Imagine Love

Imagine being in a loving marriage. You and your spouse have been together for years and have two children. Everything is good; life is hard, you fight sometimes, but that’s the way the world works. It’s real love, and you are happy.

One day, you’re lying in bed, and your spouse turns over to look at you very seriously.

“If you ever leave me, I won’t be happy,” they say. You say it will never happen and give them a hug.

“If you ever leave me, I will put a bullet through each of our children’s heads while you watch. I will lock you in a box with them, to breathe in the gas as they decompose, and to live in the slush of their rotting flesh. I will take you out of the box daily to feed you, and then to beat you to unconsciousness. When I see your eyes glaze over, I will switch the form of physical pain so that it is always fresh and new. If you get sick, I will heal you, only to keep the pain going. You will never come to terms with this. You will be in agony for the rest of your life. Your only company will be the corpses of our children, who died for your refusal to love me. Your every moment will be torture, because I cannot handle the possibility of your refusal of my love.”

You look into your spouse’s eyes and know, beyond doubt, that they are fully willing and capable of doing this. How do you feel?

God commanding your love, with punishment of Hell as the alternative, is disgusting and horrifying. What hideous monster could be so petty to condemn one to an eternity of Hell for ANY transgression? Even if Hitler were to spend a million years in Hell for every life his regime was responsible for ending, not just the Jews, but the Russians, English, Americans, and other Germans who died in World War II, his term in Hell would still only be a fraction of a picosecond when compared to all of Eternity. Is that just? Is that equitable? Who or what could fit such hatred in its heart? God is truly the greatest of all conceivable horrors.

So when people ask me “What if you’re wrong?” about being an atheist, I feel it doesn’t matter. I could not love such a loathsome creature as God. An eternity in Hell would be preferable to the forced act of singing the praises of he who would condemn me there.

If there is a Hell, it could be no worse than Heaven.