept a perfect, absolute knowledge of Christ?

He can't. That's why he won't be held accountable. Only a person with a perfect, absolute knowledge of Christ -- who denies that knowledge -- has the potential to go to Hell.

 

[Buttercup]

He can't. That's why he won't be held accountable. Only a person with a perfect, absolute knowledge of Christ -- who denies that knowledge -- has the potential to go to Hell.

Ahh, I see. Then anyone who has never had a religion at all would go to heaven as well.

 

[Scuba Pete]

No. The concept of Hell had no bearing on my conversion. It still has no influence on me.

 

[MaddLlama]

Indirectly, I suppose yes. I couldn't vote, since it wasn'y the fear of a "bad" afterlife that made me convert, but more the fact that I had a hard time understanding the concept of an afterlife, how it was explained and why it was important at all.

 

[Katzpur]

Ahh, I see. Then anyone who has never had a religion at all would go to heaven as well.

In a nutshell, most likely.

As you know, we believe that the spirit is eternal and that what we call "death" is only the death of the physical body. We believe that there is a period of time between death and the resurrection when the spirit of every person who has ever lived will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. No one goes immediately to either Heaven or to Hell but to the Spirit World, where this additional light and knowledge is given as he becomes ready to receive it.

There is no denying that our spiritual perceptions are influenced to one degree or another by our respective cultures, political environments, family backgrounds, etc. Assuming (as I do) that Jesus Christ voluntarily took upon himself the sins of each and every one who will accept His gift of eternal life, I cannot help but wonder what kind of a God would deny that gift to someone who spent his or her entire life in a society where Christianty was virtually unknown (as was the case for hundred of years in various parts of the world). I cannot believe that a loving Father in Heaven would not recognize and take into account the disadvantage a person had who lived his entire life in the former Soviet Union, having had it systematically drilled into his head that there is no God at all. We believe that all of these stumbling blocks will be removed after death and that between the time a person dies and when he is called to stand before God to be judged, he'll have the chance to learn the truth about Jesus Christ and His gospel, unencumbered by the baggage he had to haul around during this mortal life.

In theory, I suppose there could be a few who make it through both this life and the time spent in the Spirit World, eventually coming to the perfect, absolute knowledge I was speaking of before, and then denying it. But according to our belief, the huge majority of all people are eventually going to come to accept Christ, most of them on faith -- "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Not all of them will be equally appreciative of His sacrifice nor equally repentent of their sins. All of them, however, will go to heaven to receive at least a portion of the glory God has in store for them. That is why we say we have the "biggest heaven and the littlest hell" of any Christian denomination.

 

[Smoke]

I was still a Christian for years after I stopped believing in hell, so the belief in hell didn't really have anything to do with my decision to renounce Christianity. I do think it's a repugnant doctrine, and I think the forms of Christianity that threaten people with hellfire are the most contemptible.

 

[James the Persian]

As you were contemplating becoming a Christian, did the thought of ending up in Hell influence your decision to become a Christian?

Was part of the reason you converted to Christianity because you were fearful of being sent to Hell if you didnt accept these teachings?

I know for many of you this will be a hard question to answer because youve been a Christian so long you cant remember. All I ask is for you to take a truthful look at your reasons for becoming a Christian and answer if the fear of Hell was one of them.

Poll to follow......Thank you!

I can quite honestly (and did) say no. You've probably seen me post on my understanding of soteriology before and so this is unlikely to surprise you.

James

 

[*Paul*]

It definatly did with me, when I came under the terrors of God's law and realised God's wrath was upon me, it was like being woken up from a world where I could do whatever I liked and God would accept me to being in a world where God's wrath was upon me and that He did not accept me in my current state, I saw everything through different eyes. It was the the thought that God saw me as filthy and defiled by my sins (as I truly was) that drove me to conversion because I so wanted to be accepted by Him, the consequence of my defilement meant to me that this was a most horrible position to be in and one I didn't want to be in for a moment longer. The rest is history.