Posted by Novilio on July 4, 2004, at 20:52:06
In reply to ****Anybody Afraid of Hell****, posted by Stryker88 on April 16, 2004, at 5:25:43
I'm new here, and this thread goes back a ways, but I wanted to recommend a book that I found extremely healing. I span the Pre- and Post-Vatican II chasm in the Catholic world, and the Catholic culture of my youth was extremely punitive and filled with abject terror of Hell. It left its mark on me, and I've been decades getting over it, especially having seen my mother basically die of despair over personal issues that conflicted with Catholic teachings.
I'm still not quite out of the woods, but if anyone else still has a case of Hell-itis, definitely get this book:
GOOD GOATS: Healing Our Image of God
by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant-Linn, and Matthew Linn
Paulist Press, 1994You can get it on Amazon. It presents a very clear and simple method for changing our image of God from the Fearsome Punisher to the Greatest Lover, along with a detailed explanation of why we (as Catholics or whoever!) can believe this, and nay, *count* on it.
The book is short. You can read it in an hour or two, and it brought me to tears more than once. (It still does, each time I read it.)
I have studied the whole issue of Hell and Divine punishment for many years, and if there's any interest in continuing this thread, I can lay out other healing insights that I've discovered.
This is my first post, BTW, so if I botch something do let me know, and accept my apologies in advance!
--Novilio
poster:Novilio
thread:336825
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20040408/msgs/363116.html