The Primordial Fear of Hell

There is a great man with whom I imagined dialog last night. He is one of the Dubya greats, a great man of God dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. This man is a born-again Christian, and seeing as it was the Christian tradition and theology that brought me to Gnosis, I wanted to dialog with him if only to understand what moved him.
For me, the question was solely about Jesus' first miracle. It is how a person deals with the first meeting of the Christ, I surmised, that would determine how that person's Christianity grows. Now, as you should be aware if you know anything about my personal beliefs, I have very interesting and maybe even probably "proper" ways of describing what happened that afternoon in Canaan. But what I will not accept, what no honest man can accept, is that twenty large vases were filled with water upon Jesus' instruction, upon which he waved a hand in the air and commanded the ether and suddenly those twenty vases were filled with wine. I mean, what would have to be true for that to happen? Instant fermentation, an electromagnetic wind carrying crushed grapes and whatnot float over each of the vases and transform the fluid water into wine? Now you KNOW that did not happen. You know that water did not just turn to wine like that. You KNOW that. So, I said to this great man, you believe that first miracle, the all important one, that the water just turned to wine like that? Said he, "it is my choice, to suspend logic and claim faith on account of the deeds of Jesus who was also calleth the Christ, for he was the Son of God." I see how it works. Suspend logic and claim faith. "But in your heart of hearts, sir, you KNOW that water did not turn to wine." I wouldn't say he acquiesced but the laughter informed everyone that deep down, in the realm of truth, there is no suspension of logic. Well, we figured it out. This grown man, one of the top officials of the world's superpower (with the ability, we hear, to patrol the coast of New Zealand and "Project Force" globally) was so scared of Jehovah and of going to hell that he would rather take his chances believing an illogical story than chance offending this God and missing out on Heaven, and even worse, enjoying the sorrow of Hell. A grown man. And this primal fear keeps him from seeing the truth? But you know it's true, that most grown men and women in the world choose to suspend logic, no matter how obvious the truth is, out of fear that if they do not believe the lie then they may go to Hell. Well, I didn't believe the lie. I called on God, challenged God to demonstrate how to break the laws of physics, even on behalf of his son. God shone a rainbow upon me. As you can see, Jesus might have been the way, the truth and the life, but for the Children of Israel, not gentiles. I got to God another way, and it didn't involve me, a grown man, bowing down to the illogicity of fear that dominates the fact of intelligence. Why did God give me this wonderful IQ for me not to use? Why would I believe a lie because of fear? Who benefits from this fear if not the hierarchy of control that is the orthodox church. Once again, like Islam, we see a religion where intelligent men control the weak, even if the weak happen to have, as a duty, the security of the homeland of the Children of America or the establishment and pronouncement of just laws for the individual within a democracy. Now what are the implications of this fear, of this suspension of logic? At the level of duty, it is a security breach. Obviously. Don 't need to explain that to the intelligent. In the realm of truth, those who see the lie endanger others, no matter how high up they are, even if they are presidents. At other levels, honesty in pursuit of truth is the only way out of this world run by the deceiver you call Satan. But who is the deceiver if it is not the decision in the conscience of good men to bow down to subtle deceptions out of fear. Disbelievable.