“Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

I’ve been busy with school and summer job-hunting stuff lately, so I haven’t been posting here as regularly, but I just want to say something real quick that occurred to me.

When I was a Christian, I believed in hell. I didn’t know exactly who was going there, what it looked like, etc. I just thought that it existed and that it was a bad place, something most Christians (which is constituted by the “you send yourself to hell” nonsense — Christians, you’re not original there, we’ve heard that nonsense a zillion times before) pretty much agree on.

It was hard believing in hell and in the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I deserved to spend eternity there, even if Christ saved me. It made me feel deeply grateful but also fairly inferior and insecure. It wasn’t good for my psychological health overall, especially when I began having serious doubts — not the “doubts bring you closer to God” kind (again, been there, done that — that’s not original either). The “my empathy and Christianity is incompatible” kind.

It is truly disturbing to me now to realize how cold-hearted you have to be to be a Christian. Somehow, you have to be OK with thinking that some people might be going to hell and just trust God’s morality, which is supposedly going to send them there, and yet worship this God and say He has beautiful judgment.

It’s not beautiful. It’s ugly to think that anyone deserves eternal torment.

It overwhelms my mind when I think about how cruel or unfeeling towards other people one would have to be to think anyone deserves that.

Anyways — for all the controversy that happens among atheists, I’ve never met one who believed I had even an inkling of a chance of spending eternity in torment. Mosts atheists I know are very now-focused; the present is what matters. Being a decent person to the people around you matters in the here and now, and we take care of it in the present. There is no eternal torment chamber I deserve that opens up when I die.

It might sound strange to say, “Thanks for not believing that I or anyone else will spend eternity in torment — and worshipping the guy who would supposedly send me there,” because that’s such a cruel thing to believe and kinda sets a low bar, to be honest. But, sitting here in my rented room on a street near the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas surrounded by Christianity, it means a lot.

It helps me focus on the present moment, it eases a lot of my religious-era anxiety, and it makes me more comfortable than interacting with people who think that I maybe deserve to perish in hell forever.

Really. It might seem like a small thing, but you have no idea how much this has helped me.

Thank you.