I traveled to Jerusalem to face my fear of hell.

around the time i learned to read but before i was able to reason for myself i learned what my loved ones believed to be the most important fact there is to know about life here on earth i had been given an ultimatum i could form a relationship with someone who i could only learn about from ancient stories and perhaps also from the occasional still small voice in my head hardly distinguishable from my own conscience or that someone would send me to a very bad place trusting so completely those who explain this to me i quickly decided that the relationship was the obvious choice it wasn't long afterward that i began hearing fuller descriptions of the bad place i had avoided loved ones and teachers speaking before captive audiences of elementary school children painted graphic scenes of torture and anguish sometimes traveling evangelists would stop by furnishing these scenes with colorful details which i'd failed to imagine on my own this kind of torment was i was constantly reminded so painful and inescapable that no matter how paralyzing my regular nightmares about it were i'd never be able to grasp its true horror the mind of anyone much less the mind of a child is incapable of comprehending eternity after all i had no reason to fear though i was told i had a relationship with the one who could keep me out of that place there was no point to the nightmares the panic the paranoia not if i was sure that i truly knew him i'm a grown-up now and it's been a little over six years since i stopped believing that place is real or that the relationship meant to keep me from it was anything more than me mistaking my internal monologue for a dialogue over time the fear has faded but on occasion a flash of paranoia will return sometimes triggered by something as stupid and childish as a comic panel from the late fundamentalist fearmonger jack chick i have made progress though what helped me overcome fear the most was learning about the earthly origins of the hell myth in hope of deconstructing my fear even more thoroughly though i've decided to travel to the ancient site synonymous with the christian hell and i'm taking you with me [Music] that site is the valley of gehenna or gehenna in jerusalem as we make our way there stopping a few places along the way i'll do my best to explain how the christian hell myth began and why it's so connected to gehenna traveling with me is my wife taylor my buddy jeremy who you might recognize from a few previous videos and my new friend derek [Music] okay we are finally in jerusalem some time has elapsed since the intro of this video but we're finally here and gearing up to go to gehenna i thought we should talk about our upbringings and what we were taught about hell now a lot of you guys already know that i was taught that it was a literal lake of fire and you would burn there for all of eternity in terrible agony unless you accepted jesus christ into your heart as your personal lord and savior so you know i naturally did that and taylor what about you uh so for me yeah i was a place that sinners or people that didn't accept jesus into their heart went but i didn't see it as like a lake of fire or that you're gonna be like physically burned i saw it more as just eternal disconnection from god and i always imagined it as this like abyss that i'm floating in and have no contact with god or anyone jeremy yeah you think about that so i my parents didn't really say much of anything about hell but people i've met in passing in like religious classes and stuff growing up uh they've said it's like a literal lake of fire worst of the worst like worst pain you can imagine every single moment is absolute torment and it only gets like worse and worse so i never bought the whole just disconnection from god thing like it's a literal just the worst horribleness imaginable for eternity which is just incredibly it's a horrible thought the whole thing so i took it literally good thing i never actually bought it though until maybe for a couple of years when i was young but after that so yeah now derek i want to throw it over to you give give jeremy come here your turn so the question was or when i was taught growing up what did you think about hell what were you taught about ho um well i was raised catholic and i don't know it was just it was never really explicitly explained to me what heaven was or what hell was it was more like you know good people go to heaven bad people go to hell it wasn't really explicitly told to me um exactly what that meant it was kind of like up to my own interpretation and i never really had a strong connection uh with the church so i never really put too much thought into it frankly so it never really played a bearing on i mean i'm a moral person but like it didn't play a bearing on like i didn't really believe that there was such places i guess you mean you didn't have to be scared into being a decent person yeah that's just that's always wrong yeah huh how curious i guess i'm lucky yeah to explain where this christian myth came from we've got to start in classical greece plato quite possibly the most influential western philosopher ever taught a dualistic view of humanity we have a mortal body made of coarse destructible material and a soul made of extremely fine indestructible material the body can be killed but the soul by its very nature is immortal what happened to a person's soul once their body died then well we can get an idea of the platonic view by examining some of plato's writing in plato's republic written around 375 bce we find the myth of er in this story a man named er dies is separated from his body and is taken along with others who have died to a place where judges sit next to holes in the sky and earth one at a time the souls received judgment the just were sent up through a hole in the sky the unjust were sent down through a hole in the earth those who descended to the underworld had their misdeeds punished ten times over for a period of one thousand years the pure souls who ascended through the hole in the sky were rewarded for their good deeds with blissful revelry for the same amount of time the worst of the impure souls who had committed egregious injustices were condemned to the torturous underworld forever where savage men of fiery aspect tortured them when souls completed their thousand-year stints of rewards and punishments they were each given a choice as to what type of body in which they'd like to be reincarnated with the choices ranging from animals to wealthy rulers they then were made to drink from the river of forgetfulness before being reincarnated er was not allowed to drink and was sent back into his body to serve as a messenger to others so that people may remember to live virtuously plato presents this story as just that a story it's not some historical account still it represents one version of an idea integral to the platonic view souls are immortal and will in proportion to their deeds in life receive rewards or punishments after the death of the body this became the common view of the soul and afterlife in greek culture a culture highly influential in the world of early christians more on that later alright it is time to go into the old city [Music] given christianity's jewish roots i should also explain the ancient jewish ideas surrounding the soul and the afterlife and really what better place to do that than the western wall which is the only standing remains of the second jewish temple now early jews or at least those who author the hebrew bible did not have a dualistic view of humanity when the body died the person did not survive this view can be seen in what is quite possibly the oldest book in the hebrew bible the book of job but a man dies and is laid low he breathes his last and is no more as the water of a lake dries up or a riverbed becomes parched and dry so he lies down and does not rise till the heavens are no more people will not awake or be roused from their sleep i can already hear some of you typing what about the term sheol used dozens of times throughout the hebrew text is this not the old testament's way of referring to hell in a word no sheol is not described as a place of conscious torment or even a place of consciousness at all in many places throughout the hebrew bible sheol is a synonym for death the grave or a pit containing a corpse let's talk poetical style for a second there's a convention in ancient hebrew poetry called the synonymous parallelism this is where instead of rhyming two lines a poet expresses an idea in one line then expresses the same idea in a second line but in different words you could say that here the ideas rhyme rather than the words themselves take psalm 16 10 because you will not abandon me to sheol nor will you let your faithful one see decay or proverbs 1 12 let's swallow them alive like sheol and whole like those who go down to the pit in these verses the authors equate shield to a place of decay and a pit neither being a place of torment now there is a bit more complexity and ambiguity surrounding this term that i can't quite communicate here but i can confidently say that non-sectarian biblical scholars do not believe she'll to be similar to much less synonymous with hell if you'd like to learn more about sheol yourself check out the video linked in my description in short then the jewish people at least those who authored the hebrew bible did not believe in the immortal soul a conscious afterlife or rewards and punishments in an afterlife you guys feel being in the spotlight for once we're behind the camera for a reason all right there's just one more ancient way of thinking we need to understand before we get to gehenna this is the really fascinating stuff at least in my opinion the jewish apocalyptic view of bodily death and resurrection apocalypticism was a very popular view among jews in jesus time as well as a few centuries prior in this view evil forces such as demons principalities and willful powers like sin had gained control of the world which is why so much suffering and political turmoil existed to a people like the jews who'd been made victim of military conquest foreign occupation and religious persecution around that time there was a lot of evil and suffering to explain god was soon to intervene though any day now god would take back control from the forces of evil establish utopian kingdom on earth and then judge all people based on how they lived if a person sided with god and was righteous they'd be rewarded with admission to his earthly kingdom where they would live eternally that kingdom by the way would be headquartered right here in jerusalem if a person sided with the forces of evil they'd be destroyed wiped out of existence completely now it wouldn't be fair ancient people thought if only those living at the time were judged so god in fairness would bodily resurrect everyone who had ever died and subject them to the same judgment the godly would be bodily raised from the dead and live eternally while everyone else would be bodily resurrected only to be destroyed and forever forgotten john the baptist the infamous pharisees and the authors of the book of daniel all shared this view most importantly for this video though is another influential person who held to this view jesus himself as jesus says at the start of our oldest gospel mark the time has come the kingdom of god has come near repent and believe the good news critical scholars widely agree that jesus held this view as his most well attested teachings were consistent with apocalypticism the forces of evil reigned for a time but that time is coming to an end god's kingdom is about to be established on earth so repent so that you may enter into it jesus like most apocalyptic thinkers thought that this was going to happen very soon even within the lifetime of his disciples and he said to them truly i tell you some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of god has come with power clearly though that didn't happen early christians waited and waited for god's kingdom to arrive but it never did once a generation had passed and everyone alive at the time of jesus had died what were christians to do give up hope admit that jesus was wrong no that couldn't be it there had to be another explanation they thought what if we just misunderstood jesus teachings we need to find a spot that's a little more comfortable a little less sunny this is where the greek ideas we discussed earlier become relevant most early christians were not jewish in origin they were converted pagans from cultures surrounding the mediterranean this area at the time had extremely strong greek cultural influences i mean the gospels themselves were written in greek even though the characters in them would have spoken primarily aramaic whether you were a christian familiar with the apocalyptic view and were looking for a new interpretation of jesus message or more likely were a newly converted pagan hearing jesus teachings for the first time without ever knowing about jewish apocalypticism it would have been very easy to see jesus teachings through a platonic lens take jesus parable of the weeds when his disciples ask what it means he explains the field is the world and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom the weeds are the people of the evil one and the enemy who sows them is the devil the harvest is the end of the age and the harvesters are angels as the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire so will it be at the end of the age the son of man will send out his angels and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil they will throw them into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father if you understand the jewish apocalyptic view this is pretty clear at the end of time god will send angels to destroy all those judged to be evil they'll be burned up and destroyed just like the weeds plucked from a field without adherence to or understanding of apocalypticism though this could be interpreted another way perhaps as in greek myths evil people will be punished after death their souls will be thrown into a fiery torment and since souls are immortal by nature the torment will last forever what about the end of mark chapter nine there jesus says and if your eye causes you to stumble pluck it out it is better for you to enter the kingdom of god with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into gehenna where the worms that eat them do not die and the fire is not quenched many early christians could have easily thought that this mysterious gehenna referred to the destination of wicked souls after death where they'd burn in eternal fire this is in fact the interpretation that eventually became most popular among christians but it fails to acknowledge two key pieces of information not only was jesus speaking apocalyptically but also gehenna was a real earthly place [Music] okay the moment we've all been waiting for uh the anti-climax of all anti-climaxes this is the general area at least of the valley of gehenna hell on earth it looks pretty nice to me just to be clear we're not entirely sure where the events that i'm about to describe about the valley of gehenna occurred precisely but we're we're in the same spot generally speaking we're at the foot of mount zion generally regarded as the valley of guyana hell basically this this park uh jesus talked about this specific place and a lot of christians think that gehenna like the valley of ben hinnom means hell no it just means here so we're just showing this is a nice place it's not real gehenna is a valley just outside of the old city of jerusalem which was mentioned several times in the hebrew bible it's first mentioned in joshua 15 8 where it's called the valley of the son of hinnom or in hebrew gay ben hinum this place was widely reviled among ancient jews because it had once been the site of child sacrifice in second kings 23 10 it said that molech a canaanite deity or deities received child sacrifices there in order to put a stop to this the passage says king josiah desecrated the valley perhaps in part by burning it this place is mentioned many more times in the hebrew bible often as a place where god would pile up the corpses of the wicked at the end of time it is consistently described as a vile and blasphemous place at the end of the gospel of mark jesus combines this view of gehenna with an image found in the last verse of isaiah where god says that after the final judgment his people will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me the worms that eat them will not die the fire that burns them will not be quenched and they will be loathsome to all mankind these are dead earthly bodies being destroyed not conscious immortal souls being eternally tormented most early christians would not have been aware of this extensive jewish context so it isn't hard to see how these teachings of jesus when viewed through a hellenistic lens looked like something very different rest assured though gehenna is not hell and it's quite unlikely that hell was a part of the historical jesus teachings so how does it feel drew to be in the valley of gehenna uh maybe healing is what i would say i mean this has got to be the most serene idyllic and peaceful place we've been on this entire trip it's it's kind of wonderful here and that it's a great realization to be able to have when it was so traumatizing to be taught that it was just the complete opposite now i think if many of us who once were or perhaps still are christian or honest with ourselves we must acknowledge that one of the major reasons we put our faith in christ in the first place is that we didn't want to go to hell we'd heard shockingly horrifying descriptions of eternal torment became afraid and we're motivated to take a leap of faith to eliminate any risk of having that happen to us while i don't think the concept of hell was originally devised just to frighten people into converting it certainly proved itself a useful means to that end this was the case even very early in christian history in a christian apocryphal text dating to the third century the acts of thomas there's a story about a non-christian woman who dies and is taken on a brief guided tour of hell there she sees various gruesome agonizing punishments inflicted on sinners she's brought back to life in front of a crowd and immediately recounts her experience the apostle thomas then tells everyone present that these punishments and even many worse than these await those who do not turn to god the entire crowd then converts on the spot this story is certainly legendary but it does reflect a certain reality even within a couple hundred years of jesus christian evangelists like this author were using stories of hell as a tool for making converts i can't tell you how many times as a child i was presented sermons sunday school lessons and even children's radio programs that terrified me with threats of eternal hellfire so many people i knew converted after being purposely frightened by a message like that and those of us who did cried countless times over the torment that awaited the non-christians we knew and loved as i said earlier i accepted salvation at a very young age and i knew that would supposedly keep me from going to hell still when you constantly feed a child's stories of incomparably painful torture where the first billion years is just the beginning every time reassuring them that the story is true they're nearly guaranteed to be deeply emotionally scarred it's been a long journey for me to work through that and learning about the helmets true origins has greatly helped me along my way i hope it can do the same for you now the next time someone tells me that i'm going to go to hell i'll be able to say that i've already been and found the tales of its inclement weather to be greatly exaggerated there's a lot more to the story of hell's origins so if you want to learn more i highly recommend dr bart ehrman's book heaven and hell i used it as a source for this video and greatly enjoyed reading through it multiple times definitely check it out thanks for watching i've been drew of genetically modified skeptic a special thanks to my patrons for their constant love and support and for making this trip possible in the first place if you want to hear more from me subscribe as always if you are an apostate in need there are resources linked in the description to help you find community and mental health support remember to be kind to others in the comments and until next time stay skeptical i had to put the crew really through hell for this for this video it was uh nick what do you guys think how do you feel being here it's very peaceful actually it's like the perfect temperature the sun is shining i like help it's not like hell at all how's it going guys how's the shoot not so bad huh having a good time really annoyed at some old priests that are preventing us from bringing cameras into a church how dare that otherwise good here we see a wild jeremy in his natural habitat what is your mind for he's taking some b-roll there on the hunt for the most crisp footage possible what did i learn what did you learn um it's probably a bad idea to bring super large cinema cameras to a foreign country where you really don't need it but despite that being the case i'm still going to do it so you and you enjoyed it you thought it was maybe a bad idea that you still enjoyed doing oh hell yeah okay yeah i wouldn't change a thing it benefited me so i'm not gonna complain yo what up people of youtube thanks for watching i'm jeremy as you saw in the video uh here to plug my own youtube channel it's uh my name jeremy levy and on it i talk about cinema cameras and tech and do some fun cinematic nature travel videos i haven't uploaded in quite a while but i intend on uploading quite a lot in the coming months so if you're into drones and red cameras and black magic and pretty places and all that stuff then check it out um yeah had to plug something drew has over 500k subs now so it's free eyes gotta capitalize on that anyways thanks for watching peace out

Channel: Genetically Modified Skeptic

Views: 351,305

Keywords: atheism, atheist, agnostic, skeptic, skepticism, genetically modified skeptic, gm skeptic, gmskeptic, Christian to atheist, ex-christian, old Jerusalem, fear of hell, atheist in jerusalem, Western Wall, gehenna, valley of gehenna, valley of hinnom, Second Jewish Temple, Mount Zion, Mount of Olives, Church of the Holy Sepulcher, exvangelical, ex-evangelical, how to stop being afraid of hell, overcome fear of hell, afraid of hell, is hell real, Platonic dualism, Jewish apocalyptic

Id: MGvcRnlId4k

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 18 2022