I’ve been promising for some time now to take the show straight to hell, and I did it…literally! In the first moments of this show you’ll hear me searching for a way I could retain my respect for the Bible as divinely inspired, and yet lose a doctrine that was no longer compatible with my heart’s beliefs. That is how I found Gary. Here is a man who thinks with both his heart and his head. His balanced emotional and intellectual intelligence, plus a lot of research and study, led him to conclude heaven will include a whole lot more souls that most people think, and hell will not only be empty, why it doesn’t exist at all.

Let the Fighten’ Fundies light up the phones with their protests as we drop in on a conversation with Gary Amirault of tentmaker.org.

• How Gary got “straightened out” by an Assembly of God fundamentalist pastor
• The Messianic Jewish rabbi who taught Annihilationism (Conditional Immortality)
• The famous “conditionalist” Dr. Edward Fudge, author of “The Fire that Consumes”
• Hell as church myth
• The 4th century person who introduced the word “hell” into the English translations had the Gothic name “Little Wolf”
• How you might be crazy if you really have passion for people and believe in hell at the same time
• Puke (Theological nonsense) from the Dallas Theological Seminary
• 14 Booklets from J. Preston Eady, author of the “Savior of the World” Series
• How the Hebrew word Sheol (the place of the dead) was translated into three different English words
• That the word “hell” does not appear in the Old Testament in leading translations
• How modern Bible translators now understand “Sheol” means “the place of the dead” and not “a place of torment”
• The first occurrence of the word “hell” is found in Mathew 5:22, as spoke by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (I strongly advise you to read the whole sermon to get the word in context)
• How the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and then translated into Latin and Greek, then German and English
• That Hell is the Scandinavian (German/Teutonic) pagan word for “place of the dead”
• Our English word “hell” is a Teutonic word referring to a place of the underworld guarded by the goddess Hel or Hele
• The Masoretic text
• The Vulgate
• whatthehellishell.com
• How modern translators are slowly eliminating the word “hell” from the Bible
• A revolutionary change in our ability to love our enemies
• Moloch worship (of the bull) and child sacrifice, of which God said (through Jeremiah) “Such a thing never entered my mind” (aka an unthinkable horror)
• Love Wins by Rob Bell
• How a strict reading of the Bible says that anyone who calls his brother “thou fool” is in danger of Hell-fire (Gay-ben-Hinnom)
• How Jesus said: “You have made the word of God of no effect by your traditions.” (Mark 7:8)
• Doctrine is no substitute for the reality of experiencing God’s love
• Scholars will realize they never should have translated the word “Gehenna” to “hell”
• The world will be transformed when 2 Billion Christians realize in their hearts that Jesus meant for his followers to love their enemies

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Mark Twain

I often hear nowadays, people being accused.

“He’s a racist.”

“She’s a racist.”

“Trump’s a racist.”

“So and so’s a racist.”

What I have yet to hear is: “I am a racist.”

So let me be the first.

I am a racist.

Yes.

I see the ugly thing, creeping around my soul like a roach in the kitchen. I squash it, but sometime later, there it is again.

I know there is a nest somewhere, eggs hatching, a source deep within me, hidden away where it’s easy to deny. There is where I'll find the library of my false beliefs, the lies I tell myself over and over, so often they become grooves cut into my gray matter, like fissures in rock where the water runs down, cutting deeper and deeper, until fissures become swales, and swales become canyons.

When did the first racist raindrop fall? I don’t know. As a child, for sure. How many drops of poison does it take to pollute the vessel of pure water of which we are born? When, exactly, does a person become a racist, and who gets to decide?

I don’t know, but then, neither does anyone else.

I don’t believe in permanence. That’s one thing the Buddhists have taught me.

Everything changes.

We can become aware of that library of false beliefs, that nest of nasties that colors our perception of things, often for the worse. Awareness alone brings change. We can cut new grooves. My challenge as a human being is not to deny that I am a racist, for that would be as foolish as denying I have cancer when I really do. My challenge is, rather, to stop the cancer from metastasizing and poisoning the whole man.

I doubt I will ever fully eradicate my racism. Unfortunately, I suspect some vestige of it will always be with me. But what I can do, and what I do do, is expose myself to experiences that lessen my racism, those being travel, kind and honest conversation, and breaking bread with “the others” whenever I can. These experiences, like wind and rain, smooth rock and, over time, lay low even the highest mountains.

So when I hear the angry crowd shouting, "He’s a racist,” I want to ask:

“Who among you is not a racist? Stand up then and take a bow...for you are surely a god.”