JustARide said:
Call a Hell a judgment, punishment, or a vacation to Steamyville. It's still one of the two possible places we will end up, correct? The question is: how we will end up there and why? If Hell is merely a judgment that just "happens" to us as some sort of automatic result of our sin, then how can one say God is even involved? Is there some deciding authority above God that metes out Heaven/Hell judgments?
I'm going to move on unsteady ground here, so bear with me for a moment. Remember we're talking about perfect judgment. In that sense, God himself has no "control" over what it demands. He is committed to be just and has
obliged himself to be objective. I think one of the problems people have with God is that He can somehow make and bend the rules. That's not true, because things like love and justice have their own system of "rules". When a judge precides over a courtroom, he is there in the name of justice, not in his own. God similarly judges by the demands of His own name, and the separation between us and Him is just as crucial as the separation between lies and truth.
Love is the most unifying force on earth, yet we can't even define it properly - how much less
regulate it and subject it to a form of justice? It's therefore unwise to take the comparison between our legal system of justice and God's divine system of justice too far. But it is a useful analogy. The truth is that we only have God's commandments to give us an idea of what is necessary to
meet the demands justice places on us. In God's perfect system (described as "holiness"),
mercy is the big unknown - that's why I choose never underestimate it.
Interesting that you compare the "judgment" of a virus, which by all accounts, is a medical disorder that degrades the body's ability to function, with the knowing casting of a verdict of on someone's life by God...
The Bible is very clear that God's judgment is the final word, and that people will answer for their actions, their faith or lack thereof, etc. How is this in any way comparable to the actions of a disease? Diseases neither carefully deliberate whether or not they should attack someone, nor do they form opinions about that which they are "judging."
I made the comparison between sin and disease. The law exposes sin, and sin condemns us. Jesus conquered sin and death, and anybody without His intercession is still condemned, in the words of Paul, "still in your sins". You might have heard this before:
Rom 6 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Disease is not a judgement, but if left untreated it becomes one, disease doesn't ultimately lead anywhere else but death. Our guilt is more like a disease, or a curse, than a judgment. But it does lead to judgment, because it is by its nature a transgression of the law.
The Bible depicts God as a wholly conscious arbiter of punishment. Back a few posts, you argued that God sometimes reacted with more mercy to certain situations based on what happened, that he never misjudged people, that he is perfect in his judgment. If people, in effect, judge themselves, or if the judgment of Hell is merely an automatic extension of our sin, then God must have put the Heaven/Hell decision-maker on autopilot.
Not on autopilot, on Jesus. Sin meant that all would die, but nothing prevents God from resurrecting anybody from it.
John 3 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. 19This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
But the Bible argues the very opposite, my friend. It says death is not the end. For all we know, we might die another thousand deaths after the one here on earth. Death, if it were just that, would seem to be final. But the Bible tells us we live for eternity, and if that's true, then there need not be any final judgment at all, only a continuation of it, if it is indeed necessary at all.
Death is not the end because God chose not to
make it the end. Otherwise it would have been. If eternal life was a given, God would not have had to brings us into inheritance of it. It's not a right, it's a priviledge. Death fulfills the contract we have with our lives on earth, but it doesn't fulfill the contract we have with God. Likewise, life fulfils the covenant God made with us, but it does not meet the requirements of justice, because of sin.
If we have forever ahead of us, why is a concluding judgment required? Just because we've somehow officially ended the point at which we can make moral decisions? Even the angels in the Bible are depicted as making decisions to defy God. Are humans somehow frozen in time when they enter the afterlife? Rendered incapable of changing any of the opinions they formed while still alive on earth? If it's true that moral decisions can be made or changed in the afterlife (or beyond this life), I see no need for final judgment - reform maybe, but not final judgment.
The Hindus have this view of justice: that we can somehow redeem ourselves if given enough time - enough lives. Death just seems to throw a spanner in the works, a nuisance to overcome. God did postpone final judgement - He postponed it with Adam, He postponed it with Noah, He postponed it with Israel, and He is postponing it for us. But if judgment is postponed forever, is justice ever done? I don't think so.
2 Peter 3 9The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Final judgment implies that God, for whatever reason, has decided to draw the line and he has chosen death as that marker. After that point, though we live on eternally, he has decided to judge us right then and there. What's odd about that decision is that only after death will we truly know if and how God exists, so I would argue that, if the Bible is true when it says that we live after death and we will meet God, the best barometer of our Heaven/Hell-worthiness would be our behavior after we die, not before.
You refer to
Acts 17:31:
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.
Death itself is not really the marker, but it comes down to that. As I said, that's when our contract with life has been fulfilled. Death isn't as much a marker as a signifier. It's something you can't argue with, whether you believe in God or not. You make much of heaven and hell, but in reality there isn't any more difference than between life and death. There just isn't much space for an agnostic view on death. just like death plays such a decisive role in our physical lives, God - as the giver of life - plays the decisive role in our eternal lives.
Hebrews 9 27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
And the question is... why does that hypothetical good person believe in God in the first place, if not because he/she wants to please him? If the rewards of Heaven are not even a tiny factor in a Christian's faith, why does the Bible even mention them, if not to add a little incentive?
I heard a great quote on "NOW" last week from the former pastor of Riverside Church in Manhattan, something along the lines of... "Maybe it doesn't matter if a good person believes in God, but whether or not God believes in that person."
I think what the pastor meant was, regardless of someone's beliefs, does it not perhaps matter more that they answered the call (wherever they interpreted that call as coming from) to act on the best in themselves? I think that's a worthy idea.
Well, it can't be anything other than an incentive, but it certainly isn't the justifying factor. It's like the bed you're looking forward to at the end of a long journey. The incentive isn't that it's there, it's that it's
promised. To put it another way: is the promise of peace an unworthy reward for working towards it? Isn't justice itself just a reward - peace for the peaceful and punishment for the criminal?
The incentive is helpful at times when you don't know why you're doing it anymore. When there was no reason to practice love - in fact if you were being persecuted because of it - it's comforting to know that it's worth it. Remember we're not called to a love that is expected, but to one that isn't. Many people would do anyhting for a reward promised in this life, but how many would persevere when they are promised nothing but hardship in this life, and a promise in the next? That promise requires faith, my friend, and that comes at no small price in this life.
It's quite presumptuous of you to say that God has little "enticement" to love me or heart or anybody else for that matter. How could you possibly know that? It seems to me you have a very low regard for humanity in general, even when it's at its peak. Funny how Christians seem to have so much faith in God yet so little in themselves, who are, after all, God's creation.
I didn't mean it that way. I meant "enticement" in the way you described it - as an excuse to love. God loves us because we are His creation, sure, but how many people recognize that love? He doesn't only love Christians, He loves all his creation -
especially the prodigal sons. It's unrequitted love for the most part, and love that great shouldn't be.
By the way, God did not "give his life" for us. God is still here. Jesus, presumably, is still here. Now, you might say Jesus suffered for our sins and perhaps died an earthly death, but how much does death really mean if it is undertaken with the foreknowledge of ressurrection? I would have far fewer qualms with dying if I knew I was merely going to sit right back up in three days.
So, do you? Is the promise of resurrection real enough for you? Is the reward certain enough that you will risk your life for it?
Jesus' death didn't mean anything because He expected resurrection or not, only because God gave it to Him. If there was no God, then it would have been as Medicine*Woman says: he was just one of thousands who were crucified for his beliefs, nothing special.
If it was only in
this life that we had hope in Christ, we are fools indeed...
So everyone who died before Jesus went straight to Hell? Now, come on. Everyone who died, children, newborns, etc., automatically deserved eternal damnation? For what? Being so unlucky as to be born before the savior arrived?
They died, and to the Jews - who had no concept of hades as the Romans knew it - thought they went to an eternal grave,
sheol, where no-one can know God anymore. It was only later that it became associated with the Roman Hades, or the Greek Tartarus. When they started to believe in the resurrection of the dead, sheol became a prison (as in 1 Peter 3:19). And it is Jesus who possesses the keys to it (Rev 1:18). When He died, He unlocked death (which spans time) and everybody who had ever been justified by faith (Heb.11) shares the inheritance of eternal life. Just as sin of Adam affected all people, so Jesus' atonement overflows across time to all people (Rom.5:15). Christ's death and resurrection is a new deluge, His blood meant to extinguish the fires of hell (death), and He himself is the ark.
Remember how we're told the whole mess began. God created a garden, perfect and holy in all ways, but, for reasons unknown, he made a tree which granted knowledge of good and evil. He ordered Adam and Eve not eat the fruit. At that point, all Adam and Eve knew was that a booming voice in the sky told them not to do something, but they had no way of knowing whether actions were "good" or "evil." So, we can only assume God must have been testing his creations to see whether or not they were merely robots, who would act according to orders without even knowing the meaning of right and wrong. Adam and Eve disobeyed God (showing that they did, in fact, have free will and were not merely automatons) and for that they were punished, presumably with death and hell.
No; "But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam" (Rom.5)
Adam's sin wasn't one of doing evil, it was breaking a command. Sin is anything that separates you from God and causes death - even if it isn't necessarily evil. And Adam
was aware that they were disobeying God. A child doesn't have to know the consequences of an action before he must listen to his father - and not being able to appreciate the consequences doesn't make them any less after he's done something wrong. Through Adam, death got a hold on all of humanity. If we weren't like Adam ourselves, I supposed we could have just blamed him for everything. But we have free will, too, and I doubt we're doing any better.
So, the whole thing began just as it is now. God creates people, endows them with inferior faculties to make correct (or even informed) decisions, then blames them for their evil behavior and punishes them eternally. Nope. I'm not feeling the love, brother.
There is nothing inferior about free will. There is something wrong with disobedience, though. When the information itself is dangerous, being informed is the
worst answer. Do you really have to know all evil before you will avoid it? And God din't
blame them, he saved them from the consequences, just as He wants to save us. I feel the love every time I'm successful at resisting temptation, and every time I'm succesful at warning someone of danger they were not aware of.
Christianity: "Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love."
I have only this to add:
Jer.2:35
you say, 'I am innocent;
he is not angry with me.'
But I will pass judgment on you
because you say, 'I have not sinned.'