Hell as a place of eternal torment garnered power centuries after Jesus died; partly to appease the conscience of Christian leaders and justify punitive justice as a viable and appropriate response of an abusive state against its citizens. If God does it why can’t the state?
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1/
Christianity wasn’t resisting the abuses of the empire now, even after having been subjects of it for centuries. Instead Christianity was finding justifiable answers in their theology in regards to why the abuses of the empire were not only appropriate, but also godly.
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2/
Christian theologians that were seeing power and privilege after so many years of oppression, chose to protect themselves and hoard privilege, over fighting for equity and heaven for all. In doing so they offered the empire a powerful weapon: god sanctioned abuse.
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Not much has changed and often the human response to complex generational trauma can be a desire to want privilege too. To not be the abused ones. But if all we want is to climb the ladder of privilege, so we are ok; we will become the oppressors instead of bringing liberation
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The path to heaven demands that we resist hierarchies, not play their game. To do that we have to actively chose to stand with the marginalized, to center their voices and needs, to protect their well being, to magnify them. If the least of these are well, we will all be well.
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