4 ms·

"I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God..."

sjwright 7y ago
“I, the Lord your God, love you. For anyone who doesn’t love me back, I made this nice little hell for you to spend an eternity.”
- gjsman-1000 7y ago
  God did not make hell for men, but for the demons. The demons were much more intelligent than you or me, so their decision on whether to be good or evil was instantaneous. We, however, are significantly lower in intelligence than demons for a variety of reasons too complex for here. Because of that, most of humanity has a 40-70 year lifespan over which to decide whether to serve good or evil for eternity. After that, you really get what you freely chose with your life. If you chose evil, you really chose to be with Satan forever, and God honors your choice and free will. If you chose good, God honors that choice as well. That's a simple way to say it, but there is far more that can be said on this topic. Furthermore, we believe God is infinitely just, and therefore, if a person is judged worthy of Hell, that person will have absolutely _zero_ ability to argue with God's judgement and will _completely_ understand the justice of God's judgement - although, this does not mean that the person will not hate the effects of the judgement with every ounce of his body. It's kind of like if you kill a person. You understand that the murder was completely your fault and your sentence is fair, and yet you hate your sentence.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    To me that all sounds like amateur fantasy fiction writing. The thing that made me is now judging me? I don’t understand how such cheap parlour trick logic appeals to anyone. If I write a complex computer program and it doesn’t do what I wanted, I don’t blame the program for failing. Even if I gave the program machine learning or artificial general intelligence. Even if I defined computer processes as having souls.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >If you chose evil, you really chose to be with Satan forever, and God honors your choice and free will. If you chose good, God honors that choice as well. That's not consistent with Christian teaching (or, as I understand it, much Judaic teaching that doesn't even have a Hell.) It doesn't matter if you choose good or evil. According to Christian doctrine, all humans by default (even, according to some verses, infants in the womb) are destined to burn in Hell unless they've been saved through grace by Jesus. It's innate to the nature of humanity due to original sin, and that sin originates from free will itself, which humans were never meant to have, according to Genesis. It's the result of eating the forbidden fruit and "becoming like God, knowing both good and evil." The person who spends their entire life being morally upright and law abiding, doing good, and helping others? If they're not saved, they burn, too bad. Hitler earnestly prays for salvation before shooting himself in the head in his bunker? Gets an eternity of bliss in paradise. The millions of Jews he murdered? Not so much. That's how it's supposed to work. Like, unless you know the bouncer and the secret handshake, you just don't get into the club.
- gottebp 7y ago
  Hell is simply this: Your own free-will rejection of the Godhead, who is all good, all love, and all truth itself. We are used to the end of romantic relationships hurting. If you end the relationship with transcendental love, goodness, and truth itself, it is not going to feel very good. He is a gentleman though and will let you do what you want.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    I feel like your post is intended to be sarcasm, but it’s hard to tell because most sincere people don’t tend to say things that are particularly comprehensible.

“I, the Lord your God, love you. For anyone who doesn’t love me back, I made this nice little hell for you to spend an eternity.”

gjsman-1000 7y ago
God did not make hell for men, but for the demons. The demons were much more intelligent than you or me, so their decision on whether to be good or evil was instantaneous. We, however, are significantly lower in intelligence than demons for a variety of reasons too complex for here. Because of that, most of humanity has a 40-70 year lifespan over which to decide whether to serve good or evil for eternity. After that, you really get what you freely chose with your life. If you chose evil, you really chose to be with Satan forever, and God honors your choice and free will. If you chose good, God honors that choice as well. That's a simple way to say it, but there is far more that can be said on this topic. Furthermore, we believe God is infinitely just, and therefore, if a person is judged worthy of Hell, that person will have absolutely _zero_ ability to argue with God's judgement and will _completely_ understand the justice of God's judgement - although, this does not mean that the person will not hate the effects of the judgement with every ounce of his body. It's kind of like if you kill a person. You understand that the murder was completely your fault and your sentence is fair, and yet you hate your sentence.
- sjwright 7y ago
  To me that all sounds like amateur fantasy fiction writing. The thing that made me is now judging me? I don’t understand how such cheap parlour trick logic appeals to anyone. If I write a complex computer program and it doesn’t do what I wanted, I don’t blame the program for failing. Even if I gave the program machine learning or artificial general intelligence. Even if I defined computer processes as having souls.
- krapp 7y ago
  >If you chose evil, you really chose to be with Satan forever, and God honors your choice and free will. If you chose good, God honors that choice as well. That's not consistent with Christian teaching (or, as I understand it, much Judaic teaching that doesn't even have a Hell.) It doesn't matter if you choose good or evil. According to Christian doctrine, all humans by default (even, according to some verses, infants in the womb) are destined to burn in Hell unless they've been saved through grace by Jesus. It's innate to the nature of humanity due to original sin, and that sin originates from free will itself, which humans were never meant to have, according to Genesis. It's the result of eating the forbidden fruit and "becoming like God, knowing both good and evil." The person who spends their entire life being morally upright and law abiding, doing good, and helping others? If they're not saved, they burn, too bad. Hitler earnestly prays for salvation before shooting himself in the head in his bunker? Gets an eternity of bliss in paradise. The millions of Jews he murdered? Not so much. That's how it's supposed to work. Like, unless you know the bouncer and the secret handshake, you just don't get into the club.
gottebp 7y ago
Hell is simply this: Your own free-will rejection of the Godhead, who is all good, all love, and all truth itself. We are used to the end of romantic relationships hurting. If you end the relationship with transcendental love, goodness, and truth itself, it is not going to feel very good. He is a gentleman though and will let you do what you want.
- sjwright 7y ago
  I feel like your post is intended to be sarcasm, but it’s hard to tell because most sincere people don’t tend to say things that are particularly comprehensible.