Taking Hell Off The Church's Menu

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Hey, welcome family to my Irreligious Life podcast with your host, Jermaine Thomas, AKA the professor. Deconstructing and decolonize, deconverting from your faith is a very difficult journey. The process can have psychological and emotional implications. Join us as we have a heartwarming and engaging dialog. Around this and so much more. Let's get it family. Welcome back, family. Today I wanna talk about something heavy, something sacred, something loaded, and something a lot of folks have been afraid to question out loud. I wanna talk about hell. I'm going to say the quiet part out loud. I think the church needs to take hell off its menu, and every church has a menu. Maybe they do not call it that, but they have one. They are serving something every week through sermons, songs, altar calls, Bible studies, youth ministry, funerals, revivals, conferences, and counseling sessions. The church is always putting something on the plate. Some churches serve hope, some serve shame, some serve liberation, some serve control, some serve mystery, and some serve certainty. Some serve a God who heals, and some serve a God who is basically a cosmic probation officer with fire in the basement. So when I say take hell off the menu, I'm not saying stop talking about harm, accountability, consequences, evil, or justice. I'm not saying everything is fine. I'm not saying oppression does not matter, and I'm not saying people should be able to destroy others and call it grace. I am saying stop using eternal torture as a spiritual sale tactic. Stop selling people God loves them while holding them hostage with the threat of endless punishment. Stop presenting the gospel like a divine protection racket. "Nice soul you got there. Be a shame if something happened to you." That's not good news, family. That's fear management. Now, keep love on the menu, right? Keep mercy on the menu. Keep that justice on the menu. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, caring for the poor, blessing the meek, standing with the broken-hearted, keep all of that on the menu keep the table of Jesus and a God that heals on the table. But this doctrine that says God is love And if you don't love God correctly, God will torture you forever. Take that off the menu. This fear-based, trauma-producing, anxiety-inducing doctrine of eternal torment, take that shit off the menu. This episode is not me trying to win a seminary debate. I'm not coming at this mainly through a theological lens, even though I will touch on some theology in this episode. I'm coming at this through a human lens, and that means the psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual damage that happens when people are taught that God who made them also may torture them forever. The church should remove hell from its menu because fear of eternal torment can function like a psychological coercion it can produce chronic anxiety, shame, spiritual panic, scrupulosity, distrust of self, and a distorted image of God. Even when the doctrine is defined as, quote-unquote, "truth", its fruit in real people's nervous systems often look less like freedom and more like captivity. Hell doctrine can train people to live under spiritual threat. For some, that threat becomes internalized. Every doubt feels dangerous, every mistake feels cosmic, every intrusive thought becomes evidence of damnation. That is where faith stops being a home, and it starts feeling like a courtroom in your own head. Let's talk about the psychological harm. When a child is taught that hell is real, eternal conscious, fiery torment, that they could end up there if they do not believe the right way, pray the right way, repent the right way, confess the right way, obey the right way. Yeah, that's not just a doctrine sitting in their head. That becomes a body experience, and that's where trauma lives in the body. It can live in the chest, in the stomach, in the sleep cycle, in the panic attack, in the obsessive prayer, in the repeated altar call. You know the person who gets saved every Sunday because Monday through Saturday they were not sure, stuck. Some people call that conviction, but for a lot of folks, it looks more like chronic fear. It looks like anxiety. It looks like shame. It looks like religious obsessive compulsive patterns, what some call scrupulosity, where a person cannot stop checking, confessing, repenting, apologizing, rehearsing, worrying, and asking, "Am I safe? Am I saved? Did I mean it enough? Did I doubt too much? Did I commit the unforgivable sin?" That's too much, family and if you have never lived with that, you might not understand how exhausting it is. It is exhausting to have your own mind become evidence against you. It is exhausting to feel like every random thought is a spiritual emergency is exhausting to be told that the God who knows your heart is also a God who might damn you because your heart was not pure enough. That kind of fear does not always make people holy. Sometimes it makes people hypervigilant And hypervigilance is not holiness. A panic response is not spiritual maturity. Trauma bonding with a terrifying image of a God is not the same thing as love, family. Now let's move from the individual to the social. Hell doctrine does not shape private fear, it shapes communities. It gives religious leaders a weapon, and some leaders may never say it plainly, but the message lands like this: Do not question too much, do not wander too far, and do not trust your conscience too deeply, and do not listen to this podcast episode. Do not listen to your pain too carefully because if you get this wrong, the consequences are eternal. That's powerful. That is control. And if you convince people that leaving your interpretation means risking eternal torment, you don't have to earn trust, you can enforce it this is why the hell doctrine can become especially dangerous in high control religious environments. It can keep people in abusive churches. It can make victims afraid to leave. It can make queer folks, doubters, women, children, artists, thinkers, and wounded people feel like their own survival instincts are a rebellion against God. And in communities already carrying generational trauma, racial trauma, poverty trauma, and state violence, adding eternal divine violence to the spiritual imagination is not neutral. That matters. It's important. This conversation is important and if people are already trying to survive systems that tell them they are disposable, why would the church add a God who sounds like the ultimate system of disposal? Now let's touch the theology and history for a minute. Not to get lost in the weeds, but to show that the things is not as simple as some preachers make it sound, or how we heard it, or how we were indoctrinated in it. But listen to this. The English word hell often flattens multiple biblical concepts into one terrifying image. In the Hebrew Bible, there is Sheol, often connected to the grave or the realm of the dead. In the Greek New Testament, there is Hades, which carries language of a unseen realm of the dead. Then there is Gehenna, connected to a real valley outside of Jerusalem that became a symbol of judgment which is what Jesus referenced and Tartarus appears in a specific context connected to rebellious spiritual beings, Greek mythology. So when someone says the Bible clearly teaches hell, my question is, which word? Which hell? Which image? Which context? Which translation? Which tradition? Which sermon? Which empire? And which century Because the doctrine many people inherited is not just Bible. It is Bible plus translation choices. It is Bible plus imagination. It is Bible plus medieval art. It is Bible plus revival preaching. It is Bible plus empire. It is Bible plus fear and Bible plus institutional power. And once we admit that, we can stop pretending that questioning eternal torment is the same as rejecting God. And here's a deeper issue, family. Hell does not only reflect what people believe about the afterlife, it also affects what people believe about God and if you tell me God is love, but then define that love as compatible with endless torment, you have changed the meaning of love. If you tell a child, "God loves you more than anyone," and then say, "But God may torture you forever if you do not respond correctly," that child is not learning love. That child is learning danger. And later, when that child becomes an adult and struggles to feel safe with the God that you presented to them or the God they inherited, the church often says, "You just need more faith." But maybe the issue is not the lack of faith. Maybe the issue is the image of God that we're handed was terrifying. maybe they're running from a version of God that sounded too much like an abuser with unlimited power. Now let me be clear for a minute here, family, of what I'm not saying. I'm not saying evil is not real. I'm not saying harm does not matter. I'm not saying justice is optional. I'm not saying people who abuse, exploit, dominate, and destroy should face no accountability but what I am saying is that accountability does not have to mean eternal conscious torture. Justice does not have to mean sadism. Consequences do not have to mean God becomes this thing God told us not to be and if the church cannot imagine justice without endless violence, then the church may need a deeper imagination. So what stays on the church's menu? I'm glad you asked Let love stay. Let mercy stay. Let justice stay. Let liberation stay. Let accountability stay. Let community stay. Let lamenting stay. Let repentance stay. And that which we say God is the repairer of the breach, let that stay Even let the poor stay on the menu, not as a charity project, but as people Jesus centered. Let the grieving stay. Let the meek stay. Shit, even let the peacemaker stay. We need that, right? Let the people that hunger and thirst for justice stay. The folks who are tired of being spiritually manipulated, let them stay. What leaves the menu is the idea that God needs terror to be persuasive. What leaves the menu is preaching a traumatizing doctrine and calling it evangelism. What leaves the menu is leadership that uses the afterlife to control people in this life. What leaves the menu is the threat that says, "Love Him or else." And this is to the pastors. Be honest, who benefits when people are scared? Fear works. It keeps people in pews. It keeps money coming in. It keeps questions quiet. It keeps wounded people from trusting their own conscience. But fear is not discipleship. Fear is crowd control. And if the only way your gospel holds people is by threatening them then maybe what you're protecting is not the faith, but a system. So here's the better question: What would faith look like if people were invited instead of threatened, Pastor? So when I say take hell off the menu, I'm not saying take God off the menu. I'm saying stop serving people a plate of terror and calling it love. Stop feeding children nightmares and calling it discipleship. Stop using eternity like a weapon and then acting surprised when people leave church with anxiety, anger, or grief. So here's my invitation. If you are someone who grew up afraid of hell, and that fear shaped your body, your sleep, your prayers, your sexuality, your questions, your relationships, and even your sense of self, I want you to know you are not crazy. You are not weak. You are not faithless because terror hurt you. And if you are a part of a church, especially if you preach, teach, pastor, lead, counsel, or raise children in religious spaces, I want you to ask Yourself an important question. what are you serving? Are you serving love or are you serving fear with a Bible verse on top? Are you serving liberation or are you serving control dressed up as concern? Are you helping people become whole or are you keeping them scared enough to stay? Because maybe the church does not need hell to make God holy. Maybe the church does not need terror to make grace meaningful. Maybe love is not weak just because it refuses to threaten people. Maybe the good news was never supposed to sound like, "Love God or burn." Maybe the good news is that love does not need a threat attached to it. So yes, keep God on the menu. Keep compassion on the menu. Keep justice on the menu. Keep the poor, the wounded, the doubters, the seekers, the exiles, and the exhausted on the menu. But hell as a spiritual intimidation nah, family, take that shit off the menu hey family, thank you for tuning in to another episode of My Irreligious Life podcast. Don't forget to take the opportunity to go ahead and click on the alert link so that you can catch upcoming episodes. Thank you and God bless