Christianity Invented Hell To Frighten People Into Joining - Retired Episcopal Bishop Says

RETIRED Episcopal bishop Reverend John Shelby Spong has dropped
another religious bombshell by revealing that he believes hell is an
imaginary concept invented by the church to coerce people into joining
it.

Over recent weeks, there have been serious question marks raised about
the veracity of many of the claims made by Abrahamic faiths. Last
week, the Catholic Church said it no longer believes Jesus Christ will
come back, pointing out that he probably made the promise to after
taking too much wine.

This debate has been fuelled further by Reverend Spong, the retired
American bishop of the Episcopal Church who served as the Bishop of
Newark from 1979 to 2000.

He added that religions are out to control people, so hell is
probably another one of its inventions designed to frighten people
into signing up.

Reverend Spong added: "I don't think hell exists. I happen to believe
in life after death but I don't think it's got a thing to do with
reward and punishment.

"Religion is always in the control business and that's something
people don't really understand. It's in a guilt-producing control
business and if you have heaven as a place where you're rewarded for
you goodness and hell is a place where you're punished for your evil,
then you sort of have control of the population."

According to Reverend Spong, Christianity has created this fiery place
which has quite literally scared the hell out of a lot of people,
which is part of a control tactic. He added that God is not a Jew,
Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist or Christian and all these faiths are human
systems created by man.

"I think the church fired its furnaces hotter than anybody else but I
think there's a sense in most religious life of reward and punishment
in some form.
The
church doesn't like for people to grow up because you can't control
grown-ups, that's why we talk about being born again.

"When you're born again, you're still a child but people don't need to
be born again, they need to grow up. They need to accept their
responsibility for themselves and the world," Reverend Spong added.

He pointed out that the idea that the truth of God can be bound in any
human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond
imagination.
According to Reverend Spong, his religious traditions only lead him to
God and do not define God.

-NigerianWatch