Welcome to the website for Christianity without Insanity. So what is the insanity in fear-based, so-called orthodox Christianity? There are various manifestations of it, but the basic causality is the insanely-false doctrine of eternal torture in literal hell fire! This horrendous doctrine is not merely a harmless false doctrine. It is insanely false in that it characterizes God as being the greatest hypocrite and sadist in the universe who is worse than the worst of humanity.  Christ, God in the flesh, commanded humans to forgive our enemies, to pray for them, to do good for them, and even to love our enemies!

Yet Biblical literalists, due to spiritual insanity, proclaim that the God of unconditional everlasting love, amazing grace, infinite mercy, and perfect justice is going to torment His enemies in the fire of hell forever. God’s enemies are all people since all are sinners (Rom. 3:23). Therefore, all who do not personally accept Jesus as their Savior in this life God will judge, condemn, and cast into the lake of fire and brimstone wherein they will be tormented day and night forever and ever (Rev. 20:10)! And this includes the vast majority of the human race who has ever lived and who will have lived and died never even having heard about the possibility of salvation through Christ whom the Bible claims to be the Savior of the world. What is wrong with this picture? This is the very essence of spiritual insanity!

The late, great Christian writer, George MacDonald (1825-1905), was one of the greatest intellectuals who ever lived. He read the New Testament in eight languages and knew it best in the original Greek. MacDonald stated that there is nothing in the New Testament Greek text which teaches eternal punishment. MacDonald wisely declared that if people of the world truly believed in eternal punishment in hell fire, half the world would be insane and the other half would be atheists! Most Christians say that they believe in eternal torment in hell but live like they don’t. Another late, great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), was an atheist before coming to believe in Christ through the writings of MacDonald. Lewis said that he never made any secret of the fact that he always considered MacDonald his master. Lewis defended his master against the charge that his writings are heretical. He wisely stated that MacDonald believed that all will be saved only because he believed that all people will eventually come to faith in Christ.

Typical of the false teaching and consequence misunderstanding is an email I recently received. The sender said that he had been taught that the Christian Church has always believed in eternal torment in hell. He asked, “How then can the teaching of Christian Universalism [CU] be true?” And is not CU an example of what the apostle Paul warned Timothy (II Tim. 4:3) that the time will come when people will no longer endure sound doctrine? My response to this email was that at the time Paul penned this letter to Timothy in the first century, the sound doctrine was CU and the unsound doctrine was eternal torture in hell. The sound doctrine taught by Jesus, preached by the apostles, and believed by the Christian Church for over 500 years, was CU. Jesus’ teaching of CU was perverted to eternal torture in 553 by the Fifth General Council, at the behest of Justinian, the Emperor of the Roman Empire, to control the subjects of the empire through fear.