2020 a Tumultuous Year.

2020 is fast drawing to a close...and for what it is worth...in my observation the worst fear-mongering drug is NOT global warming, Trudeau mania, or as bad as Trump cult is, as bad as the Covid virus is and Trumps failure to deal with it and His disregard for the American way of life it is not the worse fear-mongering drug out there...rather:

The drug of the year is FEAR!

The drug pusher of the year is American Christianity!

The drug addicts of the year are religious Christians!

Ouch...I can feel the cat-off-nine tails ripping the flesh of this heretics’s back as Religiouists try to defend religion!

But, the fact is that the fear-mongering drug induced fear of  global warming, terrorism, Trudeau mania, and Trump’s assent as the saviour of America because of deluded religious Christians are temporary and whatever pain and suffering such as caused, and will continue to cause will pass into oblivion and Isis, Trudeau and Trump will barely be a lingering memory. 

However...the fear drug that religion is pushing that pushes religious addicts to hook people on is the fear drug of damnation and the fear of spending an ETERNITY in the torture chamber of hell, suffering for ever and ever without end! This puts God in a position of being a far greater terrorist causing more pain and suffering than any human terrorists! And it is NOT the GOSPEL!

What causes a person to defend such a place as hell? What drives a person to adamantly defend hell as good and right...FEAR! That is, they fear for a person they care about, they fear they are headed in a wrong direction, and attempt to communicate that urgency through threat and fear of judgement and condemnation but that by no means makes hell real. Also the fear threat of hell is a effective means of convincing people  to convert to religion because religion is presented as a way out of the hell they have fabricated. If we want people repent, if we want people to turn to God, if we want to see bad people become good people, the way to do it is not through the threat of fear,  condemnation and punishment in hell, but by sewing seeds of forgiveness and love. 

Love begats love. 

Fear begats fear.

For the religionists Hell is justice being served to people who have done atrocities to people therefore, deserve suffering. If they do not pay for their crimes, the religionists think, that God is unjust.

That's why the religious elite in Jesus' time got so angry with Him for speaking about providing grace and love to enemies. When Jesus preached a sermon on grace, the people became mean and tried to murder Jesus by wanting to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:28). These religionists did not want grace or love, they wanted vengeance and wrath. They did not want to see people receive God's mercy and redemption, they wanted them to receive divine  retribution. Like the religionists of today they wanted HELL.

Religionists wrongly associate justice with hell. This idea of retributive justice can be found throughout the Old Testament, and throughout every culture. In fact, the western world  is, among the biggest proponent of justice understood as retribution. 

Retribution though, a form of justice, is not the best or highest form of justice. It is better than doing nothing, but does it result in making things better for the long term but, it usually makes things worse, resulting in a cycle of retaliation and escalating wars and violence, all in the name of justice which produces hell on earth.

Is  a better way to bring about justice than retribution and wrath...if so, what is it...THE GOSPEL! of JESUS CHRIST, the GOSPEL of LOVE and GRACE. If you understand the gospel, you understand that what it proposes is the opposite of a torture chamber of hell. It proposes that the way God will make things right is not by hurting bad people by  wrath and retribution, but by turning bad people into righteous people  with undeserved LOVE and GRACE! 

Religious people think that the way of GRACE and LOVE is doing nothing to right wrong and that retaliation is needed to satisfy justice, but that is not true. Grace and Love is about change that stops the hurting, by people acting in love towards one another. Grace, Love and Mercy are not in conflict with justice. It is a truer way of defining justice from the way religion defines it. The justice of the gospel, the justice Paul calls "the justice of God" is restorative justice rather than retributive justice. It proposes that the way God will make things right is not by hurting bad people  by wrath and retribution, but by turning bad people into righteous  people through His Grace and Love.

The gospel of God's saving Grace in Jesus towards sinful humanity is a higher form of justice than the justice of hell, wrath, and retribution. It is a higher form of justice because it works better, it is more effective. It succeeds where wrath and retribution fails. That's what makes restoration justice  higher, more advanced, more developed, superior to the way of retributive justice and hell.

Retributive Justice has a need for hell!

Restoration Justice has no need for hell!

The Gospel is good news because we are all sinning sinners, we have all hurt other people. We may want someone to suffer, but the good news is, someone already suffered for what that suffering someone caused. In retributive justice everybody looses...in restoration justice everybody wins. Grace and Love win...not by overlooking evil and hurt...but by finding a way to undo it.

Why not in the year of 2021eliminate the addictive drug of FEAR and the fear-mongering of hell and move toward filling the earth with the glory of God by living the GOOD NEWS of the GOSPEL of God's GRACE and LOVE!