Yeah, alog with the whole substitutive redemption thing. "There's a Hell? But I wanted to go kill that fella and take his wife. Oh, you say that if I choose your book that I can kill tat fella, take his wife AND not go to Hell!? Sign me up!"
I grew up in a Buddhist family. Later in life, I gravitated toward Taoism. Christian hell has never scared me one bit. Seeing Christians who love to proselytize with the scare tactics (eternal frying in the lake of fire, separation from Yahweh, fading into oblivion,....) makes me either despise them or pity them. Only sociopaths can diminish their humanity that much. I am glad that Ocean and other polytheists no longer have to put up with this Christian crap. Such heinous ideology has no place in a civil society or in American culture for that matter.
The polytheism of the Torah and the Tanakh had a lot to do with my deconversion from Christianity. Fear of a literal, punitive hell kept me from leaving for a while. When I finally did jump ship, I spent my whole Sunday watching sports to keep my mind from drifting to thoughts of eternal damnation and punishment for two years straight. Fear is a hell of a drug.
Depending on which sect of Judaism, they either teach about she’ol or re-incarnation [certain sects hold Torah as the only authoritative where some hold the Talmud also, and some the Zohar also]. The book of Enoch (chapter 22) explains she’ol is the underworld where all souls go when people die. Its split into two sides by a ravine. One side is called abraham’s bosom where righteous and just souls go and the other side is where the wicked goes. Off in the distance can be seen a lake of fire which no one has been thrown into yet but will on judgment day. Sheol is simply a holding place until judgment day. Its basically the exact same concept as Hades by the Greeks and Romans. Christians and Jews threw out the book of Enoch around the 4th century [except the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church] Jews threw out Enoch because it speaks of the Messiah and Son of Man coming, and Christians threw it out because they don’t like the idea that everyone goes to she’ol. They want to think they go to “heaven”. The Bible says YHWH will set up a kingdom once again in earth. That’s why its part of the “Lord’s prayer” ... “our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, THY KINGDOM COME, thy will be done IN EARTH...” Early Catholics kept the concept around in another form called pergatory. But that was so people can buy their dead relatives a willy wonka ticket into heaven. I believe in the Scriptures and the “Church” does not teach them.
There is no Hell. The belief in Hell does a lot of psychological damage!! It is abuse!!! When people are afraid to make mistake; then people are blocked from learning and self confidence.
Judaism was originally a Polytheist faith. I believe Monotheism was a mistake, I believe in something better than reward or punishment. I believe in doing things out of love.
One of the reasons I resisted peer pressure to marry at a young age in my church and raise a family like I was expected to was because I couldn’t stomach the thought of telling my kids about hell and/or taking them to church to have a preacher yell at them that they could could die in their sleep and wake up in literal hellfire. This video reminded me I made the the right choice! Keep up the great work!
I have a vivid memory of a nightmare when I was a little boy. I went to heaven, and my mother was waiting there for me, and I watch her plummet to hell. I woke up crying... It's probably what helped strengthen my depression as a a child.
Oh geez, I had very similar experiences as a kid. I still remember having nightmares of watching my parents in heaven while I was stuck burning in hell without them forever. According to my mom, I'd wake up screaming sometimes, although I don't remember that specifically. Kinda nice to know I'm not the only one who had those dreams, but I'm sorry you had that experience.
I definitely relate. Fear of hell lingers long after it stops making sense. I now believe that the afterlife is as vast and diverse as this world and that many outcomes are possible including reincarnation.
I know this is an older video but as a new subscriber and recently changed my faith to Asatru. I remember being a young child asking "if God made everything, then who made God?" Asking questions like this, while being black no less, caused a very violent reaction and it always came back to "burning in hell" I rejected these notions because I saw it as fear-mongering to shutdown questioning. The more I began to question I realized that hell is just an abstract threat used to silence questions. When I ask the gods questions, I am given answers. My questioning and curiosity isn't meant with hostility but it's encouraged. The Gods give me a peace that Christianity could only dream of providing. Thank you for the work that you do
Oddly enough, the Jewish faith encourages questioning of God and even berating him if it is felt to be needed. And yet the Jewish people have a deep faith and it is probably their mindset of open "permission" to question that has made them one of the most successful groups of people in the world. (We'll leave aside the stricter sects that suppress their women etc)
@@pryorbishop2957 omg, the deflection of "that's just something we'll have to ask god when we meet him" is something i get from my mom ALL the time hahaha
@@fionatanzer5270 I courted Liberal Judaism for a couple of years intending to convert and yes, questioning God is encouraged. However, don't question your Rabbi's interpretation of Scripture or you'll be given the boot. Of course, I left. Then I got into Christianity for a while and eventually left that too. I'm now a Heathen and as OP says, the Gods always answer us and keep encouraging us. They're real and spiritually tangible in a way that the Christian God isn't.
I still feel the fear of hell. I'll have brief moments where ill freeze, and think, "what if God is real?" And I'm absolutely terrified of hell, until I can regain control and I can use logic to get back out of that mindset
If God is real and us all that he is really described to be (infinite, for one thing), then he will easily accept and forgive and approve your honest search for spiritual truth and your desire for spiritual honesty and kindness.
If original sin is an inevitable part of being a human, what kind of god would punish his favorite creation with eternal damnation for the crime of simply being a human being? Leaving abrahamic religion is the best choice i ever made in my life.
Cannot imagine the struggle for those who try and overcome the fear of hell. I was never in Christianity, so I don’t know, but I imagine it takes incredible strength to look at the concept of Hell and come out the other side unafraid. For those who have done so, I salute you. For those still struggling, hang in there. There are countless others who understand what you are going through, and I imagine will help if asked. You can do this.
Oh yeah, I've been pagan for 30 years and I still sometimes have worried thoughts about Hell. The idea of Hell didn't keep me in Christianity, but it did cause me a few worried nights. One of the reasons I became pagan was because the idea of the Summerlands fit my personal idea of the afterlife much better than the Catholic idea of Heaven (which, strangely, no one was ever able to describe to me). Now, as a heathen, I'm perfectly fine wherever I end up, but I definitely do believe in an afterlife. I've had a couple of people tell me that they have each have a date with me in Valhalla, though I doubt that will be my actual destination unless you count fighting chronic pain every day as being in battle. But both Folkvangr and Hel seem excellent places to rest after this lifetime of struggle.
@@TheMilitantMazdakite Yours is such a kind comment. You're wishing OP your God's protection WITHOUT intending to convert her. This is how we should all be.
As a pagan who works a lot with death, dead people, and the passing of spirits, I feel like this video was a warm Valentine's Day present. So first off, thank you for such a good video! Was raised Christian (Lutheran to be specific), and I stayed in it for a few years due to a fear of hell. The one night, I couldn't sleep and decided to think all about it, and I came to the conclusion that Christianity was far from perfect and therefore it couldn't be right. So I said screw it and distanced myself from it as much as possible by jumping into New Age practices, which then became a springboard into my dive into paganism. However, after lots of meditation, deity work, spirit work, etc. I came to the conclusion that hell was, in a way, real. In fact I believe most if not all afterlives exist in some capacity. It's all about where you personally believe you will end up.
One only enters hell if they've create hell (cause others or themselves to suffer constantly as hell is a reflection of the suffering) However it's not an eternal punishment more like temporary purification. But as for the other afterlifes, we will enter which ever one we personally believe in especially what we desire.
I used to fear hell, until I heard the Mark Twain quote about the afterlife being just like all the time before you were born. Now, I fear heaven more. Nothing is scarier than the prospect of spending the rest of eternity worshipping a god I refused to worship in life, or, even scarier, being able to meet anyone or do anything you've ever wanted for all of eternity, knowing full well there's absolutely no chance you'll get hurt or even die if you mess up. That sounds fun, until you start contemplating how long eternity really is. I'd rather burn than deal with any of what heaven has to offer.
Honestly I find the fact that Christians absolutely need to know about what happens after we die to be weird. To be sure, it might be nice to know but I am here trying to make every day worth living. Not trying to make today inhospitable for a promise of a future perfect one. To be sure the fear of Hell plenty of times has made me almost go back to Christianity. But at the end of the day, we need to live for us and our prosperity, not stay in the shadow of the fear of hell
Indeed I mean sure giving some thought to possible future scenarios is one thing near obsessively thinking about a scenario that 1) Is not proven to even be possible 2) Has no clear roadmap to prepare for in any case and 3) Has no definite timeframe. I'd rather focus on scenarios that are happening now or at least likely future scenarios that I can actively do something useful about in the here and now worrying about stuff you don't know can even happen, have no idea when it would happen if it even can and that you probably couldn't do anything of consequence to change anyway just seems like a very odd thing to do.
Wanting or needing to know what happens after death is pretty universal. I think what is annoying with Christians is the fact they say that theirs is a known destination. That it's known beyond any doubt, and supposedly known to everyone born whether in the faith or not, is just absurd.
@@kingpooh7930 Can't say that I personally have sufficient evidence to conclude there even is anything after death, seems kinda pointless to speculate on what something is before establishing that it is. After all to be something by definition requires being, identity is a property of existence without existence it's a meaningless concept.
That's weird I've never met a Christian who believed that. You know Christianity is about imitating Christ right? Like Traditionally. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism tends to worship the mind over God. Though this isn't always the case do to how fractured that world is.
Ex Christian: Hell tormented me as a kid, but when I thought that a good god wouldn't let me go there, and an evil one would, it led me to hours days, weeks of prayer. Prayer with no answers except the echos in my head.
Traditional Christians believe Hell is self imposed. It's facing the presence of God believing it to be wrath while he is waiting to embrace you. Your prayers may have been answered in silence. You were not praying to God but rather the thoughts imposed on you by heretics. I'm really sorry for this.
Regarding Hell, specifically, I struggled with acceptance of the idea even as I was active in the church of my youth. It (like the rest of Christianity) just didn't take. 08:24 "If we can just dismiss other stories of the afterlife, what prevents us from dismissing the Christian stories of the afterlife?" I asked this very question when I was much younger. I recall making the adults pretty damned angry with me, asking this. 09:01 (describing the domino effect). i took this same mental path and came to the realization that if the Christian Hell exists, and their heaven, then it would seem to be that there are multiple afterlives, dictated by the belief one held in life (how that could be, and how you'd end at one that conforms to your belief was [is] a mystery), or that there were none. Now that I'm thinking about it, I remember when I was like 19 or 20 starting a novel about a guy who winds up in the "wrong" heaven based upon his belief. Huh. I oughta see if I can find those ancient notebooks. I'm sure the writing would be fatally embarrassing at this point. Anyways, I ultimately came to the conclusion that "none" was more likely. I'm sorry for anyone fearful of, or struggling with, the idea of the Christian Hell. Based on the fire triangle of fuel, oxygen, and heat, I've come up with the Hellfire Triangle of souls, location, and ability of the divine to send someone's post-mortem consciousness there-- to deal with threats of Hell (I get a lot of them on Twitter and in UA-cam comments, for some reason). Perhaps someone will find it useful? For a threat of Hell to have merit, one must: 1) Show that consciousness survives death; that souls are a thing 2) Show that Hell is a real place, and not just imaginary. 3) Show that gods exist, and the claimant's understanding of them is correct. I realize, Ocean, this is a more atheistic tool than you may be comfortable with, but it's specifically honed against the Christian Hell belief, which we seem to agree upon. Take it easy.
I stopped caring about hell and heaven as a Christian. I just wanted the communion with that god. I felt you couldn’t altruistically come to Christ if it was out of fear. Also I didn’t have a normal view of death or self worth because of depression so that could have played into not fearing hell as much as the average person. Then as a 15 year old I wanted to convert atheists so I listened to them on UA-cam to come up with counter arguments....and that’s how I left Christianity...the first time. (It’s hard not to be brain washed when you and your family are DEEPLY intrenched in the culture.🤷♀️) I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with nearly as much anxiety about hell as the average X christian. That sounds like a great way to be traumatized. As always, your perspective was really interesting to listen to. Keep up the good work.
If a so-called bond with Jesus is supposed to be a “relationship”, no relationship should be based on fear, or on loyalty based around either the glories of a hedonistic eternity of pleasure, nor the unimaginable horrors of eternal misery if you’re not. That’s not love. That’s a bribe. You only stay in this “relationship” out of loyalty, because you’re afraid of being alone, that’s how ✝️ works, a lot only do it because they’re afraid of being abandoned.... What better way to keep people in line and make sure they behave, but a threat😏
My wife has been having personal fears from her trauma as a Christian and as if by a message from the Gods, you posted a video regarding the subject at the perfect time. Great video Ocean, keep it up!
I felt like leaving this here because I felt like my situation might be a bit unique. The short version of this story is that I actually lost my fear of Hell at the same time that I left Christianity, as I decided that I could not worship the Christian God with a clear conscience, and I would rather go to Hell with that then worship their God and feel nothing but guilt, shame, and an unshakable feeling that what I was doing was wrong. Now for the long version. I grew up in a Southern Baptist household in Mississippi. I was taught my whole life that being LGBTQ+ was a sin and a choice, so when I realized I was a Lesbian my senior year of high school, I ended up going through a major existential crisis. I became very homophobic, lashing out at anyone around me, but especially my crush at the time, to try to get rid of my feelings. I would also hang out with a guy friend a lot to hopefully develop feelings for him. But none of this ever worked, and every night, I would be in tears begging God to help me deal with this sin he had placed in my heart. And I would end up crying myself to sleep almost every night, feeling like a failure because, no matter how hard I tried or how much heart I put into my prayers, these feelings didn’t go away. College finally got me away from Church long enough to realize that I had done everything I could do, and it was God who wasn’t doing enough. That prompted a different crisis of sorts, as I started questioning whether being gay was actually a sin, whether God existed at all, or even whether he was truly worthy of worship. I eventually came to the conclusion that God, regardless of whether he existed or not, was not worthy of my worship. No just or benevolent God would condemn being LGBTQ+ as a sin, make some people that way, not respond when they ask for help, and then send them to hell when they inevitably fall to this “sin”. This was the God I saw the Biblical God to be, and I knew that I could not, in good conscience, worship that God, even if it did send me to Hell.
Hey, sis! Hope things are going well for you now! I was raised by a nominally Christian household but we weren't churchgoers. I did spend 2 years in a nondenominational Christian school, and they were good people. But my 7th grade teacher informed the class that all black people were going to hell because they were descended from the son that Noah cursed. And there was my best friend Lee sitting in the front row. Lee was black. I never accepted anyone's authority about religion after that. Other things I learned while there is that sheep get fleeced, and that I utterly reject a number of concepts that many churches preach, like redetermination or that anyone could be damned for something over which they have no control. I was fortunate and even now periodically thank my folks for raising us to think for ourselves, help others, and do the ethical and moral thing not for love of heaven or fear of hell but because it's the right thing to do. Mind, due to the time in which they were raised dad did have a bit of a meltdown when I came out to my folks, but they got over it. I have had many polytheistic friends and find that they make more effort to do right because they don't have an instant reset button like so many 'Christians' treat Christ. My own belief system is eclectic. Or more accurately synthetic. It's built of the things I like about many religions. I do call myself a Christian, thanks to a comparison of world religions professor's description of liberation theology: Christ is the god of the poor and anyone working to improve the lot of the poor is serving Christ whether they know it or not. So it doesn't matter whether you're Christian, polytheistic, monotheistic, atheist, etc. It doesn't matter whether you are peace corps or special forces. If you are digging wells to provide drinking water to the poor you are serving Christ. I CHOOSE to believe this because it is how it ought to be. If I'm wrong? Then I'll join the revolution underway in hell. I am sorry that the narrow dogma you were force-fed in your youth gave you so much pain. I am convinced that if evil exists, it hides behind pulpits. Do what you can to make this world a better place and you will find family along the way. Hugs!
I’m the opposite, I’m a very recent closet Agnostic Atheist, and i had a near constant fear of hell as a Christian but when I finally realized what i was believing and built my life on were lies, i let go and don’t fear hell or the god of the bible because he never existed. My new “fear” (more an anxiety) is not having the faintest idea what happens anymore. Will i stop existing? will i be reincarnated? will I become a ghost? will I transcend into higher forms of reality beyond this earthly realm!? I wish I could know.
Hell is the concept that led me down my path to deconversion. As a Christian for over 30 years I began asking myself whether it really made sense that a loving God would send my 12 year old to eternal torment because he didn’t believe in him or say the right prayer. I decided that what I told my son regarding religion was too important to simply regurgitate what I had always been told and assumed was true. I went down a variety of paths, we simply read the Bible wrong, Jesus didn’t really teach hell, etc etc. Each iteration of my belief system was a step further and further away from Christianity, yet I still wanted to cling to some part of it. I don’t know what I believe at this point, but I won’t be perpetuating the cycle of nonsense and fear mongering with the young man entrusted to me.
I go with the liberation theology idea that Christ is the god of the poor and anyone working to improve the lives of the poor are serving Christ whether they know it or not. I choose to believe this, and act as if it is true, because it's how I personally think it should be. I give no heed to the judgmental nonsense. Do what you can to make this world a better place. The rest will take care of itself. Your son is fortunate to have you.
Christian - my thoughts on afterlives, hell, etc. are that I firstly hold to the opinion that most, if not all forms of afterlives exist although probably not in the exact way humans express them, because of interpretation variations and other cultural factors and therefore, my personal belief is that people are subjected to whatever standards/beliefs they chose to follow in their lives Secondly, I've read in some Christian circles that the concept of the eternal Biblical hell isn't actually even that supported in the bible, more an idea that moved into mainstream understanding a few centuries later. Iirc the more early belief was based around the idea of nonexistence vs. eternal salvation - and the actual words used were borrowed from other cultures and concepts like Gehanna, Sheol, Tartarus, Hades. So idk if it even has that much founding and suspect it was somewhat deliberately misinterpreted to pressure people into complying out of fear. Thirdly, uwUUUUU
Pain is a powerful motivator. Fear of eternal/infinite pain is a BIG motivator. The biggest trick played on people who believe in Christianity is invisible rewards and punishment -- that will be received later on at an undisclosed date.
That was a hell of a video! No really,everything you said rang true.Looking at all this Christian mess from an outsiders view really is enlightening,but it's sad that it is almost impossible for they, themselves, to do.
This video sums up EVERY theological and logistical issue I’ve had during my time as a Christian since I was baptized. I’m really glad I subscribed to Ocean.
The fear stuck around after I left as the indoctrination went so deep. I still find remnants of that indoctrination from time to time. Thankful I left and definitely won’t be going back.
Rewatching your stuff during Yule feels right. Happy Solstice everybody! As a Christian, I feared Hell so much more than being a pagan. And this was in a sect of Christianity that didn’t exactly tote around this belief in a fire and brimstone hell scape (Mormons believe more in God casting one’s soul into Eternal Darkness where you cannot be reunited with family and God in their tiered Heaven situation). But I feared I’d be sent to an actual eternal damnation for little things like swearing or not reading all the books. To the point that I as a ten year old was praying for an hour straight and crying because I was so scared. Now as a hellenic pagan and on my journey to this, the concept of sin and hell was one of the first things to go for me. And boy was that a wave of relief and spiritual awareness.
My wife has had a pre-life memory her whole life. I also geek out on ghost shows and nde studies and what I always come away with is that the vast majority of experiences are very heathenish. Time spent with family, friends, meadows, youth, etc. That said, there are some experiences I have read that are hellish. Oddly enough though, they seem to only come from Christians, Hindus, Atheists, Buddhists, and Vaishnavas. Take that for what it is.
My childhood nightmares set me up to believe in reincarnation, so I have always been out of step with the traditional Christian assumptions about what happens next.
Fear of hell is what kept me in Christianity for a long time. I have scrupulosity, so for most of my life, I obsessed over whether or not I was going to hell. Eventually, when I was 16, I started really questioning my beliefs, but only within a Christian context. I never looked outside of Christianity because I feared being wrong and the potential consequences of being wrong. Around age 17, I nominally identified as a progressive Christian because I couldn't understand the idea of eternal hell or why God would condemn gays and trans people to hell forever. But deep down inside, I still feared being wrong and worried about whether or not I was leading people astray and whether or not I would be sent to hell forever for believing and teaching the wrong ideas. Again because I have scrupulosity, I always struggled with feeling worthy before God, so I decided in my mind that I would dedicate my life to God and Jesus by becoming a preacher and decided to become a Bible major at a Christian college just to feel justified before God. A few months before I turned 18, I began to intensely question Christianity. I had started talking to people of other religions in particular people of other Abrahamic faiths and Buddhists. And I had this intense cognitive dissonance because a lot of these people I interacted with acted just as "Christian" or even more "Christian" than a lot of the Christians I know. I couldn't understand how an all-loving God could condemn these people to hell forever for being wonderful people with the wrong ideas about God. It just didn't make sense to me. During my agnostic period, I lived with a lot of anxiety about whether or not I would go to hell if I just died because I couldn't find Christianity believable. What eventually got me over my fear of hell was convincing myself with absolute certainty that Christianity isn't true and getting into mysticism/occultism and knowing what God/the gods are truly like.
I remember being 11 or 12 hoping I would die in the night so that I wouldn’t have to be tested with all the rules that typically ended in hell. I could die with the innocence of a child and just go to heaven instead of slog it on earth dealing with literally everything that would push me to hell. I was scared and anxious all the time. I’m glad I stepped away from that. And thank you for opening a platform or learning and communication. It’s really opening my world. I’ve been drawn to Norse paganism and your videos are very informative.
My experience with Hell was a complicated one. My route out of Christianity was a long and winding one, but as it relates to Hell, I mostly struggled with the idea that God created Hell. As there was nothing before God, God must have brought Hell into existence, and as a result he knew that the world would go wrong. If God planned for there to never be sin, then he would have no reason to create Hell. It then became a situation of God punishing people for doing something he planned, and not only that, but doing so with eternal suffering. There were arguements that God didn't send us to hell, we sent ourselves, but in light of him *making* hell, that just felt akin to leaving a toddler in a room that would explode if it moved at all and then blaming the toddler for it's death. I struggled with fear of Hell quite a bit coming out of Christianity, but I would always combat it with the sentiment that I would rather spend an eternity suffering, then praising the bastard that would do that to others. I comforted myself by knowing that if there was one thing God couldn't take away from me and send me to Hell, it was my knowledge that he was a monster. And then I would laugh at God through my infinite agony, and in the eternal suffering, I would find some amount of solace.
Personally….I’ve seen Odin. As an old man with a walking stick sitting on a stump (that isn’t even there) on the side of one of the main highways in my area. I get chills even typing this encounter. Because I had asked Odin in my mind to see him. And that very day…I did. So for me hell is gone. The Christian hell that is. I really do believe in Odin. I also believe in Loki. To me that’s the “God”/“Devil” interaction. Thor is Jesus, being as he is the protector of all. Long hair and beard come to mind. Loki played a playful joke on me last year with a cricket. My whole family was laughing at me. It was actually a memorable moment. Some might say I’m crazy. Which is understandable. But I’ve had these experiences all on my own. I know where I’m going and that comforts me. Hope all is well Ocean. Skal
Eternal damnation made me so scared and it made me hate myself. It was one of the reasons why I was so close to being an atheist or an agnostic. I don’t believe a loving god would send his own children to burn for a finite number of mistakes. I believe in universal salvation now. My view of heaven of hell is more akin to states of mind. I left eternal damnation behind and I never looked back.
If they can't get you with guilt or a reward or maybe an apologetic or pressup garbage then they'll get you with threats of eternal torture and Pascal's wager. The mafia God
Ocean, I watched this yesterday, but when I started to comment, (of course, cuz that's the way my life works!) I got interrupted by chaos! Anyway, it was good, of course, I had to rewatch a lot of it. It's weird how hell affected me. I never truly believed in it, I thought most of it came from Dante's story, with a bit of Revelations thrown in. Even as a Christian, I never believed the common stories of heaven or hell. I got in trouble in my short stint in a christian preschool first for allowing my panties to show on the swing. I said 'god dammit' when I was pulled off by the pastor's wife, taken to see the pastor, who accused me of taking the Lord's name in vain. I argued that god wasn't his name, it was his job, so the 'time out' turned into a paddling!That was at six, luckily my Mom agreed and pulled me from there. Then, years later, at nine, I had to go to a catholic school, again just the only decent school , not because of beliefs, I told a nun her ideas of heaven, (streets paved with gold! and hell, a lake of fire with demons torturing you) were stupid. Why would god want gold, and how could you know you were being tortured if you were on fire? That nun had spoken with glee, and smacked me with her notebook! So, like I said, they didn't seem very real to me. Later as a young adult, even though I'd never believed those stories, I had some fear of stories I'd heard of people who'd 'died' , (NDE's) and claimed good, but worse, others who claimed bad, scarey, experiences. Sorry for the long, rambling, comment! 😘💓✌️🎃
Hell and the ridiculous, petty reasons one supposedly would go there was part of the reason I left Christianity; technically I'm still misotheist in that particular direction, should everything I've heard about him be true. I still have fears I'll go to hell anyway, sortof like how when you flee an abuser you worry they'll come for you for quite a while after.
I've only been a pagan for about a year and a half now, I was raised catholic and still live with religious parents. but the main thing keeping me catholic was that undying fear of you know, burning forever. It was so intense I would pray on my knees for like an hour every night just because i was scared of what would happen if i didn't. and when paganism was introduced to me slowly, and it began making sense to me, I still refused it for multiple months just because of that fear. I didn't even believe in Christianity anymore I just was too scared to take the final step towards something that was so demonized in my previous faith. even now after I've moved on there's still things I'll never be able to fully do just because of those remnants of fear. I do hope other people going through this fear can break out of it and live a much better life without it hanging over their heads.
Hell was the first thing I questioned even as a child. By age 8 I was asking the priests and nuns why if God was all loving would he be willing to fry half of his own creations. I never got an answer but the senior priest asked my mother to stop sending me to the children's Bible study class because my questions were making the nuns uncomfortable.
I'm just really glad there is somebody else who has had the same questions and issues with Christianity and came to the same conclusion. Its reassuring that someone else went through this and others are currently going through this. Mainly because it's a little isolating when you walk away from it after years of indoctrination. So thanks, from a newly called Heathen
For me personally, I believe in multiple afterlives, each correlating with the individual's belief system, for example, Christians Heaven/Hell. Heathens Valhalla/Helheim, multiple halls, Hellenists Elysium/Hades/Tartarus. Hindus, Rencarnation etc.. I guess you can say I believe that our afterlife depends on our own individual spiritual path/values/beliefs we choose to follow.
As a Celto-Roman polytheist I do believe an an afterlife, but think there are many places to go. When I was christian hell did keep me in the religion for some time, was also worried each day that I would end up there.
Left a fundamentalist Southern Baptist form of Christianity due to disagreements over the concept of God having a plan for your life and that you're wrong for not following that. Fear of Hell followed me and I sometimes stop in my tracks in panic even though its been over six years
I left Christianity after accepting that I would go to hell anyway because I had always disagreed with the doctrine in the Bible. Even as a child I thought that the stories were nonsense. Eventually I discovered that Yaweah was cruel & I would rather be damned than worship an unjust deity
Like I've said in comments to other Ocean videos, my christian experience was somewhat unusual. I honestly never even contemplated hell as an actual place before I answered Tiw's call.
I’m definitely still working through this. I left Christianity last year, but the fear of hell is taking a long time to get rid of. It’s getting better though! This is one of the most helpful videos I’ve seen since I left. Thank you.
Hell was the fuel of my anxiety in my teen years that would leave me so terrified i couldn't breath and my lips and fingers would go numb. I was encouraged to pray and find forgiveness and ally worries would be solved. That just added to 'did i ask for forgiveness right and am i still going to hell anyway'
Former Mormon here. As I journeyed out of Christianity I examined the truth claims of my religion. Soon after debunking the founding prophets, I critically examined the New Testament, where Jesus is born of a virgin, which I do not accept. My fear of hell declined after the saving figure was dethroned in my mind.
This puts a whole perspective for MD, my original reason for leaving Christianity for the norse religion was I did not feel comfortable inside of Christianity, I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders when I decided to follow the norse religion it was like I just knew, your take on Christianity and hell in this video made me realize that this is possibly why I felt so uncomfortable as being part of a Christian religion
Hell scares me, in all honesty it is the root of my massive fear of death because I know I'd go to Hell if Christianity is correct leaving ended up me sitting down and having a conversation with myself that at the end of the day if I am to be punished for trying to be the best I can be and it goes against Christianity? Then it is not a religion I personally want to be a part of anymore, not to mention Christian Hell makes no logical sense in the first place
Great video! Lots of good insights. On a side note, the snake with Eve you showed is a ball python. Funnily enough, they're some of the sweetest most gentle creatures I have ever met.
My dad was a preacher. I had to sleep in church pews more than my own bead. living in hell being promised heaven. I realized I didn't want either. My father died cursing God. So I looked into my roots, found the origin of my surname and now I Thank the gods for revealing themselves to me. They don't clam to be perfect, They're not always good or evil. They are what they are. HAIL. to the gods for this day, HAIL Ocean Keltoi. Blessed by Odin, May the Gods guide us on our journeys. Let it be so.
I was raised by a muslim family and started questioning these things when I was 10. I had the bravery to reveal my thoughts to my family when I was 17 and ever since that I have been fighting to prove the logical fallacies in islam. Genesis story is one of the most common and biggest logical errors in all abrahamic religions.
I wanna say thank you for making your videos. For the past few days I have been watching your videos and they have helped me out a lot. Your really helping me leave Christianity. Ima sub up
i was raised in a southern baptist church as well, and one of the many times i got in trouble there was when i was in sunday school and asked “if everything is made from god, why did he make the devil and hell to hurt us?” needless to say i was told to go out in the hall XD christianity being disproved by logic brings me such deep peace, as mean as that may be. you have helped me become such a happy heathen.
Yep. Fear of hell ruled my life for most of it, and kept me agnostic because I kept trying to find something that felt right to me within the Abrahamic faith and for decades I had no sense of faith or spirituality. That greatly affected the trajectory of my life as I struggled to find my true purpose or authentic voice. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective!
Hell was a surprisingly small factor in my leaving Christianity simply because I grew up in an end-times cult, but I just couldn’t hold with the idea that a loving god would knowingly create people they knew were going to be punished for eternity (bc ✨predestination✨) and just like... create them anyway. I’ve had a surprisingly easy time of getting rid of the fear of Hell, my biggest issue tends to be rapture/Revelations anxiety.
Yeah... I actually ended up making it all the way to Seminary (a Southern Baptist one😬). I was also working for a largely Southern Baptist missions organization when I started deconstructing Christianity. So my financial situation was my immediate fear about leaving the church. But even after getting over that, the fear of Hell still kept me "in the broom closet" for a long time.
I was around 11 before silently leaving. i was terrified of hell and i prayed hoping not to get there and then it just slowly fell out of my mind after i had acceped there is no reason to fear hell if im gonna go there anyway as i wasnt really a good person to my family, i had sinned etc. And i went on for a couple years as a humanist but i really hoped there was some kind of religion i could join that i could actually practice and not be in fear of hell or other christians etc. I was the type of guy to fear jesus and god but a few weeks ago i found norse paganism and im still here which is a good sign. Currently doing reasearch to further establish my views and beliefs. Your videos and wisdom of odin's have been very helpful in this and thanks for making theese.
I know I’m like 11 months late but I can agree with the video being that I have obly recently switched from Christianity to polytheism Mainly causeI haven’t had the same viewpoint For Some Time but I agree as I have been bothered by the hell that was talked so much about just glad I find a religion that has the same view as me is just amazing
Buddhism has Naraka and Nirvana, though neither are infinite but can last for a _very_ long time. Heaven and Hell are real places in the Astral Planes. Although, i like the perspective that Heaven and Hell and simultaneously present on Earth, and quite often a state of mind.
My mom convinced me that God was constantly reading my mind, looking for sin. That took YEARS to shake off. But then once you know my mother for longer than five minutes you realize that she's way too into the idea of a surveillance state, y'know, to protect from "them". And to make life easier for white women. Because reasons.
For me, my "Christianity" was the LDS and the "Hell fear keeping me obedient" was their teaching that outer darkness, or their version of the worst possible spiritual outcome, was reserved for those who "knew the truth of God and his gospel and then later denied it." This, along with the strong community aspect they filled my life with (your cult episodes kinda triggered a lot with me here) kept me in The Church far longer than I otherwise would've. Praying before falling asleep still plagues me as I cannot seem to rid myself of thinking "dear Heavenly Father" to myself almost involuntarily whenever I lie down to sleep for the night...and it's been over a dozen years now since I first realized I no longer believed and likely never truly did and my whole perception of life and existence crumbled around me.
As a kid, I was raised Catholic and we didn't really cover Hell in our church-school thing, it was mainly lessons learned in the Made-PG-For-Kids Bible stories and Heaven. Even when we grew older, I never considered Hell or death even as I grew distant from religion. The real crisis started, rather bizarrely I might add, after I played through Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore and a death scene in that game gave me a major fear of death, so much so that I desperately searched for evidence of an afterlife or the spiritual side of things being real. I started off looking into Eastern Spirituality, Ceremonial Magick, Thelema, and beliefs such as that, but after some consideration I learned it really didn't sit well with me. Then I came upon your channel and converted to Heathenry sometime after. I still look around in other spiritual worldviews while still practicing Heathenry, and the various afterlives do provide peace of mind to me (though the Dharmic religions I have more trouble understanding/accepting, Samsara really messes with the head). I don't know any better than anyone, but I do hope to wind up in Helheim or any sort of afterlife when my time comes and be reunited with my ancestors, where we can feast and coexist with Hel as our gracious host (and with any luck, they got Tekken there too).
I was a Catholic for 15 years, and left after I turned 17, these growing fears and doubts started to develop when I was around 12 or 13, the fears I started to have at 12, and continued to slowly grow, they didn’t start in church, it started when I started reading the Bible, the whole thing made me feel horrible about my own humanity, and my mistakes, I saw myself as broken and undeserving of love, the old fears still come back, pretty frequently, in what I call episodes of “Catholic guilt”, fears of being alone, fears that I’m unloved, and that I’m enraging God for my choice, fears of maggots, worms, and spiders writhing under my skin (either while I’m alive, or they’re devouring my rotting corpse, popping holes in my skin) and after 5 1/2 years, these fears are still coming back, and I still haven’t managed to let go of it....
The fear of hell would have eaten me (more like burned) me alive if it had not been for my strategy of deconstruction. I made sure I found over 100 problems and/or logical inconsistencies in Christianity before I officially left it. Finding ample evidence that it cannot be real is the only thing that helped me recover from it.
Thank you for this. I have recently been called away from Christianity and to Norse paganism after 40 some-odd years. Its a journey I will not bore everyone with, but this is indescribably helpful, and continues to be, as I have watched this video multiple times. It gives me strength and conviction in leaving Christianity behind and soundness and confidence that I am on the right path. So thank you, Ocean, for this and all that you do.
Hell didn't play much in changing my faith, but my family wasn't church going. I think I like the concept of Hell because, when you see people who do terrible things to others who want to think that, just because they didn't receive punishment now that the universe will, somehow, make things right. My friends abuser died in the past few years. She flew in from out of state because she wanted to see him in his casket; wanted to make sure he was dead and buried. We were sitting outside, smoking, and I was making sure she was ok. She was venting a bit about him and the last thing about him she said was "I mean, you ain't getting into Valhalla." We have this urge to see wrong made right.
I realized that my fear of Christian hell stems from psychological, childhood fear of being abandoned. I find it strange, even now, in my 40s, that if my whole family was in hell, hell is not scary. But if I’m there by myself (and my family is not there), then hell is very scary. So, it’s not about fearing eternal torture.
I used to have that real fear of hell when i was about 9 and leading up to when i was 21 when I was heavily Christian. After some time fight with myself about any urge to convert to another religion to experiment around and see if it was worth it starting when I was 16.
Hell os the last paiful concept that still haunts me even though I've left much of Christian doctrine behind. Thank you for the video. Maybe someday i can not have nightmares anymore.
I wish i could accurately recount my transition from christianity. I remember being afraid of hell. I remember going through and watching all of Alley43's videos. I remember being reluctant to watch Aronra's videos because "he didn't look right" but eventually giving him a try and subsequently watching all his videos. And then I remember not being afraid of hell anymore. I wish I could remember the exact moment I stopped being afraid. That would be a great time to celebrate annually.
I had hell anxiety, and rapture anxiety, and divine punishment in life anxiety like whoa as a christian, and during the first couple years of my deconversion. The thing that was kind of a snapping point was when I was telling my inlaws about some really homophobic stuff my old church did, and my husband bit down on this huge chunk of glass that was in his dessert that none of us could explain. He was fine, he wasn't hurt, but I was really freaked out and took this freak accident as a "warning shot". And at first I was scared of the god I was indoctrinated to believe again ... and then I was angry. Threatening to do something horrible to my husband if I spoke out is a mob tactic. It's a violent and abusive action from someone who, if he really was an all loving and just god, has bigger fish to fry. If he was going to pull something petty like that, he doesn't deserve my worship. And I wrote down a Statement of Disbelief, 55 things I was taught, that I cannot and will not believe anymore. Chief among those is hell. I reexamined the connection to a compassionate divine that I've felt and always thought was the holy spirit, and renamed it. I'm now an omnist popculture witch -- I believe in a more or less neutral giant cosmic shared experience, a Braavosi "Many-Faced" god that may or may not be an actual entity, but is made from tens of thousands of years of human experience, trying to explain where we come from, what our purpose is, how to interact with others, and how to cope with the inevitability of death. No one experiences their "face" of this ... let's call it the Force, exactly the same way. Some people find comfort and fulfillment in the face called Jesus, some people find it in a different face with a different name, or in academic faces of historical figures who founded a secular ethos, or in multiple faces. I name the faces who help me according to the Valar and Maiar from Tolkien's legendarium: they ask me to be kind, to myself and others, and to help where I can.
so main thing that yeeted me from christianity was hell and all good God. It all happened when I was a teenager, so there are some flaws in this way of thinking. If God is our all kind father, then how in hell can he throw us in hell? I mean if I am a shitty kid, good father wouldn't chain me to a burning furnace, vast majority of bad fathers wouldn't do that. And considering that he is transcendent, he still sins quite a lot when he interacts with our world. He breaks his own rules. Why he is not in hell? Good father wouldn’t do that. Anyway good video, thanks
Ocean, your path is similar to mine. Evangelical to Episcopalian (and then a priest told me about Celtic Christianity) and now exploring the world of Norse paganism. It’s only been about two years since I left evangelicalism but the fear that hell might be waiting is very real and sometimes comes up. I do have a friend who also left the church and we discuss this stuff often and support each other. This concept really messes people up and this video is very helpful in further unpacking the absurdity of Christianity’s idea of eternal torment. I’ll be sure to show it to my friend. ✌️😁
despite rationally knowing that hell does not make sense and cannot exist, the hellbelief is so deeply ingrained that i cannot unbelieve it. i am still totally convinced that i will surely burn in hell (the christian or the buddhist or any other one, probably successively) and that all the suffering i am experiencing both while alive and after death must be punishment for whatever i did wrong.
Thank you, Ocean. I'm glad I found this channel. I need to think about how to tell my story. (It isn't special, I just don't know exactly what to say) [edit:spelling]
I'll go wherever I'll go. If anything when I left Christianity for my brief Satanist period, I wanted to go to Hell because I didn't want to go to Heaven because everyone was obsessed with it.
Parker Campbell I can see why. Heaven is just a place where you eternally praise god. Hell is pretty much undetermined due to the narrators of the Bible being unreliable narrators. The unknown can be more attractive compared to eternal enslavement.
Xeno The Strange that’s the most reasonable guess at this point. No offense to anyone, but I’m not really expecting to see goat daddy with his goons anytime soon.
Occasionally I work with EOD (bomb disposal) guys and I've heard a couple of them use the phrase that "either I'm right or it's very suddenly not my problem anymore" and this seems very much in that vein.
As a former Christian, I remember that my faith would run into a wall every time I thought about the afterlife. Not because of the thought of hell -- my parents and the people in my community never really stressed that part so in my hazy conceptions we were all probably bound for heaven anyway. But because it all seemed so improbable to me that there would be an infinite time and place for people to keep existing but in a different way. This was one of my first sources of doubt in the whole narrative.
I was not kept in the fold by a fear of hell. An exploration of Greek lore as a youngster saved me from that headache. My exiting catalyst was the passing of my father's mother. In my, then twelve year old, mind such a great and powerful god wouldn't so upend a family.
I have been in the process for a year or two now of trying to leave my Christianity behind and move on to a neutral ground before deciding if i want to bring any spirituality back into my life at all. But, still the sudden visceral reaction that overtakes me any time I let my mind drift to "what if I am wrong, what if I'll go to hell?" even now is a testament to how certain sects of Christianity can use the threat of hell to control its members.
Hell was a vague fiery based fear concept that did keep me praying out of fear for most of my youth. For me it was finally questioning if hell does not exist and these conversations I think I am having with "God" as prayer are really just me talking back to myself what am I doing? I stopped believing as a trial run for a week, then a month, waiting for punishment or some effect. The months stretched until I realized there was no wrath to fear.
I'm new to your channel and honestly i have dealt with afterlife anxiety due to Christianity, but after getting interested in paganism and watching your video on Hel the goddess i much prefer her over christian faith due to the idea of her being a motherly figure as well as a punisher of wrong.
I vowed to leave Christianity when I was 7. Not kidding. It was during Sunday School and the pastor's wife was reading from a children's Bible, and she was talking about Genesis and when she got to Adam and Eve's kids and who they married, I popped my hand up and asked her where their spouses came from. The pastor's wife tried to deflect, saying that it wasn't important. I said that it was because if their spouses weren't from God then they were from Satan and they were evil. She then said they were from the land of Nod. And I responded "But that's where Cain went after he killed Abel, and so they're evil, and where did the people of Nod come from if God didn't create them?" She didn't like me pressing her about it, and even suggesting that God would allow anyone evil to fart around with his creations, so she snapped the book closed, knelt down in front of me so I could smell her stale cigarette and coffee breath, and told me that, "Little girls who ask too many questions go to hell." For a few weeks, I was beside myself with fear. I had night terrors, I slept walked, screaming and crying in my sleep as I dreamed of being dragged down into the fire depths of hell. It fucked me up for a while. Then, when we were at local gas station, I overheard from a few of the adults that the Pastor had been arrested for solicitation of prostitution. And then the news, later, that the pastor had used the Tithe to keep himself swimming in hired coochie. And that was the moment that I realized that the whole thing was just about money and control. At 7. I can't tell you the amount of hate I got from my aunts, uncles and even my own parents and grandparents when I refused to go to church or get baptized. That was the first time my dad threatened to kick me out of the house. At 7. Yea, fuck that noise.
It is my honest and humble opinion that if the Hell narrative didn't exist Christianity would have died out a long long time ago.
Wolf The Red or wouldn't be as prevalent
Yeah, alog with the whole substitutive redemption thing. "There's a Hell? But I wanted to go kill that fella and take his wife. Oh, you say that if I choose your book that I can kill tat fella, take his wife AND not go to Hell!? Sign me up!"
And the islam narative as well
@@paradisecityX0 only heresay that a preacher who dropped hell found his church emptying.
I grew up in a Buddhist family. Later in life, I gravitated toward Taoism. Christian hell has never scared me one bit.
Seeing Christians who love to proselytize with the scare tactics (eternal frying in the lake of fire, separation from Yahweh, fading into oblivion,....) makes me either despise them or pity them.
Only sociopaths can diminish their humanity that much.
I am glad that Ocean and other polytheists no longer have to put up with this Christian crap. Such heinous ideology has no place in a civil society or in American culture for that matter.
Its getting hot in here.
Let's take off all our clothes.
You know, I *AM* getting so hot.
I'm gonna take my clothes off.
Maybe that why hell is hot, so people get nude and horny 😂😂😂
It's 23° F (-5° C) here before wind chill, so it isn't hot here. Though shared bodily warmth, naked of course, is a prime survival strategy.
lol
@@CarlosGonzalez-mp9re That sounds Pan Hellenic, not Christian. Badum tsss.
The polytheism of the Torah and the Tanakh had a lot to do with my deconversion from Christianity. Fear of a literal, punitive hell kept me from leaving for a while. When I finally did jump ship, I spent my whole Sunday watching sports to keep my mind from drifting to thoughts of eternal damnation and punishment for two years straight. Fear is a hell of a drug.
Judaism doesn't even have a hell to speak of, it was purely a christian invention.
@@HollyOak Zoroastrianism is actually responsible for bringing the concept of hell to the Jews.
Depending on which sect of Judaism, they either teach about she’ol or re-incarnation [certain sects hold Torah as the only authoritative where some hold the Talmud also, and some the Zohar also].
The book of Enoch (chapter 22) explains she’ol is the underworld where all souls go when people die. Its split into two sides by a ravine. One side is called abraham’s bosom where righteous and just souls go and the other side is where the wicked goes. Off in the distance can be seen a lake of fire which no one has been thrown into yet but will on judgment day.
Sheol is simply a holding place until judgment day.
Its basically the exact same concept as Hades by the Greeks and Romans.
Christians and Jews threw out the book of Enoch around the 4th century [except the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church]
Jews threw out Enoch because it speaks of the Messiah and Son of Man coming, and Christians threw it out because they don’t like the idea that everyone goes to she’ol.
They want to think they go to “heaven”.
The Bible says YHWH will set up a kingdom once again in earth.
That’s why its part of the “Lord’s prayer” ... “our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, THY KINGDOM COME, thy will be done IN EARTH...”
Early Catholics kept the concept around in another form called pergatory. But that was so people can buy their dead relatives a willy wonka ticket into heaven.
I believe in the Scriptures and the “Church” does not teach them.
There is no Hell. The belief in Hell does a lot of psychological damage!! It is abuse!!! When people are afraid to make mistake; then people are blocked from learning and self confidence.
Judaism was originally a Polytheist faith. I believe Monotheism was a mistake, I believe in something better than reward or punishment. I believe in doing things out of love.
One of the reasons I resisted peer pressure to marry at a young age in my church and raise a family like I was expected to was because I couldn’t stomach the thought of telling my kids about hell and/or taking them to church to have a preacher yell at them that they could could die in their sleep and wake up in literal hellfire. This video reminded me I made the the right choice! Keep up the great work!
I have a vivid memory of a nightmare when I was a little boy. I went to heaven, and my mother was waiting there for me, and I watch her plummet to hell. I woke up crying... It's probably what helped strengthen my depression as a a child.
Oh geez, I had very similar experiences as a kid. I still remember having nightmares of watching my parents in heaven while I was stuck burning in hell without them forever. According to my mom, I'd wake up screaming sometimes, although I don't remember that specifically. Kinda nice to know I'm not the only one who had those dreams, but I'm sorry you had that experience.
I definitely relate. Fear of hell lingers long after it stops making sense. I now believe that the afterlife is as vast and diverse as this world and that many outcomes are possible including reincarnation.
I know this is an older video but as a new subscriber and recently changed my faith to Asatru.
I remember being a young child asking "if God made everything, then who made God?" Asking questions like this, while being black no less, caused a very violent reaction and it always came back to "burning in hell"
I rejected these notions because I saw it as fear-mongering to shutdown questioning. The more I began to question I realized that hell is just an abstract threat used to silence questions.
When I ask the gods questions, I am given answers. My questioning and curiosity isn't meant with hostility but it's encouraged. The Gods give me a peace that Christianity could only dream of providing.
Thank you for the work that you do
Oddly enough, the Jewish faith encourages questioning of God and even berating him if it is felt to be needed. And yet the Jewish people have a deep faith and it is probably their mindset of open "permission" to question that has made them one of the most successful groups of people in the world. (We'll leave aside the stricter sects that suppress their women etc)
As a child I asked my preacher father the same thing. Where did God come from? He told me he has always been and I can ask him when I get to heaven. 🙄
@@pryorbishop2957 omg, the deflection of "that's just something we'll have to ask god when we meet him" is something i get from my mom ALL the time hahaha
@@fionatanzer5270 I courted Liberal Judaism for a couple of years intending to convert and yes, questioning God is encouraged. However, don't question your Rabbi's interpretation of Scripture or you'll be given the boot. Of course, I left. Then I got into Christianity for a while and eventually left that too. I'm now a Heathen and as OP says, the Gods always answer us and keep encouraging us. They're real and spiritually tangible in a way that the Christian God isn't.
A friend of mine got excommunicated from the Catholic Church for asking questions during Catechism. A CHILD. Imagine that.
I still feel the fear of hell. I'll have brief moments where ill freeze, and think, "what if God is real?" And I'm absolutely terrified of hell, until I can regain control and I can use logic to get back out of that mindset
If God is real and us all that he is really described to be (infinite, for one thing), then he will easily accept and forgive and approve your honest search for spiritual truth and your desire for spiritual honesty and kindness.
If original sin is an inevitable part of being a human, what kind of god would punish his favorite creation with eternal damnation for the crime of simply being a human being? Leaving abrahamic religion is the best choice i ever made in my life.
As a Zoroastrian, I 100% agree.
Cannot imagine the struggle for those who try and overcome the fear of hell. I was never in Christianity, so I don’t know, but I imagine it takes incredible strength to look at the concept of Hell and come out the other side unafraid. For those who have done so, I salute you. For those still struggling, hang in there. There are countless others who understand what you are going through, and I imagine will help if asked. You can do this.
Oh yeah, I've been pagan for 30 years and I still sometimes have worried thoughts about Hell. The idea of Hell didn't keep me in Christianity, but it did cause me a few worried nights. One of the reasons I became pagan was because the idea of the Summerlands fit my personal idea of the afterlife much better than the Catholic idea of Heaven (which, strangely, no one was ever able to describe to me). Now, as a heathen, I'm perfectly fine wherever I end up, but I definitely do believe in an afterlife. I've had a couple of people tell me that they have each have a date with me in Valhalla, though I doubt that will be my actual destination unless you count fighting chronic pain every day as being in battle. But both Folkvangr and Hel seem excellent places to rest after this lifetime of struggle.
I thought Folkvangr was for the warriors brought to Freja? She gets first half, and Odin takes the other.
@@azuregriffin1116 That’s true. Freyja gets her choice of warriors while Odin takes the remaining warriors.
I want to learn more about everything you just said haha
As a Zoroastrian, I must tell you to not fear hell; Ahura Mazda will protect you.
@@TheMilitantMazdakite Yours is such a kind comment. You're wishing OP your God's protection WITHOUT intending to convert her. This is how we should all be.
For me, it was the "reasons" people were condemmed to hell that led me out of Christianity.
Of course every action has a reaction...
As a pagan who works a lot with death, dead people, and the passing of spirits, I feel like this video was a warm Valentine's Day present. So first off, thank you for such a good video!
Was raised Christian (Lutheran to be specific), and I stayed in it for a few years due to a fear of hell. The one night, I couldn't sleep and decided to think all about it, and I came to the conclusion that Christianity was far from perfect and therefore it couldn't be right. So I said screw it and distanced myself from it as much as possible by jumping into New Age practices, which then became a springboard into my dive into paganism.
However, after lots of meditation, deity work, spirit work, etc. I came to the conclusion that hell was, in a way, real. In fact I believe most if not all afterlives exist in some capacity. It's all about where you personally believe you will end up.
One only enters hell if they've create hell (cause others or themselves to suffer constantly as hell is a reflection of the suffering) However it's not an eternal punishment more like temporary purification. But as for the other afterlifes, we will enter which ever one we personally believe in especially what we desire.
I used to fear hell, until I heard the Mark Twain quote about the afterlife being just like all the time before you were born. Now, I fear heaven more. Nothing is scarier than the prospect of spending the rest of eternity worshipping a god I refused to worship in life, or, even scarier, being able to meet anyone or do anything you've ever wanted for all of eternity, knowing full well there's absolutely no chance you'll get hurt or even die if you mess up. That sounds fun, until you start contemplating how long eternity really is. I'd rather burn than deal with any of what heaven has to offer.
Ocean: ...and dominoes will fall across the rest of...
Me: Mmmmm...pizza...
RIGHT?
I have ordered pizza twice because of this video.
They should sponsor Ocean tbh.
Honestly I find the fact that Christians absolutely need to know about what happens after we die to be weird. To be sure, it might be nice to know but I am here trying to make every day worth living. Not trying to make today inhospitable for a promise of a future perfect one. To be sure the fear of Hell plenty of times has made me almost go back to Christianity. But at the end of the day, we need to live for us and our prosperity, not stay in the shadow of the fear of hell
Indeed I mean sure giving some thought to possible future scenarios is one thing near obsessively thinking about a scenario that 1) Is not proven to even be possible 2) Has no clear roadmap to prepare for in any case and 3) Has no definite timeframe. I'd rather focus on scenarios that are happening now or at least likely future scenarios that I can actively do something useful about in the here and now worrying about stuff you don't know can even happen, have no idea when it would happen if it even can and that you probably couldn't do anything of consequence to change anyway just seems like a very odd thing to do.
Wanting or needing to know what happens after death is pretty universal. I think what is annoying with Christians is the fact they say that theirs is a known destination. That it's known beyond any doubt, and supposedly known to everyone born whether in the faith or not, is just absurd.
@@kingpooh7930 Can't say that I personally have sufficient evidence to conclude there even is anything after death, seems kinda pointless to speculate on what something is before establishing that it is. After all to be something by definition requires being, identity is a property of existence without existence it's a meaningless concept.
@@seraphina985 I believe in our mortality. When we die we go back to dust. We become humus.
That's weird I've never met a Christian who believed that.
You know Christianity is about imitating Christ right? Like Traditionally. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism tends to worship the mind over God. Though this isn't always the case do to how fractured that world is.
Ex Christian: Hell tormented me as a kid, but when I thought that a good god wouldn't let me go there, and an evil one would, it led me to hours days, weeks of prayer. Prayer with no answers except the echos in my head.
Traditional Christians believe Hell is self imposed. It's facing the presence of God believing it to be wrath while he is waiting to embrace you.
Your prayers may have been answered in silence. You were not praying to God but rather the thoughts imposed on you by heretics. I'm really sorry for this.
In the North they had to change Hell to be a place of cold as a hot hell was quite attractive.
Regarding Hell, specifically, I struggled with acceptance of the idea even as I was active in the church of my youth. It (like the rest of Christianity) just didn't take.
08:24 "If we can just dismiss other stories of the afterlife, what prevents us from dismissing the Christian stories of the afterlife?"
I asked this very question when I was much younger. I recall making the adults pretty damned angry with me, asking this.
09:01 (describing the domino effect).
i took this same mental path and came to the realization that if the Christian Hell exists, and their heaven, then it would seem to be that there are multiple afterlives, dictated by the belief one held in life (how that could be, and how you'd end at one that conforms to your belief was [is] a mystery), or that there were none. Now that I'm thinking about it, I remember when I was like 19 or 20 starting a novel about a guy who winds up in the "wrong" heaven based upon his belief. Huh. I oughta see if I can find those ancient notebooks. I'm sure the writing would be fatally embarrassing at this point. Anyways, I ultimately came to the conclusion that "none" was more likely.
I'm sorry for anyone fearful of, or struggling with, the idea of the Christian Hell.
Based on the fire triangle of fuel, oxygen, and heat, I've come up with the Hellfire Triangle of souls, location, and ability of the divine to send someone's post-mortem consciousness there-- to deal with threats of Hell (I get a lot of them on Twitter and in UA-cam comments, for some reason). Perhaps someone will find it useful?
For a threat of Hell to have merit, one must:
1) Show that consciousness survives death; that souls are a thing
2) Show that Hell is a real place, and not just imaginary.
3) Show that gods exist, and the claimant's understanding of them is correct.
I realize, Ocean, this is a more atheistic tool than you may be comfortable with, but it's specifically honed against the Christian Hell belief, which we seem to agree upon.
Take it easy.
I stopped caring about hell and heaven as a Christian. I just wanted the communion with that god. I felt you couldn’t altruistically come to Christ if it was out of fear. Also I didn’t have a normal view of death or self worth because of depression so that could have played into not fearing hell as much as the average person. Then as a 15 year old I wanted to convert atheists so I listened to them on UA-cam to come up with counter arguments....and that’s how I left Christianity...the first time. (It’s hard not to be brain washed when you and your family are DEEPLY intrenched in the culture.🤷♀️) I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with nearly as much anxiety about hell as the average X christian. That sounds like a great way to be traumatized.
As always, your perspective was really interesting to listen to. Keep up the good work.
If a so-called bond with Jesus is supposed to be a “relationship”, no relationship should be based on fear, or on loyalty based around either the glories of a hedonistic eternity of pleasure, nor the unimaginable horrors of eternal misery if you’re not.
That’s not love. That’s a bribe.
You only stay in this “relationship” out of loyalty, because you’re afraid of being alone, that’s how ✝️ works, a lot only do it because they’re afraid of being abandoned....
What better way to keep people in line and make sure they behave, but a threat😏
My wife has been having personal fears from her trauma as a Christian and as if by a message from the Gods, you posted a video regarding the subject at the perfect time.
Great video Ocean, keep it up!
I felt like leaving this here because I felt like my situation might be a bit unique.
The short version of this story is that I actually lost my fear of Hell at the same time that I left Christianity, as I decided that I could not worship the Christian God with a clear conscience, and I would rather go to Hell with that then worship their God and feel nothing but guilt, shame, and an unshakable feeling that what I was doing was wrong.
Now for the long version.
I grew up in a Southern Baptist household in Mississippi. I was taught my whole life that being LGBTQ+ was a sin and a choice, so when I realized I was a Lesbian my senior year of high school, I ended up going through a major existential crisis. I became very homophobic, lashing out at anyone around me, but especially my crush at the time, to try to get rid of my feelings. I would also hang out with a guy friend a lot to hopefully develop feelings for him. But none of this ever worked, and every night, I would be in tears begging God to help me deal with this sin he had placed in my heart. And I would end up crying myself to sleep almost every night, feeling like a failure because, no matter how hard I tried or how much heart I put into my prayers, these feelings didn’t go away. College finally got me away from Church long enough to realize that I had done everything I could do, and it was God who wasn’t doing enough. That prompted a different crisis of sorts, as I started questioning whether being gay was actually a sin, whether God existed at all, or even whether he was truly worthy of worship. I eventually came to the conclusion that God, regardless of whether he existed or not, was not worthy of my worship. No just or benevolent God would condemn being LGBTQ+ as a sin, make some people that way, not respond when they ask for help, and then send them to hell when they inevitably fall to this “sin”. This was the God I saw the Biblical God to be, and I knew that I could not, in good conscience, worship that God, even if it did send me to Hell.
Hell was made up by men!!! The gods never made Hell!!! They are not cruel!
Hey, sis! Hope things are going well for you now!
I was raised by a nominally Christian household but we weren't churchgoers. I did spend 2 years in a nondenominational Christian school, and they were good people. But my 7th grade teacher informed the class that all black people were going to hell because they were descended from the son that Noah cursed. And there was my best friend Lee sitting in the front row. Lee was black. I never accepted anyone's authority about religion after that.
Other things I learned while there is that sheep get fleeced, and that I utterly reject a number of concepts that many churches preach, like redetermination or that anyone could be damned for something over which they have no control.
I was fortunate and even now periodically thank my folks for raising us to think for ourselves, help others, and do the ethical and moral thing not for love of heaven or fear of hell but because it's the right thing to do.
Mind, due to the time in which they were raised dad did have a bit of a meltdown when I came out to my folks, but they got over it.
I have had many polytheistic friends and find that they make more effort to do right because they don't have an instant reset button like so many 'Christians' treat Christ.
My own belief system is eclectic. Or more accurately synthetic. It's built of the things I like about many religions. I do call myself a Christian, thanks to a comparison of world religions professor's description of liberation theology: Christ is the god of the poor and anyone working to improve the lot of the poor is serving Christ whether they know it or not. So it doesn't matter whether you're Christian, polytheistic, monotheistic, atheist, etc. It doesn't matter whether you are peace corps or special forces. If you are digging wells to provide drinking water to the poor you are serving Christ. I CHOOSE to believe this because it is how it ought to be.
If I'm wrong? Then I'll join the revolution underway in hell.
I am sorry that the narrow dogma you were force-fed in your youth gave you so much pain. I am convinced that if evil exists, it hides behind pulpits.
Do what you can to make this world a better place and you will find family along the way.
Hugs!
Ngl I got a lot more of random fear epsidoes of Hell as a non Christian than I ever did as a Christian
Got to scare you back to the flock.
I’m the opposite, I’m a very recent closet Agnostic Atheist, and i had a near constant fear of hell as a Christian but when I finally realized what i was believing and built my life on were lies, i let go and don’t fear hell or the god of the bible because he never existed. My new “fear” (more an anxiety) is not having the faintest idea what happens anymore. Will i stop existing? will i be reincarnated? will I become a ghost? will I transcend into higher forms of reality beyond this earthly realm!? I wish I could know.
You have done an amazing job of puting some very vaguely formed and complex thoughts that I have had into coherent words. Thx for that.
Hell is the concept that led me down my path to deconversion. As a Christian for over 30 years I began asking myself whether it really made sense that a loving God would send my 12 year old to eternal torment because he didn’t believe in him or say the right prayer. I decided that what I told my son regarding religion was too important to simply regurgitate what I had always been told and assumed was true. I went down a variety of paths, we simply read the Bible wrong, Jesus didn’t really teach hell, etc etc. Each iteration of my belief system was a step further and further away from Christianity, yet I still wanted to cling to some part of it. I don’t know what I believe at this point, but I won’t be perpetuating the cycle of nonsense and fear mongering with the young man entrusted to me.
I go with the liberation theology idea that Christ is the god of the poor and anyone working to improve the lives of the poor are serving Christ whether they know it or not. I choose to believe this, and act as if it is true, because it's how I personally think it should be.
I give no heed to the judgmental nonsense.
Do what you can to make this world a better place. The rest will take care of itself.
Your son is fortunate to have you.
Christian - my thoughts on afterlives, hell, etc. are that I firstly hold to the opinion that most, if not all forms of afterlives exist although probably not in the exact way humans express them, because of interpretation variations and other cultural factors and therefore, my personal belief is that people are subjected to whatever standards/beliefs they chose to follow in their lives
Secondly, I've read in some Christian circles that the concept of the eternal Biblical hell isn't actually even that supported in the bible, more an idea that moved into mainstream understanding a few centuries later. Iirc the more early belief was based around the idea of nonexistence vs. eternal salvation - and the actual words used were borrowed from other cultures and concepts like Gehanna, Sheol, Tartarus, Hades. So idk if it even has that much founding and suspect it was somewhat deliberately misinterpreted to pressure people into complying out of fear.
Thirdly, uwUUUUU
So in essence it all goes back to the most important Christian historical figure: Dante Alighieri?
Christian fanfiction: the most successful fanfiction until 50 Shades?
Pain is a powerful motivator. Fear of eternal/infinite pain is a BIG motivator. The biggest trick played on people who believe in Christianity is invisible rewards and punishment -- that will be received later on at an undisclosed date.
That was a hell of a video! No really,everything you said rang true.Looking at all this Christian mess from an outsiders view really is enlightening,but it's sad that it is almost impossible for they, themselves, to do.
This video sums up EVERY theological and logistical issue I’ve had during my time as a Christian since I was baptized. I’m really glad I subscribed to Ocean.
The fear stuck around after I left as the indoctrination went so deep. I still find remnants of that indoctrination from time to time. Thankful I left and definitely won’t be going back.
Rewatching your stuff during Yule feels right. Happy Solstice everybody!
As a Christian, I feared Hell so much more than being a pagan. And this was in a sect of Christianity that didn’t exactly tote around this belief in a fire and brimstone hell scape (Mormons believe more in God casting one’s soul into Eternal Darkness where you cannot be reunited with family and God in their tiered Heaven situation). But I feared I’d be sent to an actual eternal damnation for little things like swearing or not reading all the books. To the point that I as a ten year old was praying for an hour straight and crying because I was so scared.
Now as a hellenic pagan and on my journey to this, the concept of sin and hell was one of the first things to go for me. And boy was that a wave of relief and spiritual awareness.
My wife has had a pre-life memory her whole life. I also geek out on ghost shows and nde studies and what I always come away with is that the vast majority of experiences are very heathenish. Time spent with family, friends, meadows, youth, etc. That said, there are some experiences I have read that are hellish. Oddly enough though, they seem to only come from Christians, Hindus, Atheists, Buddhists, and Vaishnavas. Take that for what it is.
My childhood nightmares set me up to believe in reincarnation, so I have always been out of step with the traditional Christian assumptions about what happens next.
Fear of hell is what kept me in Christianity for a long time. I have scrupulosity, so for most of my life, I obsessed over whether or not I was going to hell. Eventually, when I was 16, I started really questioning my beliefs, but only within a Christian context. I never looked outside of Christianity because I feared being wrong and the potential consequences of being wrong. Around age 17, I nominally identified as a progressive Christian because I couldn't understand the idea of eternal hell or why God would condemn gays and trans people to hell forever. But deep down inside, I still feared being wrong and worried about whether or not I was leading people astray and whether or not I would be sent to hell forever for believing and teaching the wrong ideas. Again because I have scrupulosity, I always struggled with feeling worthy before God, so I decided in my mind that I would dedicate my life to God and Jesus by becoming a preacher and decided to become a Bible major at a Christian college just to feel justified before God.
A few months before I turned 18, I began to intensely question Christianity. I had started talking to people of other religions in particular people of other Abrahamic faiths and Buddhists. And I had this intense cognitive dissonance because a lot of these people I interacted with acted just as "Christian" or even more "Christian" than a lot of the Christians I know. I couldn't understand how an all-loving God could condemn these people to hell forever for being wonderful people with the wrong ideas about God. It just didn't make sense to me. During my agnostic period, I lived with a lot of anxiety about whether or not I would go to hell if I just died because I couldn't find Christianity believable. What eventually got me over my fear of hell was convincing myself with absolute certainty that Christianity isn't true and getting into mysticism/occultism and knowing what God/the gods are truly like.
I remember being 11 or 12 hoping I would die in the night so that I wouldn’t have to be tested with all the rules that typically ended in hell. I could die with the innocence of a child and just go to heaven instead of slog it on earth dealing with literally everything that would push me to hell. I was scared and anxious all the time. I’m glad I stepped away from that. And thank you for opening a platform or learning and communication. It’s really opening my world. I’ve been drawn to Norse paganism and your videos are very informative.
My experience with Hell was a complicated one. My route out of Christianity was a long and winding one, but as it relates to Hell, I mostly struggled with the idea that God created Hell.
As there was nothing before God, God must have brought Hell into existence, and as a result he knew that the world would go wrong. If God planned for there to never be sin, then he would have no reason to create Hell.
It then became a situation of God punishing people for doing something he planned, and not only that, but doing so with eternal suffering.
There were arguements that God didn't send us to hell, we sent ourselves, but in light of him *making* hell, that just felt akin to leaving a toddler in a room that would explode if it moved at all and then blaming the toddler for it's death.
I struggled with fear of Hell quite a bit coming out of Christianity, but I would always combat it with the sentiment that I would rather spend an eternity suffering, then praising the bastard that would do that to others. I comforted myself by knowing that if there was one thing God couldn't take away from me and send me to Hell, it was my knowledge that he was a monster. And then I would laugh at God through my infinite agony, and in the eternal suffering, I would find some amount of solace.
Personally….I’ve seen Odin. As an old man with a walking stick sitting on a stump (that isn’t even there) on the side of one of the main highways in my area. I get chills even typing this encounter. Because I had asked Odin in my mind to see him. And that very day…I did. So for me hell is gone. The Christian hell that is. I really do believe in Odin. I also believe in Loki. To me that’s the “God”/“Devil” interaction. Thor is Jesus, being as he is the protector of all. Long hair and beard come to mind. Loki played a playful joke on me last year with a cricket. My whole family was laughing at me. It was actually a memorable moment. Some might say I’m crazy. Which is understandable. But I’ve had these experiences all on my own. I know where I’m going and that comforts me. Hope all is well Ocean. Skal
Eternal damnation made me so scared and it made me hate myself. It was one of the reasons why I was so close to being an atheist or an agnostic. I don’t believe a loving god would send his own children to burn for a finite number of mistakes. I believe in universal salvation now. My view of heaven of hell is more akin to states of mind. I left eternal damnation behind and I never looked back.
If they can't get you with guilt or a reward or maybe an apologetic or pressup garbage then they'll get you with threats of eternal torture and Pascal's wager. The mafia God
Ocean, I watched this yesterday, but when I started to comment, (of course, cuz that's the way my life works!) I got interrupted by chaos! Anyway, it was good, of course, I had to rewatch a lot of it. It's weird how hell affected me. I never truly believed in it, I thought most of it came from Dante's story, with a bit of Revelations thrown in. Even as a Christian, I never believed the common stories of heaven or hell. I got in trouble in my short stint in a christian preschool first for allowing my panties to show on the swing. I said 'god dammit' when I was pulled off by the pastor's wife, taken to see the pastor, who accused me of taking the Lord's name in vain. I argued that god wasn't his name, it was his job, so the 'time out' turned into a paddling!That was at six, luckily my Mom agreed and pulled me from there. Then, years later, at nine, I had to go to a catholic school, again just the only decent school , not because of beliefs, I told a nun her ideas of heaven, (streets paved with gold! and hell, a lake of fire with demons torturing you) were stupid. Why would god want gold, and how could you know you were being tortured if you were on fire? That nun had spoken with glee, and smacked me with her notebook! So, like I said, they didn't seem very real to me. Later as a young adult, even though I'd never believed those stories, I had some fear of stories I'd heard of people who'd 'died' , (NDE's) and claimed good, but worse, others who claimed bad, scarey, experiences. Sorry for the long, rambling, comment! 😘💓✌️🎃
So far you and Aliakai have been spot on about my journey. Thank you both for putting this out there.
I was afraid of hell even after I didn’t believe it any longer.
Thats very common I think.
Hell and the ridiculous, petty reasons one supposedly would go there was part of the reason I left Christianity; technically I'm still misotheist in that particular direction, should everything I've heard about him be true. I still have fears I'll go to hell anyway, sortof like how when you flee an abuser you worry they'll come for you for quite a while after.
Had nightmares for years that my ex was back.
I empathize
I've only been a pagan for about a year and a half now, I was raised catholic and still live with religious parents. but the main thing keeping me catholic was that undying fear of you know, burning forever. It was so intense I would pray on my knees for like an hour every night just because i was scared of what would happen if i didn't. and when paganism was introduced to me slowly, and it began making sense to me, I still refused it for multiple months just because of that fear. I didn't even believe in Christianity anymore I just was too scared to take the final step towards something that was so demonized in my previous faith. even now after I've moved on there's still things I'll never be able to fully do just because of those remnants of fear. I do hope other people going through this fear can break out of it and live a much better life without it hanging over their heads.
Hell was the first thing I questioned even as a child. By age 8 I was asking the priests and nuns why if God was all loving would he be willing to fry half of his own creations. I never got an answer but the senior priest asked my mother to stop sending me to the children's Bible study class because my questions were making the nuns uncomfortable.
I'm just really glad there is somebody else who has had the same questions and issues with Christianity and came to the same conclusion. Its reassuring that someone else went through this and others are currently going through this. Mainly because it's a little isolating when you walk away from it after years of indoctrination. So thanks, from a newly called Heathen
For me personally, I believe in multiple afterlives, each correlating with the individual's belief system, for example, Christians Heaven/Hell. Heathens Valhalla/Helheim, multiple halls, Hellenists Elysium/Hades/Tartarus. Hindus, Rencarnation etc.. I guess you can say I believe that our afterlife depends on our own individual spiritual path/values/beliefs we choose to follow.
Same here! Glad someone else shares the same mindset.
As a Celto-Roman polytheist I do believe an an afterlife, but think there are many places to go. When I was christian hell did keep me in the religion for some time, was also worried each day that I would end up there.
Left a fundamentalist Southern Baptist form of Christianity due to disagreements over the concept of God having a plan for your life and that you're wrong for not following that. Fear of Hell followed me and I sometimes stop in my tracks in panic even though its been over six years
I left Christianity after accepting that I would go to hell anyway because I had always disagreed with the doctrine in the Bible. Even as a child I thought that the stories were nonsense. Eventually I discovered that Yaweah was cruel & I would rather be damned than worship an unjust deity
Like I've said in comments to other Ocean videos, my christian experience was somewhat unusual. I honestly never even contemplated hell as an actual place before I answered Tiw's call.
I’m definitely still working through this. I left Christianity last year, but the fear of hell is taking a long time to get rid of. It’s getting better though! This is one of the most helpful videos I’ve seen since I left. Thank you.
Hell was the fuel of my anxiety in my teen years that would leave me so terrified i couldn't breath and my lips and fingers would go numb. I was encouraged to pray and find forgiveness and ally worries would be solved. That just added to 'did i ask for forgiveness right and am i still going to hell anyway'
Former Mormon here. As I journeyed out of Christianity I examined the truth claims of my religion. Soon after debunking the founding prophets, I critically examined the New Testament, where Jesus is born of a virgin, which I do not accept. My fear of hell declined after the saving figure was dethroned in my mind.
This puts a whole perspective for MD, my original reason for leaving Christianity for the norse religion was I did not feel comfortable inside of Christianity, I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders when I decided to follow the norse religion it was like I just knew, your take on Christianity and hell in this video made me realize that this is possibly why I felt so uncomfortable as being part of a Christian religion
Hell scares me, in all honesty it is the root of my massive fear of death because I know I'd go to Hell if Christianity is correct leaving ended up me sitting down and having a conversation with myself that at the end of the day if I am to be punished for trying to be the best I can be and it goes against Christianity? Then it is not a religion I personally want to be a part of anymore, not to mention Christian Hell makes no logical sense in the first place
Great video! Lots of good insights.
On a side note, the snake with Eve you showed is a ball python. Funnily enough, they're some of the sweetest most gentle creatures I have ever met.
When I left christianity wasn't hell, rather that once I died there would be nothing
Your soul lives on
My dad was a preacher. I had to sleep in church pews more than my own bead. living in hell being promised heaven. I realized I didn't want either. My father died cursing God. So I looked into my roots, found the origin of my surname and now I Thank the gods for revealing themselves to me. They don't clam to be perfect, They're not always good or evil. They are what they are. HAIL. to the gods for this day, HAIL Ocean Keltoi. Blessed by Odin, May the Gods guide us on our journeys. Let it be so.
I was raised by a muslim family and started questioning these things when I was 10. I had the bravery to reveal my thoughts to my family when I was 17 and ever since that I have been fighting to prove the logical fallacies in islam. Genesis story is one of the most common and biggest logical errors in all abrahamic religions.
I had a huge fear of hell before I left Christianity. It didn't completely go away when I left but it did lessen
Thorstein's story sounds so comforting.
I know for me, the hell narrative is what had me second guessing myself so much when I left theism. --Darchie
I wanna say thank you for making your videos. For the past few days I have been watching your videos and they have helped me out a lot. Your really helping me leave Christianity. Ima sub up
i was raised in a southern baptist church as well, and one of the many times i got in trouble there was when i was in sunday school and asked “if everything is made from god, why did he make the devil and hell to hurt us?” needless to say i was told to go out in the hall XD
christianity being disproved by logic brings me such deep peace, as mean as that may be. you have helped me become such a happy heathen.
Yep. Fear of hell ruled my life for most of it, and kept me agnostic because I kept trying to find something that felt right to me within the Abrahamic faith and for decades I had no sense of faith or spirituality. That greatly affected the trajectory of my life as I struggled to find my true purpose or authentic voice. I really appreciate you sharing your perspective!
Hell was a surprisingly small factor in my leaving Christianity simply because I grew up in an end-times cult, but I just couldn’t hold with the idea that a loving god would knowingly create people they knew were going to be punished for eternity (bc ✨predestination✨) and just like... create them anyway. I’ve had a surprisingly easy time of getting rid of the fear of Hell, my biggest issue tends to be rapture/Revelations anxiety.
Going through some hell based anxiety. Gonna rewatch some of your videos. They help.
My fear of Hell left me the moment I left Christianity. From then on I have amused myself with the inconsistencies and silliness found within Hell.
Yeah... I actually ended up making it all the way to Seminary (a Southern Baptist one😬). I was also working for a largely Southern Baptist missions organization when I started deconstructing Christianity. So my financial situation was my immediate fear about leaving the church. But even after getting over that, the fear of Hell still kept me "in the broom closet" for a long time.
I was around 11 before silently leaving. i was terrified of hell and i prayed hoping not to get there and then it just slowly fell out of my mind after i had acceped there is no reason to fear hell if im gonna go there anyway as i wasnt really a good person to my family, i had sinned etc.
And i went on for a couple years as a humanist but i really hoped there was some kind of religion i could join that i could actually practice and not be in fear of hell or other christians etc. I was the type of guy to fear jesus and god but a few weeks ago i found norse paganism and im still here which is a good sign. Currently doing reasearch to further establish my views and beliefs. Your videos and wisdom of odin's have been very helpful in this and thanks for making theese.
I know I’m like 11 months late but I can agree with the video being that I have obly recently switched from Christianity to polytheism Mainly causeI haven’t had the same viewpoint For Some Time but I agree as I have been bothered by the hell that was talked so much about just glad I find a religion that has the same view as me is just amazing
Buddhism has Naraka and Nirvana, though neither are infinite but can last for a _very_ long time. Heaven and Hell are real places in the Astral Planes. Although, i like the perspective that Heaven and Hell and simultaneously present on Earth, and quite often a state of mind.
My mom convinced me that God was constantly reading my mind, looking for sin. That took YEARS to shake off.
But then once you know my mother for longer than five minutes you realize that she's way too into the idea of a surveillance state, y'know, to protect from "them". And to make life easier for white women. Because reasons.
For me, my "Christianity" was the LDS and the "Hell fear keeping me obedient" was their teaching that outer darkness, or their version of the worst possible spiritual outcome, was reserved for those who "knew the truth of God and his gospel and then later denied it." This, along with the strong community aspect they filled my life with (your cult episodes kinda triggered a lot with me here) kept me in The Church far longer than I otherwise would've. Praying before falling asleep still plagues me as I cannot seem to rid myself of thinking "dear Heavenly Father" to myself almost involuntarily whenever I lie down to sleep for the night...and it's been over a dozen years now since I first realized I no longer believed and likely never truly did and my whole perception of life and existence crumbled around me.
As a kid, I was raised Catholic and we didn't really cover Hell in our church-school thing, it was mainly lessons learned in the Made-PG-For-Kids Bible stories and Heaven. Even when we grew older, I never considered Hell or death even as I grew distant from religion. The real crisis started, rather bizarrely I might add, after I played through Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore and a death scene in that game gave me a major fear of death, so much so that I desperately searched for evidence of an afterlife or the spiritual side of things being real. I started off looking into Eastern Spirituality, Ceremonial Magick, Thelema, and beliefs such as that, but after some consideration I learned it really didn't sit well with me. Then I came upon your channel and converted to Heathenry sometime after. I still look around in other spiritual worldviews while still practicing Heathenry, and the various afterlives do provide peace of mind to me (though the Dharmic religions I have more trouble understanding/accepting, Samsara really messes with the head). I don't know any better than anyone, but I do hope to wind up in Helheim or any sort of afterlife when my time comes and be reunited with my ancestors, where we can feast and coexist with Hel as our gracious host (and with any luck, they got Tekken there too).
I was a Catholic for 15 years, and left after I turned 17, these growing fears and doubts started to develop when I was around 12 or 13, the fears I started to have at 12, and continued to slowly grow, they didn’t start in church, it started when I started reading the Bible, the whole thing made me feel horrible about my own humanity, and my mistakes, I saw myself as broken and undeserving of love, the old fears still come back, pretty frequently, in what I call episodes of “Catholic guilt”, fears of being alone, fears that I’m unloved, and that I’m enraging God for my choice, fears of maggots, worms, and spiders writhing under my skin (either while I’m alive, or they’re devouring my rotting corpse, popping holes in my skin) and after 5 1/2 years, these fears are still coming back, and I still haven’t managed to let go of it....
The fear of hell would have eaten me (more like burned) me alive if it had not been for my strategy of deconstruction. I made sure I found over 100 problems and/or logical inconsistencies in Christianity before I officially left it. Finding ample evidence that it cannot be real is the only thing that helped me recover from it.
Thank you for this. I have recently been called away from Christianity and to Norse paganism after 40 some-odd years. Its a journey I will not bore everyone with, but this is indescribably helpful, and continues to be, as I have watched this video multiple times. It gives me strength and conviction in leaving Christianity behind and soundness and confidence that I am on the right path. So thank you, Ocean, for this and all that you do.
Hell didn't play much in changing my faith, but my family wasn't church going. I think I like the concept of Hell because, when you see people who do terrible things to others who want to think that, just because they didn't receive punishment now that the universe will, somehow, make things right. My friends abuser died in the past few years. She flew in from out of state because she wanted to see him in his casket; wanted to make sure he was dead and buried. We were sitting outside, smoking, and I was making sure she was ok. She was venting a bit about him and the last thing about him she said was "I mean, you ain't getting into Valhalla."
We have this urge to see wrong made right.
I realized that my fear of Christian hell stems from psychological, childhood fear of being abandoned. I find it strange, even now, in my 40s, that if my whole family was in hell, hell is not scary. But if I’m there by myself (and my family is not there), then hell is very scary. So, it’s not about fearing eternal torture.
Love the use of the Bosch! Such a creepy painting!
Yep fear of hell and the general guilt and shame that goes with the sin concept still hang over me, decades after jumping ship.
I used to have that real fear of hell when i was about 9 and leading up to when i was 21 when I was heavily Christian. After some time fight with myself about any urge to convert to another religion to experiment around and see if it was worth it starting when I was 16.
Hell os the last paiful concept that still haunts me even though I've left much of Christian doctrine behind. Thank you for the video. Maybe someday i can not have nightmares anymore.
I wish i could accurately recount my transition from christianity. I remember being afraid of hell. I remember going through and watching all of Alley43's videos. I remember being reluctant to watch Aronra's videos because "he didn't look right" but eventually giving him a try and subsequently watching all his videos. And then I remember not being afraid of hell anymore. I wish I could remember the exact moment I stopped being afraid. That would be a great time to celebrate annually.
I had hell anxiety, and rapture anxiety, and divine punishment in life anxiety like whoa as a christian, and during the first couple years of my deconversion. The thing that was kind of a snapping point was when I was telling my inlaws about some really homophobic stuff my old church did, and my husband bit down on this huge chunk of glass that was in his dessert that none of us could explain. He was fine, he wasn't hurt, but I was really freaked out and took this freak accident as a "warning shot". And at first I was scared of the god I was indoctrinated to believe again ... and then I was angry. Threatening to do something horrible to my husband if I spoke out is a mob tactic. It's a violent and abusive action from someone who, if he really was an all loving and just god, has bigger fish to fry. If he was going to pull something petty like that, he doesn't deserve my worship. And I wrote down a Statement of Disbelief, 55 things I was taught, that I cannot and will not believe anymore. Chief among those is hell. I reexamined the connection to a compassionate divine that I've felt and always thought was the holy spirit, and renamed it. I'm now an omnist popculture witch -- I believe in a more or less neutral giant cosmic shared experience, a Braavosi "Many-Faced" god that may or may not be an actual entity, but is made from tens of thousands of years of human experience, trying to explain where we come from, what our purpose is, how to interact with others, and how to cope with the inevitability of death. No one experiences their "face" of this ... let's call it the Force, exactly the same way. Some people find comfort and fulfillment in the face called Jesus, some people find it in a different face with a different name, or in academic faces of historical figures who founded a secular ethos, or in multiple faces. I name the faces who help me according to the Valar and Maiar from Tolkien's legendarium: they ask me to be kind, to myself and others, and to help where I can.
I am proud of you here, Ocean. You were not scared to ask the questions. Well done! Skål! 🍻
so main thing that yeeted me from christianity was hell and all good God. It all happened when I was a teenager, so there are some flaws in this way of thinking. If God is our all kind father, then how in hell can he throw us in hell? I mean if I am a shitty kid, good father wouldn't chain me to a burning furnace, vast majority of bad fathers wouldn't do that. And considering that he is transcendent, he still sins quite a lot when he interacts with our world. He breaks his own rules. Why he is not in hell? Good father wouldn’t do that. Anyway good video, thanks
These are really good points.
Ocean, your path is similar to mine. Evangelical to Episcopalian (and then a priest told me about Celtic Christianity) and now exploring the world of Norse paganism. It’s only been about two years since I left evangelicalism but the fear that hell might be waiting is very real and sometimes comes up. I do have a friend who also left the church and we discuss this stuff often and support each other. This concept really messes people up and this video is very helpful in further unpacking the absurdity of Christianity’s idea of eternal torment. I’ll be sure to show it to my friend. ✌️😁
despite rationally knowing that hell does not make sense and cannot exist, the hellbelief is so deeply ingrained that i cannot unbelieve it. i am still totally convinced that i will surely burn in hell (the christian or the buddhist or any other one, probably successively) and that all the suffering i am experiencing both while alive and after death must be punishment for whatever i did wrong.
Thank you, Ocean. I'm glad I found this channel. I need to think about how to tell my story. (It isn't special, I just don't know exactly what to say) [edit:spelling]
I'll go wherever I'll go. If anything when I left Christianity for my brief Satanist period, I wanted to go to Hell because I didn't want to go to Heaven because everyone was obsessed with it.
Parker Campbell I can see why. Heaven is just a place where you eternally praise god. Hell is pretty much undetermined due to the narrators of the Bible being unreliable narrators. The unknown can be more attractive compared to eternal enslavement.
Xeno The Strange that’s the most reasonable guess at this point. No offense to anyone, but I’m not really expecting to see goat daddy with his goons anytime soon.
Well articulated. I would have to lie to myself to believe in an afterlife. I refuse to be dishonest to myself or others.
Occasionally I work with EOD (bomb disposal) guys and I've heard a couple of them use the phrase that "either I'm right or it's very suddenly not my problem anymore" and this seems very much in that vein.
I love that, that's beautiful.
As a former Christian, I remember that my faith would run into a wall every time I thought about the afterlife. Not because of the thought of hell -- my parents and the people in my community never really stressed that part so in my hazy conceptions we were all probably bound for heaven anyway. But because it all seemed so improbable to me that there would be an infinite time and place for people to keep existing but in a different way. This was one of my first sources of doubt in the whole narrative.
I was not kept in the fold by a fear of hell. An exploration of Greek lore as a youngster saved me from that headache. My exiting catalyst was the passing of my father's mother. In my, then twelve year old, mind such a great and powerful god wouldn't so upend a family.
I have been in the process for a year or two now of trying to leave my Christianity behind and move on to a neutral ground before deciding if i want to bring any spirituality back into my life at all. But, still the sudden visceral reaction that overtakes me any time I let my mind drift to "what if I am wrong, what if I'll go to hell?" even now is a testament to how certain sects of Christianity can use the threat of hell to control its members.
Hell was a vague fiery based fear concept that did keep me praying out of fear for most of my youth. For me it was finally questioning if hell does not exist and these conversations I think I am having with "God" as prayer are really just me talking back to myself what am I doing? I stopped believing as a trial run for a week, then a month, waiting for punishment or some effect. The months stretched until I realized there was no wrath to fear.
I'm new to your channel and honestly i have dealt with afterlife anxiety due to Christianity, but after getting interested in paganism and watching your video on Hel the goddess i much prefer her over christian faith due to the idea of her being a motherly figure as well as a punisher of wrong.
I vowed to leave Christianity when I was 7. Not kidding. It was during Sunday School and the pastor's wife was reading from a children's Bible, and she was talking about Genesis and when she got to Adam and Eve's kids and who they married, I popped my hand up and asked her where their spouses came from.
The pastor's wife tried to deflect, saying that it wasn't important. I said that it was because if their spouses weren't from God then they were from Satan and they were evil.
She then said they were from the land of Nod. And I responded "But that's where Cain went after he killed Abel, and so they're evil, and where did the people of Nod come from if God didn't create them?"
She didn't like me pressing her about it, and even suggesting that God would allow anyone evil to fart around with his creations, so she snapped the book closed, knelt down in front of me so I could smell her stale cigarette and coffee breath, and told me that, "Little girls who ask too many questions go to hell."
For a few weeks, I was beside myself with fear. I had night terrors, I slept walked, screaming and crying in my sleep as I dreamed of being dragged down into the fire depths of hell. It fucked me up for a while.
Then, when we were at local gas station, I overheard from a few of the adults that the Pastor had been arrested for solicitation of prostitution. And then the news, later, that the pastor had used the Tithe to keep himself swimming in hired coochie.
And that was the moment that I realized that the whole thing was just about money and control. At 7.
I can't tell you the amount of hate I got from my aunts, uncles and even my own parents and grandparents when I refused to go to church or get baptized. That was the first time my dad threatened to kick me out of the house.
At 7.
Yea, fuck that noise.