The kingly pig looks taken aback by this statement. "You claim to be 'baiting' our kind?.. A master of it, no less - after all the trust we hsve placed in you?"

So, Judaism back in Jesus' time, along with the early Christians, they didn't have Hell as we know of it today. Skipping over Sheol as that was for everyone regardless of whether they were evil or not - In their theology, if one died and weren't "right" with YHWH/God (God here refers to the Christian's deity), they would go to Gehenna.

Gehenna, is referred to as the "Lake of Fire" in the Apocalypse of John (Or Revelation as some call it). Here's a passage of it from Revelation 20:11-15

and a few other select verses that refer to the same concept, from the other Gospels

Now there's a few things I'd like to draw attention to:

The concept of an "eternal fire"

The complete and eternal destruction of both body and soul

The comparison to destruction of "root" and "branch" (types of wood)

Early Christians and certain Jewish people in that era (as Gehenna has evolved in what exactly it constitutes from then to now, and even between Jewish people of that era, who had a wide variety of views on things, but for simplicity sake, we're gonna focus on Apocalypticism Judaism (200 BCE - 100 CE), which Jesus was a part of) believed that Gehenna was like a literal fire. As in, if you throw wood into a fire, it's destroyed, permanently. You can't reform it, you can't bring it back. It's gone. It ceases to exist, literally. (Yes, it turns to ash and the matter is still there, but I digress, the wood is destroyed)

That's literally what Jesus and others who wrote the Bible thought of Gehenna. When you're tossed into the fire, you're destroyed permanently. You cease to exist. Maybe a few seconds of suffering, but after that? You're gone. Both body, and soul, are destroyed.

So, with that understanding of the theology of the time, let's take a look at John 3:16:

So, you have two options here:

Believe in Jesus, and have eternal life, and don't perish

Don't believe, and perish, without eternal life

Now, under modern Christian theology, you don't believe? You go to Hell and burn eternally.

But... this verse, it says that you only have eternal life, if you believe. It never says a good eternal life, or an eternal life without hell. It just says you only have eternal life if you believe in Jesus. That makes zero sense in modern understandings.

That's because under the author's understanding back then, as you now know, you don't burn eternally. You die and cease to exist if you don't believe in Jesus.

The Greek word used here for "perish" is ἀπόλλυμι (apoollumi), which refers to destroying an inanimate object, to kill, or destroy permanently and completely

Other examples of this word being used in the Greek manuscripts:

The king was furious! He sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city to the ground. Matt 22:7

saying, “What with us, do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” Mark 1:24

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed Luke 5:37

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you whether it is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” Luke 6:9

I'm currently writing a book on the Apocalypse of John actually, and explaining every single verse and what it ACTUALLY meant to Christians of the time, complete with academic citations. Doing research into what the Christian texts actually mean is a huge interest of mine and is a way for me to heal from trauma I had growing up.

It's incredibly interesting how much the religion evolved. Hell, the BIGGEST thing in Christian theology was only made "canon" because pastors and priests made it the fuck up to reconcile textual issues, and Christians of the time noticed that any evidence for it was lacking from the Latin translations, and got so angry at the publishers that they added text in to make it canon.

That concept? The trinity. This one verse is the ONLY verse in the NT that explicitly states that the trinity is a thing, and it was only added later on in later translations.

Ehrman did a short section of his one lecture on the KJV and its issues, on the Johanine Comma, if you're looking to hear more about it from a respected expert on the Bible

“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”

of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)

“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”

First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)

“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”