The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Robert Ingersol on Hell

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender, it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.

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I’ve recently went back through my life and re lived my psychotic episodes and eternal suffering has played a role in my psychotic breaks. It’s not the only thing but the main thing. Every time I have a psychotic break it has to do with the Bible. It’s my experience of highly intense shame, guilt and anxiety that caused my psychotic break and is what triggers it when I’m off my meds. This paper from Oxford Academic (Schizophrenia Bulletin: The Journal of Psychoses and Related Disorders) talks about how delusional guilt convinces patients that they deserve punishment. It hits on my delusions of grandiosity of thinking I’m somebody or an exaggerated sense of my own importance in combination with the guilt for my past “sins”. This leads me to a paranoid delusion that they are coming after me to torture me. I get this idea of torture from the idea that I’m evil at the core and deserve eternal torture from God. I also start thinking I’m Christ and their going to hang me on a cross and torture me.

Just got my shot of Invega Sustena today and I’m doing fantastic. I remember being on Risperdol and not taking it for a couple of months. I started getting grandiose delusions mixed with guilt and shame. Pretty soon ideas of reference creeped in and I thought the news papers and TV were sending me messages. I would connect all the coincidences in a chain and be at the center of it all. For instance, an article in the newspaper would be about Trump but I thought the government was writing about me. I was the Trump in the paper. This was their way of sending me hidden messages. When I went back to my counselor she decided to put me on the Invega Susitna shot. I got the first shot that day because they had some in the clinic. About 30 minutes later I went to the store and bought a paper. It had stopped referring to me and sending me coded messages. The TV stopped also. I haven’t missed a shot since I started getting it 2 years ago and I haven’t had any grandiose paranoid delusions of persecution or ideas of reference since. Can the Invega Susitna shot work this quickly or was it all in my head? I asked a couple of different people at the clinic and got different answers

It’s the trauma I experienced from the doctrine of eternal suffering. In my book CBT for psychoses it states:

People with psychoses experience high rates of trauma as children and/or as adults. page 175

Feelings of fear, depression, helplessness, hopelessness, embarrassment, and shame seem to be common factors prior to relapse in psychoses. page 7

I just found out that injectable antipsychotics can work right away. From hours to days after the first shot. That’s how it worked for me. It was anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours

OUR creator God, is no such God.
I understand your indignation. I have it myself.
Please allow God to work.

Peace.