Yes, but let's say your friend hadn't shaped up and flown straight and still became a juvenille delinquent. Would his mother have then said, ok, well you had your chance, I'm now going to torture you for the rest of your life?

Of course not.

There are many different interpretations of hell by Christian sects and many regard hell as the choice of the individual since God has done so much to extend grace and redemption already.

What do you think hell is? And how would that choice be exercised?

Splendour
well my conversation with this person started when they replied to my original post in this thread which was this
and their reply was this

Well I generalize it as a terrible place.

As far as the exercise I think its a response to what you've learned about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I would say God doesn't regard the nonbeliever as his child. As when Jesus told the pharisees their father was the devil.

Perhaps hell is a place where you are totally cut off from God and the Demons just have their way with you kind of like prison, and throw in some fire and brimstone

I think there is a point where a parent might totally cut off their child but they dont torture them they just dont help them anymore

So God creates us, set out some very specific rules that are hidden in a mass of competing rules, and then obscures those specific rules in ambiguous text. Gives us an incredibly short time on this earth to master the rules, and if we fail, condemns us to eternal torture (or something equally terrible) and disowns us for a time span (eternity) which so massively dwarfs the time we have on this earth that our actual time on earth will be completely inconsequential. Do I have it right?

Matt. 7:7: New International Version ©

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

kinda. He does give us a quite a challenge. The book is hard to understand but it is widely known, therefore not hard to find... at least?

I'd say we dont have to master the rules and never make mistakes to make it into heaven as I'm sure you have heard the gospel. However, if we do strive for perfection, the cooler life will be. As I always say the ideal christian would be like Jesus. He would be able to multiply bread, heal the sick, attain his needs (even money) at will, and just all around be fullfilled. Not many have reached this potential (less than 50? if not 15) and I for one am convinced the only way to get there is to fast and put it all on the line.

I like how you point out how eternity dwarfs our time here on earth, so to speak. A good thing to keep in mind when facing adversity.

I like to point out how eternity dwarfs the time since the Big Bang. A good thing to keep in mind when facing heaven.

But doesn't it trouble you that once you screw up, the punishment lasts FOREVER? Does the punishment fit the crime? Especially given that no one asks to be born? It just seems cruel. I find that hard to reconcile with the idea of a loving and just God.

This is the key part that makes your arguement "Especially given that no one asks to be born?"

I agree with you completly and my personal interpretation of god/bible does not include people/souls of people remaining in hell for eternity.

Many prophets in the bible have said it is better to never have been born.... but once your in, your in.

In saying once you screw up I suppose you mean die after hearing the gospel and rejecting it. As long as your alive all other screw ups can be covered as I'm sure u've heard.

As far as loving, he suited up and payed for sin. He is even willing to give YOU the kingdom.

As far as justice, everyone is guilty. I don't ask for justice, I ask for mercy. Sure it would seem more compassionate to totally annihilate those who love their sin instead of sending them to hell, but I think that takes the importance off of salvation and lets sinners off the hook too easy. If the bible said sinners would simply be annihilated then I dont think many would truly care about righteousness (even if they believed it) as they really wouldn't have to pay a price for unrighteousness.

I would almost say it is better to have never heard the gospel than to reject it because Paul points out that those who have not heard would be judged by a standard of what they know of righteousness. The details of this i'm not really sure of, but I trust God is smarter than me and will do the right thing in this situation.

It does seem pretty harsh. If the punishments in the old testament are eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, how could sinners ever sin so much as to deserve eternal hell? I suppose God just really can't stand sin and wants no part of it so he has to seperate them from himself. When ones left to oneself in the eternal realm, you come up against things more powerfull than yourself and its not gonna be fun, what can I say. To be fair though, even though we were abomidable to him, he made a way.

That verse cant work for those of us who are unable to perceive God because of our defective genes.

I can't tell if you meant this in a smartass way or not. Either way, do you agree with my post?

I have a more absolute view of God than most.

God is so holy that only separation from him is possible in our current state and only he can fix it and bridge the separation. He can't tolerate sin and we can't totally remove it ourselves so he provides grace.

Since he's bridging between this world and the next world our logic is limited in its usefulness because we can't fully apply it to the next world. We really only have the text to go on.

We really don't fully know what separation from God would mean since we haven't experienced it.

Also for the power of God's word to work in your life now you have to put it into action. Christ says his family are the people that obey God.

I guess I see it as an emergency situation. I never know when I will die and I'm not arguing with any being with the solution. It'd be like arguing with a fireman while my house burns down. That's a nonsensical condition. I don't fear death btw I think the next world will be much better. I'm more worried about being in an unresolved condition to receive the operation of God's grace.

Sounds like you're saying that you don't believe in Hell, or at least the version that has people burning in a fiery pit. Is that fair? Your "hell" is the absence of God? but not ever unremitting torture?

I haven't done a "hell study" yet to study specific details and characteristics of hell though I meant to do one a few months back. I just didn't get around to it. Hell was never motivational for me. Separation from God was always more than enough to motivate me. I didn't have to examine the degree of torture. There's nothing wrong with knowing it in detail and most religious people insist on it. I just thought there were more important things to focus on. Hell could just be one psychic element to God's call/message and depending on your psychological disposition you pay attention and could even overemphasize that aspect of God's message.

The bible mentions that some people "will get offended" by the word. I always intuitively felt God was good so I never take offense at things in the bible. I know there's always more to the story than on the surface. If I dig for the answer I usually turn up either something reasonable or a piece of the puzzle that connects to something else of deeper importance or meaning that people need to learn.

Fair enough. But if you study does turn up that hell is burning, fire, etc. And that is to last for eternity, would that seem like an approproriate punishment for merely refusing to believe in God, or Jesus? Do you think that can be reconciled with a good and just god?

Yes because the call of God has to be effectual. Hell isn't just concerning who answers God and who doesn't. It'd be a place of punishment and could have a deterrent effect on certain people.

Jeffrey Dahmer's an example. He wasn't saved til after his crimes. He claimed on tv if he'd been saved before them he didn't think he'd have done them.

The human psyche and its relationship to faith/religion is strange and almost totally unexplicable.

Not everyone focuses and interprets in the same way and God has to get results.

I'm not trying to trap you here. Your argument is, because facing hell could stop some people from becoming bad and could motivate them to follow the bible for less than 100 years, it is just to punish those who do not follow the bible for all eternity?

I think this is an invalid question on the part of atheists.

Implicit in most believer's belief in God is a belief in his sovereign power and holiness. Some believers may have felt it necessary to question this. I don't feel its necessary.

The bible says "judge not lest ye be judged". Clearly I'm in an inferior position to God so I can't judge him. Thinking I can judge his actions is a category error.

With respect, that is a complete cop-out to deal with what must be an uncomfortable position to someone in your position. But you should know that to an outsider issues like these put your God in a pretty poor light.

I don't mean the following to be offensive to believers, but I'll give you my honest opinion here. It makes him look frankly like a monster who created an entire universe to feed his ego and anyone who doesn't play ball will be tortured for eternity in revenge. Because once you get to torture for eternity, there cannot be any redeeming reason for the torture: it is solely punishment - you never get to the upside where you've learned your lesson and can become "good" again. Punishment for which the only crime is not pledging your unquestioning allegiance to this egomaniac power hungry creator.

I don't write this to be offensive to you, I really don't, but its hard not to come to this conclusion based on what I know of your beliefs.

And why shouldn't you judge God? Just because he created you? Just because he threatened you? I'm sorry, I just don't see the justice of the God of the bible. A just god should want what is best for his creations no matter what they do. A just god would punish as a method of reform, not eternal damnation. A just god would not care if his creations worshiped him, he would be above such pettiness.

As Christians, I do not see how you can just paper over such a problem, replacing it with the trite: "I'm in an inferior position to God so I can't judge him." Why not? What does superiority have to do with morality? Aren't you inferior to Satan too? But you would judge him wouldn't you? Power does not equal goodness.

Again, I don't mean to offend here, but I am curious as to believers' take on this beyond abstention.

I think we're done then....As soon as the other poster uses the word "torture" I know exactly where you are coming from and its from an internal position of inconsistency. I've done this debate a thousand times and I want to know why you think you have to prove God is a monster if you don't believe a God even exists. I think you have an unresolved issue and maybe an awareness of God but you're just not sure if you want him to exist.

Clearly its a categorical error. I can't judge the wisdom of God's actions any more than an inferior animal like a turtle or a cat can judge mine. They just haven't the capacity nor can they do what I can do.

It boils down to a question of acceptance of dominion. The earth was put under's man domininion and man is under God's dominion. I haven't seen a person yet capable of resolving evil in the world but God's plan is now in action and he calls us to be a part of his solution to the problem of evil that is both within us and outside us. You either accept God is both good and capable or you don't. But don't pretend that God is a monster because we don't have a high enough capacity to judge THE JUDGE. Its like a 2 year old getting angry and questioning me because I put him in his bedroom on a time out. The parent is the one in dominion and should be and God is the one in dominion and should be.

That would be disappointing.

Well, that's the way I've been told the story, I'm happy to hear competing views and that was part of my question and I have understood you to have confirmed it.

Two things: I don't have to believe in god to argument from inside that framework.

As to whether I am unresolved as to the issue of God: well of course I am! My position is that it is most likely there is no god, not absolutely there is no god. I also tend to believe that if there is a supreme being who created the world, the chance that any one religion got it right is very small. This is based on the fact that there have been thousands of different religions over time with widely different views and billions of different interpretations.

I will say that if I did believe this point of view - and I don't mean this hyperbollically - that I would have decided not to have children. The fact there was a significant chance that they could end up in eternal torment, despite my best efforts to avoid that for them, would be enough to say that I know I will love them too much to expose them to such harm.

But how does one flow from the other? You can say you suspect you don't have the capacity, but what is that based on? Because there is a being with immense power? That doesn't suspend the powers of judgment that being ostensibly gave you.

Can you honestly tell me that you are comfortable with millions (billions?) of people suffering from everlasting hell, even though they were basically good people, who had heard about Jesus, but decided nevertheless to stick with the religion of their upbringing, the religion their parents told them was true? Their own preachers told them was true. The muslim whose never attacked anyone. The jew who goes to shul every Saturday. The Buddhist who meditates under the tree? They all get everlasting punishment if they've heard of Jesus and rejected him right? Heck, in your versioin even Jeffrey Dahmer gets to go to heaven!


But if the 2 year was put in the bedroom for the rest of his life, you would find that horrifying. And if the parent started burning the kid, even more so. A parent's dominion is not absolute. If the parent becomes abusive they lose the right.

I can be a twelve year being spanked by my parents and thinking they are monsters but being wrong. Or I can be the same kid having the **** kicked out of me by my parents and thinking they are monsters and being right. Agreed there are times where the inferior being can't properly judge the superior one. There will be plenty of times for misunderstanding, but some things just cross that line where it is clear.

As for the "greater plan", once you get to "everlasting", the whole "greater plan" thing has to go out the window right? The plan is over. Fini. It's just the punishment stage now, for ever.

I really am interested in theists' take on this.