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To: Soliton

God is not a dictator. He is not capricious, nor does He torture people.

God is good, totally. The greater the capacity for good, the greater the capacity for evil. If God, being omnipotent, were not totally good, He would be totally evil. Being totally evil, He would not be capable of any good at all, nor could He create it, nor would He allow it. As a matter of fact, He would not allow anything that was not Himself. Evil beings like dictators tolerate no dissent or challenge to their authority. That being the case, if God became evil, it would result in the instant annihilation of anything not Himself.

God does not torture, as you like to imagine. Pain is the consequence of certain behavior, not inflicted on someone for perverted enjoyment. If you burn yourself on the stove, the stove is not torturing you for touching it.

If you’re going to label God a dictator because He punishes sin, you have effectively just labeled every parent on the planet a dictator, attributing to them also, evil motives, torturing their children for disobedience.

God has given us free will, something no dictator would ever do, because they cannot tolerate the challenge to their authority. Yes, there are consequences to actions. God does not inflict pain to punish, He warns us of the natural consequences of our actions. That is not torturing.

God knew that we could not meet His standards, so from the beginning, when Adam and Eve disobeyed, He promised a redeemer, someone who would reconcile mankind to Himself. God Himself, took on a body and came to earth and lived and died among us,(a horrible death at that) for the purpose of providing a way of being delivered from the consequences of our sin. He did for us, what we could not do for ourselves, hardly the actions of a dictator to provide a way to escape those consequences.

That, combined with free will, provides us an escape from the consequences of sin. The choice is ours. If someone ends up in hell, it’s their own doing. They rejected God’s plan; something so simple that a child and understand and do.

It isn’t like God hasn’t warned us. He has, over and over. One thing He will not do, however, is override someone’s free will and force the decision on them. So people end up where they want. They may not like it very much, but they got their choice and knew of the consequences.


30 posted on 04/17/2008 7:41:35 AM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
If someone ends up in hell, it's their own doing. They rejected God's plan; something so simple that a child and understand and do.

Are Jewish Holocaust victims who kept their faith doomed to Hell?

Is it right and just that they suffer forever in Hell?

31 posted on 04/17/2008 8:21:49 AM PDT by Ken H
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