Am I Going to Hell? What the New Testament Says About Death and the Afterlife

If there is one thing most people are certain of about the Bible, it is that it describes how after people die they will be rewarded with heaven or tormented in hell. But does it? As it turns out ... well, you'll be surprised by what the Bible actually says. And once your surprise fades, you'll probably want to know: where do the Christian ideas of the afterlife come from?

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[colinlavery]

Telling your children they will go to hell if they don't believe in Jesus... is CHILD ABUSE !!!!

[deborahbarbour]

My mental health is so much better since I stopped believing in Hell. 😊

[MicahBuzanMUSIC]

Being a child and thinking you're going to hell if you don't believe in Jesus is traumatic. I don't know how many times I was "born again" out of a obsessive compulsive fear that I might not really be saved.

[youdeservethis]

I grew up in a fundamentalist family. One of the hardest things to let go in my deconversion was a fear that I would spend eternity screaming in Hell because I stole a package of orange TicTacs when I was five years old. Thank you Dr. Ehrman for helping me finally break free of Christianity's chains.

[jerryjones]

Dr. Ehrman's background resonates with me as a deconstructing theist. He has helped me to exorcise the fears of my past conditioning. I now want to know rather than blind believing.

[DiscipleToki]

Whoever wrote the apocalypse of Peter was clearly a sadistic psychopath. It is disgusting, to call that righteousness is beyond evil. Any God who would devise such a place is the only worthy of going there. To think people could read this and actually have respect for an entity that would do such things says a great deal about their character. Not even someone like Hitler would deserve that treatment. There, I feel better now. 😜

[erink]

When I was a child indoctrinated in Catholicism, I remember being told that heaven was a place where everyone sings praise to god and worships him for all eternity. I thought my gosh that sounds terrible, church FOREVER?! But instantly I shut that down, I was AFRAID TO THINK IT, because hell was surely worse. I knew I was finally free when (less than a year ago) I was able to say out loud “this is all stupid and I was taught to be afraid to think.” Still counting the ways THAT has screwed up my life.

I found Dr. Ehrman’s lectures a few months ago and he has brought so much clarity. The religious part of my education (Catholic school through 12th grade) was never for my own good. And it certainly left a lot of Christian history out of the classroom. It’s all very fascinating and has totally accelerated the deconstruction I’ve been working on for years.

In the past year, I finally reached a point where I saw the light and took a breath, “born again” …but this time on MY terms.

[betzib]

I adore the sanity of this channel where i can learn about the theological elements that have so informed our culture...without someone trying to pull me into "a relationship with the Lord".

[kobe]

Good stuff. American Fundamentalist Christianity is a confused mess

[neallacey]

What I notice about Matthew 25 is that no one is condemned for their actions, but for their inaction.

[gazzas]

Why if we are to follow the teachings of the bible why the hell was it open to so much interpretation?? why not in simple terms? Is it because it is written by men not some vague idea of a fictious being someone called god.

[Wokeisnotwoke]

I remember once, at a bible study, I got kind of teary at something the guy leading it was saying and my sister-in-law assumed I was crying because my mother who passed away was in hell. That made me so angry. I now no longer consider myself a Christian. I don’t believe Jesus would consider himself a Christian. I’ve spent the last 5 years or so deconstructing my Christianity and I now am in the stage that not only am I not religious, but I would venture to call myself anti-religious.

[davidk]

Just now starting the video, but wanted to say thanks in advance. FYI, I *am* going to hell — my dad said so, when I was 9 years old, because I made a random thoughtless unintentional subject-reversing joke that he thought was blasphemous and truly unforgivable. Naturally, god never answered my pleas for forgiveness, so for the next 10 years of sleepless nights, I assumed my dad must have been right.

So that’s how my formative years went. See if you can imagine all the cumulative effects that would have on a person.

[danieldhardman]

Two points:
1) Indoctrinating children into the idea of hell should be considered child abuse
2) heaven is of no consequence, hell is the only thing that matters

As a former Christian and Christian minister, I can recall the day I decided I would not teach my children about heaven and hell. We were in church one Sunday--me, my wife, our son and newborn daughter. As we sat enjoying the service, I watched my son playing among the pews. In that moment, I remembered how terrified I was as a child about dying and going to hell. I remembered lying in my bed, my mind paralyzed w fear that I might die in my sins and go to hell. That was the moment I decided I would not pass on that same torment to my own children.

Bart is right, the descriptions of hell are intricately detailed while the descriptions of heaven are super brief. One day I realized that it one were to remove the concept of hell from Christianity, the number of Christians would drop to near zero almost overnight. Everyone is afraid of hell, but almost no one, even the writers of scripture, really give a rat's ass about heaven. As far as heaven goes, people would just as well stay right here on earth if it were possible as long as they dont go to hell.

I mean, can we just acknowledge that the "Bible" is mythology? Nothing more, nothing less. Can we just stop lying to people. It is not true and could be er be true. Can we just admit that so people can get on w living their lives?

[andybeans]

I've never been religious, but in my youth I read a lot of fantasy fiction and the concepts of a generic "land of the dead" and reincarnation always made more sense than heavens and hells.

[AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen]

👏😐
Great episode
I really never believed that God being "good" would send any decent person to hell so I never felt hell was ever an issue in my experience.
It was learning, that there may be no afterlife that really made me sad, to not see my friends and family after passing.
But I guess you gotta accept reality for what it really is if you are a truth seeker

[quijote]

I've read Bart's book "Heaven and Hell." Even if you aren't afraid of hell and don't believe in heaven or hell, as I don't, it's still a wonderful, interesting, understandable and necessary read. Who wouldn't want to know about the origination of ideas that have had such an affect on Western civilization and the culture that informs us? His book is thorough and convincing. It is based on translation of the original languages of the Bible. It's never boring and supremely rational and fact-based. It is not an attempt to undermine faith; it means to underscore what lies behind faith. A person should know what they are saying/accepting when they affirm a particular faith.

[susanstein]

I’m Jewish and I was never threatened with going to Hell. When a born again Christian asked me if I knew if I was going to Heaven or Hell, I didn’t know if Jews believed in Hell because no one had ever mentioned Hell ever.

I asked a Black Baptist minister if a Jew who was murdered in Auschwitz was now in Heaven or Hell. He didn’t want to answer me and he tried to weasel his way out of it, but he eventually admitted the answer was they were in Hell.

[shawnstatzer]

The fear tactic does not work on me. I figure that a [g]od who would cast his creation into an eternal hellfire, where there is weeping gnashing of teeth, is bad parenting at its finest.

[elainebraindrain]

I'm afraid of life and death. Existance is not our choice, death is not our choice, it's all a frightening horror story for me and many others.