Saved From the Fear of Hell
By Rick Lannoye
So how is it that I came to write this book about Hell? I get this question a lot. Let me try to answer, beginning with a little biographical info.
Basically, I'm just a regular guy who has had a few not-so-regular life experiences, experiences that first led to doubts, then to hard questions, and then finally--because of a huge desire to settle for nothing less than the truth no matter what it turns out to be--to some very good answers.
I was born in 1956, in Racine, Wisconsin. My Dad was an Ex-Marine and a devout Catholic; my Mom, a transplant from rural North Carolina, and a not-so-devout Baptist.
I went to Catholic parochial school from the 1st through the 8th grades, but just as I was completing my last year, both of my parents "got saved" or converted to Evangelicalism, and it wasn't long before I was converted too. I was only 14 years old, but I went all out for this new faith which seemed to provide a ready answer to every one of life's big questions.
While still in my teens, I became a rodie for a Christian rock band and went traveling all around the country and eventually to Europe. Eventually, I returned to the States to go to college. Within a couple years, I enrolled in a religious university with every intention of becoming a traditional missionary.
But something wonderful was already going on. I was beginning to have doubts. Yes, having doubts was a wonderful thing! In fact, I'll go so far as to say--as a way of paraphrasing what I was told to tell others in my evangelizing youth--that it was doubt that saved me!
I suppose my whole life has turned on that one, beautiful moment, when I finally stopped long enough to think about what I had been told to believe (what those who had converted me said I was supposed to believe, what they said I had better believe...or else!) in order to entertain some doubts. I began to really question each and every assertion that I had, in my youthful zeal swallowed, hook, line and sinker. Don't get me wrong. I had been reading the Bible for years! However, I, like many converts to Evangelicalism, had been told, in advance, what this or that passage meant. So whenever I read the Bible, it was very difficult to get beyond, what I like to call, the "doctrinal filter" that prevented me from understanding what each part of the Bible was saying, in its own context. I was greatly bothered by the many contradictions I found, but I wasn't allowed to believe there was such a thing as a "contradiction." In fact, I found out real quickly that the last thing you want to do and still be regarded as a "true believer" is to ever admit out loud that you've noticed some parts of the Bible saying one thing and another part saying just the opposite! No, you were just supposed to accept it all as God's Word, and if you didn't like any of the run-of-the-mill explanations for how all the contradictions can somehow still be true, then you just have to wait until you get to Heaven to find out.
Maybe it's easy for most Christians to passively accept all they're told they must believe, things like God torturing billions of people in Hell and so on. But as one who was taking his faith so seriously, so seriously in fact that I meant to dedicate my entire life to bringing its message to some remote jungle on the other side of the world, I had to really think my beliefs through, and to sort out the doubts I was having.
At first, I thought I would find the answers and have every doctrine I'd been handed reconfirmed if only I studied the Bible more thoroughly. After all, I'd been told that all the answers were in this one book. So, study it in depth I did! But I began with a whole new approach--I tossed out the doctrinal filter! "I'm just going to take each passage for what it says, and let the chips fall where they may!" I determined. In other words, I began to find out what the Bible really had to say, with the result that I began to have even more doubts about some of the beliefs I'd been told I had to accept, (even though other beliefs, such as Jesus' many exhortations to do what we can to help the suffering, became all the stronger of my convictions).
I started with the doctrine of Hell, and after only a short time of really looking at this belief with a truly critical eye, it became clear to me just how absurd it was. It was as if scales fell from my eyes! Once I began to read the Bible, especially the gospels, without the filtering lense of religious dogma telling me first what it meant, the passages that were typically used to justify this belief began to stand out like bleeding sore thumbs, that they did not belong there! Over the years that followed, it became very clear that the message of Jesus had been obscured, that his words of hope had been twisted inside out, adulterated! I was, and still am, amazed sometimes, at how I could have ever thought for a moment that the adulterations which, sadly, made their way into the biblical texts over the centuries, could in any way jive with all the rest. But I now know that I felt compelled to accept them before I even had a chance to read them for myself. For reasons I didn't know at the time, there were those in high places of religious institutional authority that wanted to make sure I felt obligated to believe in false doctrines, such as Hell, even though they completely contradict everything else Jesus taught!
Finally, I decided to speak up. It's not always easy, because those who have been pertetuating a very distorted view of God are very good at keeping people mentally and emotionally trapped. It's not enough to understand where the doctrine of Hell really came from, what Jesus really had to say about it and why the belief found it's way into Christianity in spite of its 180 degree opposition to Jesus' core message, but also to understand how they seduce new converts into swallowing the doctrine of Hell, and how they keep them chained to their pews with the fear of it. It's taken me years to unravel all of this confusion, and I still work very hard to expose every new lie and distortion that they come up with.
The result is my book Hell? No! Why You Can Be Certain There's No Such Place As Hell. Whatever you're beliefs are about Hell and the type of God who would put anyone there, I urge you to look at what I've discovered. I'm not asking anyone to just believe what I say but, really, I'm just pointing out a lot of things that are already out there in plain view, such as the many, many teachings of Jesus which, if anyone, even an atheist, were to take just as they are, would have to conclude that the guy who came up with these ideas did not, and could not have, believed in Hell.