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Originally Posted by The_Liquid_Laser
Heh, I just posted this in another thread, but it is probably more appropriate in this one. According to the Bible hell is basically death rather than eternal suffering. I won't deny that there is a long prevelant teaching of eternal suffering in the Christian church, but I don't believe that is what the Bible teaches. Here is what I posted in another thread:
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one of my friends IRL told me that the idea of hell doesnt exist in the OT...in the OT its simply just punishment in this life and then death being the ultimate punishment...
...then suddenly the NT brings up this much darker view of being sent to place of terrible suffering... funny how i read somewhere Jesus preaches twice as much on hell as he does heaven.... yet ive never read a biblical description of heaven.
i kind of have to assume that absence of God would be torture in some sense we cant describe: like think about it...he takes away all the gifts you have? what is left? if you somehow can live on im guessing it would suck....
Im just struggling with the idea that this infinite God, would let an arbitrary barrier of this split second of peoples lifetimes (in a cosmic sense) be the last bell? Like why can't he continue to fight for your soul in the afterlife? why does he give up in the afterlife?
I thought God was great because he was unquantiable, or infinite. We loosely define his infiniteness as love. well how does he suddenly stop loving us when we die just because we did what he programmed us to do?!
im tired of semantics games played by apologetics:
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In the above verses you can see that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked yet he delighted in destroying the wicked people. Is this a contradiction? No. Because God has a purpose and a plan and He has the sovereign right to accomplish His will.
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God can and does control people's hearts and actions so that they will accomplish His purpose. He does this sovereignty and He does it without causing people to sin. He can even make someone's heart hard for the purpose of carrying out His plan.
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God did not cause the people who crucified Jesus to sin. But, He sure used their sin and He predestined all of it to occur. He used the sins of Herod and Pilate along with the Gentiles to do His divine will. In fact, God anointed them to do what they did. Why? To carry out His purpose and His plan to bring His Son to the cross, to save sinners, and to bring glory to Himself.
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am i going insane!??? how is this the most loving God? Am i the only one who reads this apologetics person as playing semanitcs and side stepping the obvious moral questions?
Might does not make right. The very fact that I can imagine a more loving God myself, makes we wonder how this is the most loving god possible?
This could be all side stepped by taking the entire bible as metaphor and going universalist...that all will be saved by being cleansed of the flesh during revelation (the second death would also be metaphorical). but apparently this is a heretical view.
I just feel like im loosing my mind. punishment should either A) teach a lesson. or B) protect people from dangerous parties. How is this all fitting into God pre ordaining who will be saved from the very start? why would he give up on that 1% chance of his children if he has all of eternity to try and visit them in hell.
why is it so much nobler to believe in the resurection 2000 years later without any appeal to the 5 senses? In fact God should know exactly what it would take for each person to be saved based on their skepticism that he created them with!? Why couldnt a person who came to believe by witnessing God/jesus in person during the afterlife come to "believe"?
