Reddit reviews Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

You should start reading Christian Universalist books. I think it will help calm you down and give you some new grounding. Here's an easy read: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Wins-About-Heaven-Person-ebook/dp/B004IWR3CE

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And here's one by an article by a respected philosopher: http://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/1129-2/

Are there any subjects you're particularly interested in? I'll link a few below that I found very helpful, but I know everyone has different sorts of interests and stumbling blocks, so if there's something more specific you're looking for (or if you want more resources on a particular topic), let me know.

• Naturalistic explanation of "spiritual experiences": Church services and retreats, where most people have very moving spiritual experiences, have quite a lot in common with hypnotic manipulation techniques. Outside of these high-emotion environments, another interesting idea I've heard is that of simulacra, through which humans can manufacture and simulate their own ideas of how reality (and God) should be, and thus experience a deception. A personal testimonial that also drove the point home for me was that of a philosophy student who started to reexamine his faith through a more critical lens.
  
  
• Historical evidence for Jesus/gospels: According to Rational Wiki, there is very little reason to trust the gospels, and although it is likely that some historical Jesus existed, there is essentially no verification of his existence outside of the gospels until centuries later. Robert Price (Bible Geek podcast, which can be found in a number of places including here) also brings up some fantastic counterpoints to the most common apologetic arguments, and seems to really know his stuff. If you're interested in a book, I've also heard great things about Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus.
  
  
• Contradictions in the Bible: A good graphical representation on Bibviz that compiles a few different resources. This does list all apparent contradictions, even minor ones that most Christians can easily dispute or dismiss, but there are many others that are not as easy to dismiss. (For example, in Genesis 1 and 2, did plants or humans come first?) These are most effective when considered in opposition to Biblical inerrancy/infallibility. If inerrancy isn't a big deal to you, then this point isn't as important.
  
  
• Evolution: Talk Origins is an excellent tool for learning more about evolution if you've been brought up with creationism (either old earth or young earth). It has plenty of resources that very specifically counter the most common creationist arguments, and even has some point-by-point rebuttals to some creationist books. If inerrancy is something you struggle with, the fact of evolution can be a pretty big hit, since the creation story doesn't only crop up in Genesis 1-12, but also in several places in the New Testament. If it's not, evolution isn't a huge deal, but is still fun to learn more about.
  
  
• Atrocities of God: The first thing that really got to me was seeing the Christian God as an abuser. As a Christian, I didn't like the comparison, but as I thought about it, I realized that all of it was true according to Biblical principles, and it bothered me. As I previously mentioned, God did condone rape in the OT. On top of that, the OT law commanded that you stone a woman who was found to not be a virgin on her wedding night. I'm sure there are plenty others, but these stood out to me. They don't disprove Yahweh's existence, but they do show that he's not such a "loving" God as Christians claim. A rebuttal I've heard (though not a good one), is that obviously a loving God can do these things, because he (or at least biblical authors) claim that he's loving, and also record him doing these things. Those are opposing claims; they cannot both be true, at least with a healthy understanding of what it means to be loving.
  
  
• Hell: The most common interpretation is that anyone who doesn't explicitly believe in/follow Jesus will be subject to eternal damnation and torture. There are other interpretations. C.S. Lewis clearly seemed to give some leeway in who went to hell (as evidenced in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle), and at least wanted to believe that everyone had a chance at heaven, even after death (as evidenced in The Great Divorce). Rob Bell also wants to believe that everyone will go to heaven (see Love Wins), although I think many people called this book heretical. Another alternative explanation I've read supported the idea of annihilation for non-believers, rather than eternal punishment, which had far better Biblical support than I expected. Personally, I couldn't rationalize God punishing people for simply not believing in him, given how scant the evidence is in favor of Christianity, or how God could punish people who left the church because of how Christians abused them in God's name. On the other hand, if you check out what Jesus says about hell in the gospels, he seems to imply that these groups would receive hellfire and punishment of some sort. It's not so easily dismissed.
  
  
• Natural Disasters: Not a source, but the problem of suffering is one that Christians have never been able to adequately explain. Sure, you can pin human-inflicted suffering on sin, but natural disasters? Not so much. Think of the tsunamis that kill hundreds of thousands of people around the Indian Ocean (most being Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or otherwise non-Christian), many of whom have likely never heard the Christian gospel. These people are doomed to eternal punishment, and it's because of God's creation alone. Even if you assume they don't automatically get sent to hell, what physical or even spiritual good could this possibly accomplish? This, in my opinion, is inexcusable.
  
  Anyway, that ended up being way longer than I intended, but hopefully some of the sources help you. At the very least, it should give you something to think about and some possible topics to consider when evaluating your religious beliefs.

Any death threat was very much something not originally in there, but read into it later on by the fanatical type of people Jesus was against. "Huffmon writes that the Ten Commandments were written with room for varying interpretation because they are fundamental. They are not as explicit or detailed as rules and regulations or many other biblical laws and commandments, because they provide guiding principles that apply universally, across changing circumstances. They do not specify punishments for their violation. Their precise import must be worked out in each separate situation." 1

I totally get your anger :( If things happened as I was originally taught that they were, it seems obscenely unjust. So, I'm trying to make sense of it as well. Since my understanding of the original intent of Genesis was as transcribing oral tradition legends, not as a literal historical work in the style we're familiar with, I interpret it that way. It was a massive shift of my perspective but an incredably liberating one.

This is not the most intellectually sound book, but if you're interested in contemporary Christian literature, its a quick read and its essence rang true for me.

Hey was just looking for a past thread where I had explained it really well. So some of this is copy pasta with some added explanation for context. Sorry for the text wall I wanted to make sure I wasn't speaking christianese at you. Sometimes it's like a whole other language when you don't have the context.
I tried to link everything for you. Let me know if you have any other questions at all. :)

So first off I guess I should explain that our denomination is not like a traditional denomination but is an association of pastors with similar values. The current church government setup for us is a highly empowered senior pastor who is accountable to the church board, who is elected by members, and the National Vineyard board who is made up of other pastors in the association. There aren't too many strict rulings on individual issues.

The national board did come out with a response paper to the book Ken wrote in which they reaffirmed the traditional marriage arguments. I did not read the paper for my own mental health. It's available online if you're interested.

There is a Vineyard church of Toledo and I've heard they are nice folks but I have no idea what the pastor there thinks about all this. There is a wide range of views on any number of things depending on which Vineyard you attend. I know that their were other churches getting ready to at least put it on the table for discussion but I don't know what will happen with that.

I think that doing things this way is consistent for the character of our faith community here in Ann Arbor. Some of the LGBT community have stated that this doesn't go far enough but this is what the community in our congregation wants. We have a policy of our focus being on Christ and everything else being secondary. Also a bit more of the reasoning behind it.

As a bisexual woman with a mtf spouse it's been really good for us. I think that having this approach has both given us safe space and given people with questions room to ask without feeling weird about it. I'm ok with people not agreeing with me as long as they are respectful. Many of the LGBT congregants have expressed the same opinion. There are tons of open and affirming churches in the area. It would be easier to go there but that's not what we want. People just want to have the same rights as any other member and to be loved and supported.

That doesn't mean that anyone at our church is perfect or sin free.

Our church recently has had a bunch of congregational meetings on the issue because we are most likely being disaffiliated with the Vineyard movement over this stance. I mean that kind of sucks. But we're not backing down on treating LGBT members as equal so that means that this was pretty much inevitable. However, I feel that our church has become more committed to being together as a family. All discussions were very respectful and honored our commitment to God and each other.

We don't think as a whole that any beliefs beyond the Nicene and the Apostles creed are necessary to be a believer. We don't agree on many other issues. These issues are referred to as disputable matters per Romans 14.

Another example of a disputable matter would be remarriage after divorce. Most churches now accept this allow these couples and allow for full membership and communion. The Catholic church being a notable exception.

An issue that is not currently a hot topic in our church is the issue of what hell looks like, who goes there, and if it exists. We had this as a discussion about the time Rob Bell's book on the issue came out. Not everyone in our church agrees on that but it doesn't mean that we break fellowship over it or tell people who belongs.
In the 90's way before I attended creation theory was a big deal. We made room for people with differing beliefs. There are young earth creationists and biology students that sit together in our pews.

Also there is a book that Ken wrote A Letter to my Congregation

And an article here that summarizes it fairly well.

My favorite? Well Love Wins was pretty pleasant to read.