Posted on 07/02/2008 10:24:31 PM PDT by ROTB
There is a skeptic I have been witnessing to. He has many questions. I offered to answer them all if he took the trouble to write them down. I have included my answers to his questions.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Answer: Through Adam's sin, God cursed the world. What is greater: The difference between a fly's intelligence and yours, or the difference between your intelligence, and the intelligence of the Creators who arranged the 3 billion base pairs of the human genome and every living creature in a week?
Question: Can you deny God's Judgment of Adam was a setup?
Answer: No. Adam exercised free will, and there were consequences to his choices for everybody who lived after him. In the same way, you have free will, and there are consequences to your choices for everyone who lives after you.
Question: Why did God not prevent Mohamed from being born. He apparently wanted half the world led away from salvation though Christ by Mohamed's actions.
Answer: Mohamed exercised his free will to exalt himself and thus deceive billions. Mohamed will be held accountable for his lies.
Question: If God cares about humans, wants us to know his will & find our way to salvation then why was his word given to a very few people in one small corner of the world, taking many centuries to spread, resulting in most of the world (China, Japan, Malaysia, Africa, India, North & South America, Russia, Australia, etc...) throughout most of time, knowing nothing of the Jewish religion or Jesus Christ. This resulted in thousands of belief systems, many of which were cruel and inhumane, such as the Mayans who for centuries captured or killed their neighbors, offering them to God (sic) by the thousands. Yet God let this go on for many centuries, never telling these people to stop killing people less barbarous than themselves in His name. He didn't care!
Answer: God's desire to punish sin was satisfied with Jesus on the cross. God is thus not mad at sin any longer, and send fire from heaven anymore like He did with Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus blamed Satan for murder in John 10:10. Also, God does not punish people to hell for lack of information. They know he exists despite their lies. See Romans 1:19-20. People get punished in hell because they are sinners. Now you know about Christ. Do you care about lost people? Will you go? What is your excuse? Jesus said in Matthew 7:21 that there would be hypocrites in the Church.
Question: How can God create a man, imperfect, flawed, naturally selfish & sinful, give him a 2000 year old book some people believe in, and expect him to have faith only God can give, change his life completely no longer living for himself ; And if he is unable to do this, be condemned to immersion in hellfire for eternity. Any human being who would throw gasoline on someone and set them on fire for revenge would be deemed a monster. But when God does it a billion times longer, it's JUST.
Answer: The Old Testament writings were began in 1000BC, and were finalized by at least 150BC, given the Septuagint translation from Hebrew to Greek existed by then. So you are off by at least 150 years. Visit www.awmi.net to see what a ministry centered on miracles looks and sounds like. Furthermore, God claims to be the habitation of justice (Psalms 89:14, Jeremiah 31:23 and 50:7), so he must punish sin. God's hatred of sin is so total, that only hell will do. Remember, people know they are sinning. See Romans 1:19-20 again. Jesus took your punishment for you. Believe in Jesus and receive forgiveness and the personal love of God. Refuse the love and forgiveness of God through Christ, and suffer now and in hellfire forever.
Question: Hell was created for the Devil but he's not there. Yet millions of people who died centuries ago have been there since the moment of their death and they are never getting out. Why?
Answer: People know when they sin, and deserve to be punished.
Question: How does God abandon a man who is of another faith, not knowing Jesus, who lives his life totally according to the only God he knows, doing His will as best he knows. But our just God is going to send him to hell.
Answer: People walk away from false religions towards Christ all the time when they hear the good news. What are you doing about Jesus Christ? Are you griping and complaining about fine points of doctrine? Or did you accept the good news, and relay it with fidelity to lost people around you?
There's a sermon online somewhere called Ten Shekels and a Shirt that deals with this question very succinctly. I believe the gist of it was "Man is not condemned because God decided it...Man is condemned because he deserves it." The point was God as the redeemer, not God the punisher. We all deserve Hell, and are lucky to escape it.
I love Catholic Apolegetics but really bad at communicating them.
Good Luck.
One thing I heard on Catholic radio to this subject is to suggest to whom you are witnessing to as opposed to telling them.
Did that make sense?
**Question: Hell was created for the Devil but he’s not there. Yet millions of people who died centuries ago have been there since the moment of their death and they are never getting out. Why?
Answer: People know when they sin, and deserve to be punished. **
The answer is quite true, no pc or escaping it. To get into heaven is like going through a needle’s eye.
I may be headed to hell BUT at least I know Barak Obama will be there burning alongside me.
This comes under the category of "Don't cast your pearls before swine." Our Commission is to testify of Jesus and the Gospel. The person that is seeking Truth will be prompted by the Holy Spirit. He/she will listen intently and have legitimate questions. The questions I consider asking "How many angels on the head of a pin?" are just a pagan intent on wasting your time thinking you have no clue about what you are talking about. It wouldn't matter if you gave the finest thesis on Religion ever given, the pagan will never "get it".
The question on Mohamed is at least relevant to the world around us unlike the flytrap. Sarah rejected the power of God to give her a "love" child at her old age so she intervened in God's business because she failed to trust God. Abraham entered the "slave" girl to have an illegitimate child. The points are many and profound. Trusting God is how you get your blessings. Look at Mary's blessing by trusting God. You cannot "help" God. He has no plan B. If it doesn't come to pass, it wasn't God. God promised a love child to Abraham but he got a poor imitation. What this represents is God's love for us with the gift of Jesus vs, the "slave" child of the Law. If you notice, Islam is all about the Law. They are slaves to the Law even to killing their own wives and children. Issac, OTOH represents God's promise and His love. If Abraham had a pact with God for all his power and wealth, he also had a problem when he didn't wait on God for his blessing. So, to this day, we have Islam as the antagonists of God's people and will most likely be involved in the Tribulation time. I'm sure Ishmael was as planned by God as Issac was as his tribe is in prophesy. A non believer always has trouble with this sort of answer because they think God must have made a mistake. God used Pharaoh to punish the Jews, just as He used many other Pagan kings to do His bidding in order to get the desired result from the Jews. Jesus was born on the proper day, in the proper year and died exactly on the proper day in the proper year in the proper manor. God planned it from the foundation of the world, so Adam and Eve were planned and every moment after that till the return of Jesus on the Mount of Olives on Judgment Day. If God knows the hairs on your head and a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, I suspect He knows what is going to happen next.
Like I said at the start, I would ask the person if they think they need Jesus to save them from their sin and if they blow you off, you are just arguing with a corpse. Non believers think they are as good as the next person and need nothing. Jesus said "There is none good, no not one", so in fact, they are as good as the next fellow and will end up in Hell with them. If they are seriously seeking God, then you won't have to do much before they are on their knees weeping asking you to show them what they must do for salvation. Exercises like this are mostly for you to get more involved in your Bible, not for the person asking stupid questions about flytraps. The Holy Spirit gives Jesus His Bride and you really have little to do with it. Your job is to obey and testify of the Gospel. God takes care of the rest.( lest you boast)
If God's hatred of sin were so total, why would he create Man capable of sin?
Because while God does create us, and desires that we live free from sin, he doesn't rule us or force us to choose Him. The devil is the ruler of this world, and we are under his curse as long as we live here. Perfection is reserved for the afterlife...should we choose God's grace, and accept the Blood of Jesus, we will live forever in heaven, then and only then will we be incapable of sinning.
Furthermore, why create a being from nothingness, just to torture it for all eternity? Why not simply return it to nothingness?
God does not torture people in Hell, they torture themselves because they sent themselves there, not Him. They do not return to nothingness because they must be punished for their sins. That's the tragedy of it. The souls that are in Hell ARE nothingness to God. He shuts them out of His memory forever, never to show them the love and grace and acceptance He offered them while on Earth. They rejected Him and His Son. They trampled His Blood underfoot, as if it were unholy. And now He will reject them, never hear their cries, and never shed another tear for them. Jesus died for our sins, and if we reject his sacrifice, and all He went through and suffered for us, in the end, their is no sympathy for us.
My best suggestion would be to pray. I will pray for your friend now and also my own atheist brother.
You have the capability to accept this great gift and spend eternity with your Creator. If you reject the costly gift of the Blood of Jesus, you have earned eternity in Hell and that brings glory to God. To question God on why and how He accomplishes His Will is a little presumptuous.
If your child gave his life to save someone and they spit on his grave, I don't think you would have a problem with them spending eternity in fire and brimstone. You may even get some satisfaction from it. The God of the Bible loves us unconditionally, and yet it also says He is a jealous God.
After the simple answer that God gave bees a defense against naughty boys who try swatting down nests...he's into beekeeping and honey production.
If government's hatred of crime were so total, why would it permit man opportunities to commit crimes? < / sarc >
Your friend may never find the answers he is looking for in a religious order.
Maybe he's asking the wrong questions about life and existence.
If these questions are of utmost importance to him and he concludes that there is no god, will all of his answers of origins of existence and the meaning of life have been answered?
In the absence of any morality in the spawning of life in this world, how can judgement be cast over any action? What mortal life form gets to choose which is the higher life form?
Back to that flytrap question. If there is no god to make what the flytrap does "wrong", what would make it wrong for the flytrap to feed itself on another species? It is the cycle of life. No morality about it.
And when one pack of animals or nest of insects wars on another there is nothing immoral about it.
So it would be wrong to claim that man going to war against man is immoral.
It is the bestial nature. If it is good enough to justify homosexual relations, it is good enough for all actions in the absence of a divine creator.
Do as thou will was the philosophy adopted by "so called" Satanists (actually atheists) like Anton LaVey.
"Calling All Christians"What flavor?
They made a movie about it. Kneel before Zod!
I love how people that can't seem to balance a checkbook want to question why God would do something. Because He can doesn't seem to be a good answer. He says He is the potter, you are the clay. Who has the right to tell the potter what to do with his creation? He can make a perfectly good pot and break it on the floor. He owns it. Read the book of Job.
The Bible, of course, states that God is all powerful. He has already planned your entire life ahead of you. He knows everything that was, everything that is, and everything that is to come. Yet, at the same time, we have free will. We have the capacity to choose to follow God.
Is this a contradiction? If our choices were pre-ordained, then are they really our choices?
I mean, if God already knew that Adam and Eve were going to eat the fruit, then why did He test them? Also, why did God seem surprised when they did eat the fruit? "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" and "What is this that thou hast done?" Finally, I find it highly unlikely that God actually put a curse on the snake to crawl on its belly. There are much more unfortunate animals than the snake. Snakes are found all over the Earth and are well-adapted to their environments. Also, in many cases, the fact that it crawls is an advantage over many other species, not mention the poisonous fangs that snakes are notorious for.
I want to believe in God. However, I refuse interpret the Bible literally. It doesn't make sense.
"You have the capability to accept this great gift and spend eternity with your Creator. If you reject the costly gift of the Blood of Jesus, you have earned eternity in Hell and that brings glory to God. To question God on why and how He accomplishes His Will is a little presumptuous."
I must have seen this point thousands of times before.........at least. Sure, sometimes it's longer and sometimes it's shorter. Its always slightly different, but the general content is still the same. "God is God! If you don't follow Jesus, you will burn in hell! How dare you question God?"
I hate this argument. It's so stupid. Of course I have to question God!!! Presumptuous? I prefer rational. God must stand up to logic. Every single believer of every false religion in the world is trapped by their ignorance and fear. Muslims, Hindus, Mormons...how can they be so devout in their faith? Because they never question. They are so intensely devoted in proving that their religion is the only corrent religion that they forget to ask the most important question: Is it true?
If you search for evidence that supports global warming, what are you going to find? Duh, evidence that supports global warming. You're going to hear so much bull**** about melting ice caps, unusual heat waves, and rising sea levels that you'll be a believer in no time at all. You would never have learned about www.petitionproject.com, the ice-age scare only a few decades ago, the activity of the sun, the impact of water vapor, the satellite pictures of antarctica, or all the glaciers that are growing in size.
I prefer to look at both sides of the picture. If I go to hell because of that, then so be it.
"Comment: People that ask such questions just want to argue. They think they have superior intelligence and you have no answers."
Oh, now you can read people's minds? Okay, I'm going to make a completely absurd suggestion. Is it possible that people have a different motive than just arguing? Is it possible that they actually want to find out the truth? (gasp, no way)
"I love how people that can't seem to balance a checkbook want to question why God would do something."
Ah, yes, you can balance a checkbook perfectly, while all non-Christians are completely baffled. Obviously, you are of the highest intelligence, and you do have all the answers. You are not answering any questions adequately because we are a waste of your time.
(1) God is so far advanced that we cannot comprehend His actions any more than an ant can understand our court system.
(2) Pre-knowledge does not mean pre-destined.
(3)God is reasonable and even invites “Come let us reason together” to show the logic of His system.
(4) Sinners - those who do not wish to advance to the perfection stage and wish to remain sinners - would be miserable in heaven. It really would be torture there as well.
(4) God loves us - you and me- with a love we cannot fully appreciate. It is a pure love in which he hates what sin has done to our relationship with Him and each other. There can be no compromise with sin. It must be destroyed completely and with it those who choose it to make the universe safe.
Most will disagree, but that’s okay. Start by reading 1 Timothy 4:10, then go to www.tentmaker.org. This is not Unitarian by the way. I’m not wanting to debate anybody on this, because it is pointless. But I found many answers when I read the entire Bible, noticed several verses like the one above, and started searching the internet. Your mileage may vary.
If there is no God, what IS justice? If there IS a God who made everything, with what justice other than that which He provides can we criticize Him?
He may be a morally flawed person in a world which seems to be filled with gratuitous cruelty. So how does he come to the notion that something is wrong with things as they are? What standard of how things SHOULD be does he use, and where did he get that standard?
Except there isn’t, really. While God has planned out everything about us, he has not dictated what we shall choose. It is possible that with future technology, parents would be able to have this “soul-crafting” ability as much as humanly can be had. Say there is a chip invented that can be implanted into your brain so that you must do exactly what that chip tells you to do. I am sure that some parents would choose to implant this in their children’s brains and make them so that they will only do what their parents want them to do. But doesn’t that idea horrify you? It horrifies me. Loving parents would not do that because it takes away from the humanity of that child. It makes that child merely a robot.
The fact that there are people in heaven means that humans CAN go to heaven and that God has definitely given us a way that we can choose to be with Him. But to make us choose that would be no better than mind control. If He is truly loving, He will let us make our own choices, which includes the choice to defy Him. He did not create us to fail. He created us with the ability to fail if we choose.
A starving man will not do well to be picky about the taste of his food. ;-)
God did not know that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit. Why? Because He loved them, and trusted them. He COULD have known, He could have looked into the future to see, but He CHOSE not to. If He is an all-powerful being who can do all things, He can also choose not to do something, IMO.
I want to believe in God. However, I refuse interpret the Bible literally. It doesn't make sense.
When you actually read it, and study, and dig deep into it, you discover the Mind of God...and it is the most beautiful, breathtaking thing I have ever read.
I hate this argument. It's so stupid. Of course I have to question God!!! Presumptuous? I prefer rational. God must stand up to logic.
So-called "logic" dictates that my mother should be dead of an inoperable brain tumor...but Jesus healed her when the doctors couldn't.
"A starving man will not do well to be picky about the taste of his food. ;-)"But such a man must not eat contradictory foods lest he vomit them both and be worse off than before.
One thing I heard on Catholic radio to this subject is to suggest to whom you are witnessing to as opposed to telling them.
Did that make sense?
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Yes. I’ve heard that effective witnessing to Muslims involves a very humble heart. I believe you.
I may be headed to hell BUT at least I know Barak Obama will be there burning alongside me.
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Both of you deserve it, but I hope both of you escape it.
I also deserve it, but I will get in on the merit of Jesus Christ.
God’s hatred of sin is so total, that only hell will do.
Did God not make Man? If God’s hatred of sin were so total, why would he create Man capable of sin? Why create something imperfect from nothing, then condemn the imperfection? Furthermore, why create a being from nothingness, just to torture it for all eternity? Why not simply return it to nothingness?
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Because if God were to annihilate us when we don’t make it into heaven, then we would only have instrumental value, as opposed to intrinsic value.
We are made in the image of God, so we have intrinsic value. This is why Christians go nuts over euthanasia.
What flavor?
Catholic?
Protestant?
Evangelical?
Miscellaneous?
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Christians = people who believe the Bible is the word of God
Wow.
Um, there were fly-eating plants and animal-eating-animals millennia before there was any curse.
It’s called the food chain.
Don’t let an agonstic define the terms of debate like that. There is no correlation between man’s sin and the food chain. Never was.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will consider the matter.
"Christians = people who believe the Bible is the word of God"On a different thread someone asked what a Christian was.
A Christian is someone who has accepted and placed their trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.I would like to note that, just because someone believes that the bible is the word of God does not make them a Christian.
Christianity is not a religion, but a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Eternal life through Jesus Christ is a gift that one needs only to accept: it cannot be earned.
I’ll grab two of them.
The salvation of those who haven’t heard of God or Jesus:
God has provided a general revelation in Creation, and a more personal revelation that is our internal moral ethos which has to come from somewhere. For those who seek Him, He will provide a way to find Him. Numerous anectdotes can be supplied for those who chose to seek God who hadn’t heard of Him that were provided with the means to find Him.
The punishment of “hellfire”:
“Flames” and other descriptions are figurative. Hell is merely the separation from God - just a continuation of what they chose in life. The remorse comes from your realization of your mistake.
And actually, to force someone who has chosen to separate himself from God into His presence for eternity would in itself be Hell.
How can God create a man, imperfect, flawed, naturally selfish & sinful,
Founding his question on a flawed premise – ignoring that the creation was perfect and sinless.
give him a 2000 year old book some people believe in, and expect him to have faith only God can give, change his life completely no longer living for himself ;
His vagueness betrays the essence of Christianity – the historical FACT of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. He also recognizes that Christianity (and God) denies that one’s behavior by itself can grant him/her eternal life, but the source is God through Christ. He also recognizes as a result in faith in God, one’s life is changed. He shows a lot of distain for the bible in general and probably has never really opened it up and read it (some people believe in). Perhaps recognizing that to do so, he would then be accountable to the words therein and the accompanying calling of the Holy Spirit to repentance.
And if he is unable to do this, be condemned to immersion in hellfire for eternity. Any human being who would throw gasoline on someone and set them on fire for revenge would be deemed a monster. But when God does it a billion times longer, it's JUST
Goes right back to the Person, Nature and Work of Christ. God paid the price Himself knowing that man on his own was unable. Here is a refusal to recognize the mercy of God in order to maintain a prideful, self reliance and non-repentant life in opposition to God, because as he recognized earlier – the result would be life changing. Were God to force salvation onto all, this same anti-God spirit would be screaming that He is a dictator for not allowing one to live their own lives. What he fails to see is that at that time of judgment, Jesus will stand before him with the nail pierced hands visible and essentially say to him that He did the suffering for him to reconcile him to Himself. He will remember your responses to him that Jesus paid it all for him, and will have no excuse for his choice.
Then the Bible is wrong and God is a liar if Genesis says there was NO death? If God says the evening and the morning was the first day, He was lying? There was NO death before the Fall, and a day wasn't a millennia.
This is to the point I was making earlier. People believe what they choose to believe. When you learn to trust God, you become closer to Him. He wouldn't lie to you or hurt you. The Bible is written the way it is written to impart special knowledge to it's reader. To reject that knowledge is to reject the love of God. The Book is for His people. All others reject it, just as they reject good, truth, and Spiritual things.
It's when you start to pick and choose what you believe in the Scriptures that you get confused about God's plan and you start to make up things YOU think God wants. It's gone so far now that some denominations preach homosexual marriage or abortion is ok with God. They can contort the Scriptures to fit whatever THEY think. The whole point of becoming a Christian is repentance from this way of thinking and fidelity with God. The rebellion against God is what we were discussing in the first place. God is sovereign. He can make flytraps and feed them flies as easy as he can create a universe from nothing. It's not our job to question why God would allow flies to die anymore than to throw someone into Hell. All we need to know is we aren't pleasing to Him as sinners and He loved us enough to fix it.
I can't tell you the number of times someone has said they don't want to be in Heaven with a God that allows "such and such"(eg. some dastardly crime against a child). The child belongs to Him and He can do what He wishes with them. The child is in Heaven and doesn't even remember his life here. There is no crying or dying there. We cling to life here on Earth when we have been promised something infinitely more beautiful. We don't trust God and His promises is the problem.
Life here is temporary and life after death is eternity. That's a long time to be away from the one that loves you.
You know, it will end up being a waste of your breath to answer his questions. Because he will just keep coming up with more. Instead ask him very simply if he can honestly say he is at peace with himself, his family, his life and the world. Ask him if the state of the world reflects that man is inherently good. Or does it rather show somewhere there is a toxin at work that is doing its damndest to spread misery and pain. Ask him if he thinks the world deserves better.
Ask him do the hearts of men cause this misery or is it all just random happenings? Then ask him what He would think if he had the chance to meet a person who could change those hearts.
Then if he says yes such a person would be someone to meet. Explain that He can be met in the Bible and through prayer. And then simply pray. Sincerely and humbly that His own heart be opened.
Oh you might mention this man has a name, Jesus.
PS. Please don’t think because I keep writing about Jesus as Person I am forgetting that He is God. You can get to that further on in your discussions.
"He could have looked into the future to see, but He CHOSE not to."
It is not a matter of whether or not He looks into the future. He does not have a limitless capacity to know, it's not like he's looking through a manual of the universe, he already knows. It's double-think. I know that Adam is going to eat the fruit, but I choose to not know that Adam is going to eat the fruit, so then, when he does, I will get mad, and cast him out of the garden of Eden.
"The child belongs to Him and He can do what He wishes with them."
If my children disobeyed me, I would find suitable punishments for every wrong action that they committed, not abandon them to be tortured in a boundless ocean of fire for all eternity.
God loves us unconditionally. God has a purpose for everything that He does. When He lets us burn in hell forever, is he loving us? If he does, then what is his purpose?
Okay, glad it helped on your first sentence. I didn’t write any of those subsequent quotes though...
I have to say I loved the Venus Fly Trap. I remember watching shows about that when I was a kid and thinking “that’s neat”.
And God doesn't send anyone to hell. People send themselves to hell by refusing to listen to God's word, and by placing the self above the one to whom the self owes everything and to whom the self wants to ultimately be reunited. God is the core of everything. The emptiness that most human beings feel, in the core of their soul, comes from lack of God, the relationship with God one can only obtain through his Son, Jesus Christ. Yet people are selfish (and stupid) and so they attempt to fill up that void inside them with material possessions, or the pursuit of pleasure: sex, drugs, partying, etc. But it never works.
God respects the free will of human beings. When a person spends their entire life ignoring God, or worse, denying him, and then dies, God gives them what they desire - hell. A place separate from him. The only difference is, once a person winds up in hell, they finally know what they've done, and they know what they've lost, and they know they're never going to get another chance.
God is good. God is love. God is merciful. But God is also (and so many Christians - especially of the leftist and Universalist bent - tend to constantly ignore it) just.
I cannot say what God does to those who die who did not hear about Christ, but I can be fairly sure of what happens to those who die and did hear about Christ but rejected or denied Him. The Bible makes it pretty clear. And nowhere does the Bible indicate there is any "second chance" after one dies, to accept Christ. But I believe the Catholic Church (and I may be mistaken in either whole or in part, but I do remember hearing something like this) teaches something along the lines of the souls of certain people possibly being given an opportunity to accept Christ after they die. I don't remember which souls, or in what context, but I think I remember having heard something like that in their teaching. Some Catholic, here, will have to fill you in.
I understand that. It doesn’t seem like something a loving God would do, right? What loving God would create people knowing they would end up in hell.
There is one argument that we all deserve hell because we all sin. Like you said earlier, we were made with the ability to sin by God so isn’t that a bit cruel, but we were also made with the ability to resist sin and we choose not to. Nobody deserves heaven, essentially, we are there by the grace of God because His son intervenes on our behalf. It might be kinder to allow a soul to slip into oblivion depending on the soul, but would it be just?
I’m also not so sure of your statement that every single one would decide not to risk it. Perhaps you would, but there are plenty of people who I am sure would risk it because they have human conceit and feel that now that they know, they can avoid hell. It’s an interesting concept, and I can’t think of anything biblical right now that would answer this, but is there any way to be certain that our souls weren’t already given that choice before being sent to earth?
If a teenager defies her parents’ advice and gets herself involved in the heavy drug culture and ends up dying at the ripe age of 23 from the lifestyle she’s chosen, is that the fault of the parents? If they had somehow had a pretty good idea that she would choose to do that, should they have never had sex, or killed her as an infant, to spare her from such a fate? They probably would have given her a chance and tried their hardest to teach her while she was growing up, but the rest was up to her. Basically, it’s torture she’s brought upon herself, a torture she’s chosen.
It’s a bit different I guess because God knows beforehand that we will fail with certainty, but He still gives us the chance. You could argue that there are a lot of people that a loving God would have never created because he knows their fates; those that will end up in hell, those that have committed terrible atrocities here on earth, those that will live terrible, wretched lives filled with angst and sorrow, but all of that defies the concept of free will.
I’m sorry, I know I’m not very good at explaining it. I’m trying, and I’m not trying to preach or anything, I just want to answer your questions as best as I can.
There is an entire story being played out. Think of it this way, God is the author of a book and we, the creation, are Chapter 1.
Would you tell a book author to start over because you don’t like how he began with Chapter One? No, of course not! You must read the ENTIRE book to understand why God does what he does. The bible is the greatest love story ever told. He doesn’t just save one damsel in distress, but he will save anyone who wants to be saved. So the question is, Do you WANT to be saved?
The ending of the story has not yet happened but it will. God has given us a sneak peek into what will happen in the near future, if you just read it.
God’s word, the bible is to be taken as a whole, not picked apart and just read in parts.
No, not after. When they die. This makes the salvation of those not affiliated with the Catholic Church possible.
Funny - I’m currently listening to “The Case for Faith” and they’ve answered your questions.
The life here on Earth IS your 1st, 2nd, 3rd... chance. God will not let you die if there is any chance that you will choose Him (this argument extends to the delaying of the 2nd coming). Remember, He sees all times and places simultaneously.
Remember, God is all about free will. If you don’t choose Him, that’s your free will to do so. If you were to come into his presence, or even experience some time in hell before making that choice, then you wouldn’t be doing it of your free will, but under coersion.
You have plenty of “information” to make the choice (ref the general revelation in creation and the personal revelation in your own heart - your ethos and desire to seek the Creator). He WILL reveal himself to those who “seek him with all their heart”.
Seriously, read/listen to The Case for Faith - the interviewees do a much better job than I. One guy has made a study of the hell topic.
I remember hearing that all animals were vegetarians before Adam’s sin.
I think www.answersingenesis.com teaches the same thing.
Because if God were to annihilate us when we don’t make it into heaven, then we would only have instrumental value, as opposed to intrinsic value.
I don’t think I understand what you mean here. Are you saying that, because we are created in the image of God, that it would be wrong to destroy us? If so, why would tormenting us for all eternity be any better?
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Yes. I never thought of it this way, but part of being image bearers of God, is that we are eternal once made.
God has so much respect for you, that if you choose to go to hell, he will let you. But he (and I) hope you would instead choose forgiveness, heaven, and joy and relationship with him now.
You have intrinsic value because you (unlike animals) were made in the image of God. You are so important to God despite your sin, that he sent Jesus to die in your place, take your punishment in your place, go to hell in your place, so IF you believe in Jesus, you can know God personally, be forgiven, and go to heaven when you wear out your earth suit.
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