FROM THE MANUSCRIPT
In the author’s words
And fear is powerful. Fear can make people obey. Fear can make people confess. Fear can make people repeat words. Fear can make people join a church, walk an aisle, raise a hand, bow a head, and say whatever they think will save them from eternal punishment. But fear cannot create mature love. Fear cannot create deep understanding. Fear cannot create spiritual transformation. Fear can make a person submit. But submission is not the same thing as awakening. That is why the inherited imagination of heaven and hell has to be confronted. Not because the questions of judgment, death, eternity, consequence, separation, divine justice, or salvation are unimportant. They are serious questions. They deserve seriousness. But that is exactly the point. They deserve more than cartoons. They deserve more than clouds and fire. They deserve more than a preacher’s threat. They deserve more than a child’s nightmare dressed up as doctrine. They deserve more than shallow religiousness saying, “Convert or burn,” while pretending that sentence contains the full depth of scripture, God, Jesus, judgment, mercy, transformation, and the human soul. The popular Western image of heaven and hell is not pure biblical truth. It is inherited religious imagination.
The God They Inherited, manuscript p. 129. Transcribed from the supplied manuscript; line breaks normalized.
The definition above is an editorial summary of this chapter, not a separately named theory or a claim of scientific proof.