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How can a benevolent God stand for the existance of a hell with eternal suffering?

Venom

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a narrative on how i can't understand how God could create hell and allow people to go there for eternity:


Blood rolls down a lashed back. Tears and mucous choke the cries of pain. You recognize the face of this person as your best friend. Broken flesh reveals the lung cavity of an agonized young girl. Worms eat away at her lungs and heart as she coughs up blood. This was your daughter. An older man, is chained at one end of his hands and feet and is being pulled apart as his sockets rip apart, then are mended and then ripped apart again, over and over again. You recognize this as that amazing high school teacher you would never forget who helped you everyday after school on the math you couldn't ever do right. A dark bottomless pit fills with water, and there is a women trying to stay above the water, yet she continues to drown. Her, you recognize as your mother.

This list goes on as you recognize hundreds of important people that you knew in your life. Still beyond this group of hundreds, there are billions of people with each their own eternal damnation. As far as the eye can see, you turn around and around, taking in this scene of pain, sorrow and despair. Enforcers of hate carry out these acts of cosmic justice and laugh in the power they have over this domain. They've stolen these souls from their creator. They laugh at you, they tell you they've won. That they've taken away some of your domain, forever. In what ever theatric way best portrayed: slow motion, music or whatever best portrays the absolute horror of this place you take a few turns trying to find a visual without horror to rest your sight. This is a location, with less hope than a Nazi concentration camp.

Each face represents a lost soul, begging for deliverance and mercy. These people are being punished. Why are these people here? Some were raised Jewish from a young impressionable age, one was too young to understand the complexities of arguments and was swept away in atheistic debate. Another man became bitter from his lot in life and never gave thought to a compassionate God. A scientist, who couldn't bring himself to basing his life on faith, was programmed through his work to reject everything without evidence. Each a sinner. Each had moments of true selfishness. Each had moments of hate. Each doubted the existence of Jesus. Yet, each had moments of true unprompted compassion, innocence and friendship. They deserve this punishment, yes. They are sinners, yes. They are human.


They are your creation. What thought goes through your head. Really imagine the screams, the gore, the pain, the desperation, the hopeless aura.


You look down at your hands. You have the power to change this all. You let this all happen. They had a choice, yes. Einstein wasn't the one that decided to drop an atomic bomb, but he sure didn't lack a feeling of guilt when they used his ideas to create one. Your creation, your atomic knowledge, and this Hiroshima, is what its been reduced to. Your inner conscience pleads for mercy. Your soul speaks to the one objective morality that you're sure exists: mercy and sympathy. Without these, all punishment is simply revenge. Punishment should do one of two things: teach the punished party a lesson that can be learned from or it should protect other people by removing dangerous parties. Punishment that seeks to torture for the sake of torture, or doesn't allow the party the chance to demonstrate a lesson learned, is simply revenge. Revenge is not morality.

You look once more at the worms pouring in and out of your daughters entrails. You then spin around to see the math teacher being split in half. You spin once more to witness a gay mans teeth being placed on the curb of a wood block, and then being hit over the head with a mallet, crushing everything between the lead and the wood block. The amount of suffering in one location is overwhelming. Unthinkable decibels of broken bones, screams, rips of flesh and whips cracking are drowning out all of your thoughts. Over the sound, you remind yourself that these people deserve their fate, that they are sinners.

How long will this go on for? For eternity. Are anyones sins really worth infinity? If no one is ever going to be freed, are they really learning anything here? Surely if you were to save them from this torture, they would believe in your forgiveness and truth as much as any earthly believer. So if they are save-able, why are you giving up on them? Why not cry out, "This is madness! this is not what I want for any of my creation!". Did Jesus die in vain? Jesus was resurrected, yet these people still must suffer. If for some, belief completed the transaction, why does a lack of belief make these people less deserving of your compassion? If your own son had been dragged off to be tortured for eternity for his sins, would you not be willing to storm the gates of hell if you had a sliver of hope that you could save him?

All humans have at least a .0000001% bit of good. There is some part of God's image in all of us. How could God limit himself to just a mere lifetime as a time frame to reclaim your previous innate goodness? Would this all powerful and compassionate God, not be willing to endure the terrible sites of hell to show himself, his compassion and seek to show you the goodness inside of you? If this goodness can be reclaimed through belief in Christ's sacrifice in the earthly life, why should God give up on you in the afterlife?


i just don't understand :cry:
 

Virtual ghost

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Ok, hell is a bad place to be.

But I don't understand why people see heaven as promised land ?
 

Venom

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Ok, hell is a bad place to be.

But I don't understand why people see heaven as promised land ?


do you mean that as in, "heaven isnt explicitly promised?"

or that heaven doesn't sound great?
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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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:

My point though is that the Bible doesn't depict hell as eternal torture. It depicts it as death or destruction, i.e. being destroyed by fire.

"Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell." Matt. 10:28 (emphasis mine)

Consider also these two well known passages:
"...whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23 (again empasis mine)

Preachers often portray the choice as being between heaven and hell. However the Bible portrays the choice as being between life and death. The alternative to life is not torture. It's death. Some people reinterpret death to mean torture. I don't. I believe death literally means death.
 

sassafrassquatch

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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:

Is that like Annihilationism?
 

Usehername

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TLL, do you by chance have an internet resource (or even a book) where you find you agree often with someone's biblical teachings/views?

I find I'm so regularly searching multiple avenues, to find one thing that I strongly argree with or don't see a huge hole in their perspective that was left unanswered and untouched.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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TLL, do you by chance have an internet resource (or even a book) where you find you agree often with someone's biblical teachings/views?

I find I'm so regularly searching multiple avenues, to find one thing that I strongly argree with or don't see a huge hole in their perspective that was left unanswered and untouched.

That's a tough one. I'm a Seventh Day Adventist, so the best I could do is point you to an SDA website. (Here's one: Fundamental Beliefs) However there are some views where I don't agree with my denomination. For example SDA's tend to be far too legalistic in my opinioin. Basically I am an SDA, because we agree on the theology which is most important to me including grace, salvation by faith, and views on the afterlife.

Theology is just one part of religion though. For example I don't really know what the theology of The Salvation Army is, but when it comes to practice I think they really have the right idea. :) However, I do agree with my denomination on a fair amount of social issues. For example health, education, and separation between Church and State are important values for us. (These used to be important for evangelicals in general about 100 years ago, but most other denominations have done a 180 since then.)

Overall I'd say I'm something of a mutt. Most of my views come from private study, and I ask someone knowledgable when I have a question. For example my pastor has a PhD, and there is also a theology professor who attends my church. Unfortunately I can't point to a single online source or book where I could say, "This guy completely captures what I believe."
 

Domino

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My mother sat by and listened as I told her about the Army Rangers when they liberated a camp that had held the mangled survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. One Ranger spoke of an emaciated prisoner who'd begun walking toward the camp's gate only to collapse and lie unmoving on the ground. The Ranger came back for him, picked him up -- remarking later with fresh horror that the prisoner weighed no more than a child -- and carried him through the gates. The Ranger knew the man was dying, so he knelt down with him on the freedom side and held him in his arms until the man passed. There was a look of mute relief on the prisoner's face.

When I first read that story, I felt myself shattering.

It grieved me -- this poor man had endured for so long, his spirit had stayed with his body instead of abandoning it in the middle of indescribable horror, only to have him die at the very moment of his liberation -- but also twisted me with the gentle tragedy of it all -- he died in the arms of 11th hour kindness.

I was so grateful that he met his end with someone who'd come to save him, and yet where was this anger coming from?

I spoke to my ENTJ best friend Athena.

"I wanted him to live," I snapped into the phone.

"I know," she said. "If I were there with him, I would have wanted that too. I would've been like 'Dude, you're gonna live if I have to give you CPR for 100 years!', but think about this -- maybe to die on the other side of the gate was all he really wanted. Maybe, after everything he'd suffered, what mattered to him most was that someone came for him in the end."

Bitterly, I wondered aloud if relief itself had killed him.

I told her about a certain priest, a Father Englemar Unzeitig, who'd been newly-ordained at the outset of WW2 and who'd been almost immediately imprisoned by the SS for speaking against the abuses aimed at the Jews. Father Englemar was thrown into Dachau, which he called the "largest church on earth" because scores upon scores of priests, church workers, and clergy had been sent there.

At some point, toward the end of the war, an outbreak of typhoid at the camp had decimated the population. Victims were sequestered off alone, left to die. But 20 men volunteered to go take care of them, knowing that they were signing their death warrants. One of them was Father Englemar.

He contracted typhoid and died a day after his 34th birthday, and only weeks shy of the camp's liberation by US troops.

In a letter smuggled out to his sister, written just before he died, he said, "The Good is undying and victory must remain with God, even if it sometimes seems useless for us to spread love in the world. Nevertheless, one sees again and again that the human heart is attuned to love, and it cannot withstand its power in the long run... we want to continue to do and offer everything so that love and peace may soon reign again."

His graciousness tore me to pieces. No thing looks so enduring or noble anymore. All people care about is how white their teeth are or who they know.

Here's where my conflict begins...

While I'm struck speechless by such a brilliant flash in the darkness, I resent the darkness for closing in again. I told my mother that a great deal of my sadness was due to the fact that I believed that the darkness got the last word. I don't mean that in an end times sense.

I mean it in the sense of the eschatology of the every day.

Evil breaks my heart because it gets the last word. The brilliance dies out and darkness sets in once more. I feel the loss of having been understood or accepted or loved, and that the source is gone. Darkness can't stomp out greatness, but I feel the effects of it's grasping hands, when it seizes on a beautiful person and drags them into it's own death.

"Compassion" means to 'suffer with' -- voluntarily entering into the suffering of another's torment and taking part of the load.

Why can't grace of that magnitude survive here? Why can't it kick the door in?!

I hate feeling so strongly about something I can't see or feel, but I know is there. Hell may not be pits of fire, but an even more awful separation from God, from the good of the universe. If we limited human beings can create such horrors in our tiny brains, surely Hell must be the collective of all evil malign things.

God is holy in ways we are not. I believe He's benevolent and kind, but there's another aspect of Him that makes Hell necessary? I grapple with this.
 

Venom

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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:

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:

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.

....

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.


.....

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.

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"?

:cry::cry::cry::cry::doh:
 

Totenkindly

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a narrative on how i can't understand how God could create hell and allow people to go there for eternity


Oh no... the topic from hell ... err, about hell... again!

Blood rolls down a lashed back. Tears and mucous choke the cries of pain. You recognize the face of this person as your best friend. Broken flesh reveals the lung cavity of an agonized young girl. Worms eat away at her lungs and heart as she coughs up blood. This was your daughter. An older man, is chained at one end of his hands and feet and is being pulled apart as his sockets rip apart, then are mended and then ripped apart again, over and over again. You recognize this as that amazing high school teacher you would never forget who helped you everyday after school on the math you couldn't ever do right. A dark bottomless pit fills with water, and there is a women trying to stay above the water, yet she continues to drown. Her, you recognize as your mother.... (etc)

Rather than trying to answer the question in some way, I will mention a point of connection instead.

Have you read Neil Gaiman's "Seasons of Mist" in his Sandman graphic novel story?

He explores the same topics as you do, when he scripts a dramatic arc where Lucifer decides he's done playing patsy and decides to shut down Hell and go away.

There's one evocative scene where a naked man is nailed and chained through his skin to a large rock, and Lucifer goes to tell him he's released.

Lucifer: You! Did you not hear my proclamation? You are free.

Breschau: I... will... not... leave.

Lucifer: Oh, but you WILL leave.

Breschau: You... do... not understand. I am Breschau.

Lucifer: So?

Breschau: I am receiving just punishment for my crimes committed while I was alive. For my crimes were MONSTROUS things.

Lucifer: I don't care about your crimes. I want you OUT of here.

Breschau: Demon, I will not be fooled by your prattle. I am Breschau of Livonia. I ripped out hte tongues of those who spoke against me, and cut the unborn babies from the wombs of my enemies' women, that they would not become warriors to rise against me. // I took my mother by force, and I strangled my sister when she would not consent to my advances. // Soon my name was whispered in the night by mothers to terrify their babes into obedience. I am Breschau who bathed int he blood of children. // I am Breschau who forced the true prophets of the lord to dance upon plates of iron, under which fires were burning, and I laughed at they danced. // I am Breschau, and when my mistress was unfaithful, I cut the nose from her face and worse it about my neck. AS for the woman, I had her sewn to her lover, and skin to skin, I left them in the desert to be eaten by ravens, and I laughed as I heard them scream. // I am Breschau, and this is my punishment.

Lucifer: You must go.

Breschau: Did you not HEAR me, fiend? I have KILLED --

Lucifer: I heard. You killed a number of people who would be now long-since dead anyway. So what? You've been chained to this slab for eleven hundred years. Haven't you tortured yourself enough?

Breschau: It's not me that is torturing me. It's the vengeance of the LORD -- Did you not hear? I -

Lucifer: -- am Breschau. Yes, I know. // But no one today remembers Breschau. No one. I doubt one living mortal in a hundred of thousand could even point where Livonia used to be, on a map. The world has forgotten you.

Breschau: But... I .... am...

Lucfier: ENOUGH. Go.

[Breschau is released.]


Later, Lucifer is talking to Morpheus, lord of dreams, and says. "... they live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them. // and then they die and come here (having transgressed against what they believed to be right) and expect US to fulfill their desire for pain and retribution. I don't make them come here. // They talk of me going around and buying souls like a fishwife come market day, never stopping to ask themselves why. I need no souls. And how can anyone own a soul? // No, they belong to themselves. They just hate to have to face up to it."

Two angels end up taking Hell over, in service of Heaven, so that punishment can be restored. The two angels decide they want the punishment to have a point -- they are "kinder gentler rulers" than Lucifer had been.

When one demon is flaying the skin from a damned soul, one of the angels flies over and stops him.

Remiel: No. That was the OLD hell. That was a place of mindless torture and purposeless pain. There will be no more wanton violence, no further suffering inflicted without reason or explanation. We will HURT you, and we are NOT sorry. But we do not do it to punish you. We do it to REDEEM you. Because afterwards you'll be a better person. And, because, we love you. One day you'll thank us for it. (flies off)

Victim (calling after, as the punishment begins again): But.. you don't understand. That makes it worse. That makes it so much worse.
 
S

Sniffles

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Oh brother, this has to be one of the most irritating topics to discuss in regards to theology. Not least of which because I often hate eschatological topics.

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?

There's considerable debate about when one's permenant fate is actually determined. I know of some Orthodox theologians who speculate that on the last day Christ does grant sinners in Hell one last chance to geniunely repent.

I've also heard of Jacques Maritain's speculation that even a soul in Hell can still find salvation of sorts, where they then suffer the least amount of punishment. So technically they're still in Hell, but have found salvation.

One could literally spend years, if not decades, looking into the various perspectives presented on this issue within the Christian tradition.

well how does he suddenly stop loving us when we die just because we did what he programmed us to do?!

God never stops loving us, even when we're in Hell. And arguing "doing what he programmed us to do" is a rather odd argument to make, since among many other things, it neglects the act of original sin.

How is this all fitting into God pre ordaining who will be saved from the very start?

Well Im speaking as a Catholic, not a Calvinist. The notion of God pre-ordaining people to Heaven or Hell is a Calvinist notion that is not found within most other Christian traditions that I know of.

Catholicism holds that one goes to Hell because they consciously choose to reject God's ways and not seek proper repentence.
 

Domino

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Narrow eschatology to the little "deaths" of every hour and it's no longer a giant "but where does it all end?!" morass.
 

Jack Flak

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*literally makes sure this isn't in NF Idyllic*

It doesn't, PP. There'll always be the good and bad, and happiness & joy aren't prolonged emotions, they refer only to moments. When I heard that years ago, I saw things a little more optimistically.
 
S

Sniffles

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Not least of which because I often hate eschatological topics.

Let me clarify a bit. I actually seek an eschatological understanding of the world - ie what is the ultimate purpose of life, history, everything.

But the actual specifics of what happens at the end is what usually annoys me. Not that I don't care, far from it. It's just......it's really hard to explain. I guess it's just many people often miss the fricking point on so many levels.

One of my oddities of character I guess. :blush:
 

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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...

That's true. Sheol (the grave) is what exists in the OT. Both the righteous and unrighteous went there. The "faith" aspect involved believing that despite everyone going to Sheol, the faithful in JHVH would somehow be restored to real life and preserved somehow.

(So the capital punishment cases seem even harsher in some ways. Nowadays we kill criminals but try to convert them and maybe they'll get into heaven. The OT Jews didn't have that. Destruction of the body was destruction of the life. And desecration of bodies was even worse -- the criminals whose bodies were being left out in the open to be eaten by scavengers? Well, they couldn't really be resurrected, their bodies were defiled, destroyed, and lost forever, as far as I can guess... there would be no resurrection for them, if such a thing existed.)

Notions of heaven and hell evolve along with the personification of a devil figure.

...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 think one of the longest is probably in Revelation. So to me, that doesn't count in terms of getting a "realistic" view -- the entire book is metaphorical and symbolic.

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....

There are those who believe in fire.

I tend to believe that people flee from God if they hate him or can't submit to him... and that's hell. Because all relationship is built on some degree of submission and sacrifice. If you flee from God, you won't be able to tolerate any sort of real love/intimacy.

I've had enough loneliness in my life that I don't want to imagine being lonely forever and believing that nothing would ever change. It would be excruciating and hopeless, like an inner black fire eating you empty like cancer gnawing brittle bones.

Like why can't he continue to fight for your soul in the afterlife? why does he give up in the afterlife?

The only half-palatable idea I ever had on this is that, as humans, we are ignorant. Thus, we chase what we WANT to believe in rather than what actually we know to be real. Our heart intentions are more obvious.

Put another way, we know people who obey the law because they want to submit. Others obey the law just to avoid being punished. The attitudes are very different ones. The first shows a commitment to the law; the second is just self-preservation and opportunism, and as soon as they know they could get away with something, they would.

Now replace "law" with "God" and then ask yourself which sort of people God would want to spend eternity with... and which types would want to actually spend eternity with God.

I think, if Christianity is accurate and there's a God and a moment when we finally see him face to face, then in that moment our intentions will become obvious, and we'll either embrace him or run from him. Running from him leads us into hell.

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?!

In my interpretation above, God would grieve over those who flee him but would not be willing to force them to obey and stay, out of love.


as far as the quote you recorded here, at my age, I have resolved that what passes for apologetics is mostly just bullshit to justify one's current belief system. You're actually looking at the ramifications of the apologetics -- "But that would mean THIS!!! And I find that repulsive, many people would find it repulsive!"

But that doesn't matter. How you feel about it doesn't matter to those who think differently. The idea is merely intellectually derived from the accepted doctrines. Thus it might seem internally consistent to them, and they don't bother to actually feel through what it means if implemented.

You're operating from a values/ethics POV.

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 have intellectual trouble believing that nothing we do matters because in the end we'll all be treated the same. That seems to downplay selfishness and evil. I have to think that our behavior has definite ramifications.

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 come to "believe"?

You ask the good questions, hon. There aren't great answers. In the end, most people just take a "faith step," either for a particular religion or for their own personal ethics. Reason won't get you there 100%.
 

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*literally makes sure this isn't in NF Idyllic*

It doesn't, PP. There'll always be the good and bad, and happiness & joy aren't prolonged emotions, they refer only to moments. When I heard that years ago, I saw things a little more optimistically.

You don't bear the NFJ hallmark of "oh God, where are you?!"

I've been doing that since, .... 3rd grade? *head shake* I read St. John de la Cruz, I get calm, something happens, I go cosmic again. I expect that to happen - as everything keeps evolving and changing.

Where's Edahn and his Buddhist monkey mind when we need him!?
 

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You don't bear the NFJ hallmark of "oh God, where are you?!"

I've been doing that since, .... 3rd grade? *head shake* I read St. John de la Cruz, I get calm, something happens, I go cosmic again. I expect that to happen - as everything keeps evolving and changing.

Where's Edahn and his Buddhist monkey mind when we need him!?
*McMahon* You are correct, Sir! *"does" logic*
 

Domino

ENFJ In Chains
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,429
MBTI Type
eNFJ
Enneagram
4w3
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Let me clarify a bit. I actually seek an eschatological understanding of the world - ie what is the ultimate purpose of life, history, everything.

But the actual specifics of what happens at the end is what usually annoys me. Not that I don't care, far from it. It's just......it's really hard to explain. I guess it's just many people often miss the fricking point on so many levels.

One of my oddities of character I guess. :blush:

Not at all. I generally get annoyed and dismissive when anyone starts in on "Hell" because ultimately, there's little I can do beyond what my Christian leanings tell me. I can't control the FINAL outcome. Furthermore, I don't like wasting my time on speculation of that nature when people are starving and being tortured to death in THIS realm of existence. I don't handle "senseless" torture or maulings very well - those will send my compass spinning wildly.
 
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