My Reflection : Fear of Hell

Today I want to share a short story by Msgr. Arthur Tonne taken from book of Frank Mihalic, 1000 Stories Volume 1 with a title of Fear of Hell

A Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Protestant minister happened to die at the same time. All three appeared at the pearly gates, but had to wait in a long line. Suddenly a taxi driver joined them. But St. Peter beckoned him to come to the head of the line.  

The three clergymen could not understand. Finally the priest went up to St. Peter and asked, "How come that taxi driver gets to go in ahead of us? You know taxi drivers ... And you also know we three men of the cloth have been preaching all our lives, trying to keep people out of hell." 

St. Peter smiled, "I know. I know. But ... this taxi driver has scared hell out of more people in one week than you three have in your entire lives." -short story by Msgr. Arthur Tonne

The three workers of God preached on their entire lives to put our strong believe on what God's promises, and through religion, people be reminded with this testament. In the contrary the taxi driver made it in different way but the result is far better than the three. 

Have you ever heard the reward and punishment concept? What is better, if you do such things you will get rewarded or if you don't do such things you will get punished? Of course the reward ideas and that is what God wants for us but then since we are hard headed most of the time we are not doing the things we need to do even it has a reward waiting for us but in the end of it we don't want to get punished. 

Yes, that is the reason why almost all religion teach us the fear of hell because they believe that this it is more effective to remind with God's promises because we have all the fear of hell and we don't want to get punished. I remember those days seeing preacher asking for your time to listen to the word of God, they are always started it with punishment, about hell, about death and the reward or what we called the Good News.

Fortunately there are preachers who scare us out of hell, religion who always remind us the punishments. But actually it is more grateful if we can look further for God's promises through rewards and not because we are fear with punishment because I believe that is what he wants for us to do. 

Remember the story of Good Samaritan? (you can Google it if you want) Well Samaritans has no religion at that time but then Jesus used a Samaritan in one of his famous parable, The Parable of the Good Samaritan. Because they have no religion, no one told them about the punishment or even reward but then he did good works as what God want us to do and what we must do alike regardless of rewards and punishment.

From this reflection we can attach a quote from Albert Einstein saying, "What a miserable creature man would be if he were good not for the sake of being good, but because religion told him that he would get a reward after this life, and that if he were't good he'd be punished."