Jenyar said:
You don't have to acknowledge the authority of the country you live in. Do they still have authority over you?
Yes, fortunately or unfortunately.
And your analogy is valid -- comparing the way a country's government has authority over you is the same as they way God has autohrity over people -- because we do not own the earth, nor our lives, but God does?
Or just look at it this way: God owns justice, and it's the gate through which everyone must pass.
That's interesting: God *owns* justice. Only what is owned can be lost. If there is noone to own justice, justice can be lost.
God cares for people, whether they believe or not. He cares for everybody in that He provided a way to be reconciled with Him.
And if they refuse? What are the consequences?
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stretched said:
If you mean the Christian god (who is Christ Jesus according to Christianity). This god certainly does not care for unbelievers. As Jenyar says, maybe he cares, but there is a provision. "My way or the fiery highway" If this omnipotent god truly cared, there would no need for reconciliation. It would be a done thing.
Then God would have to be a Golden Retriever.
What he does do willingly though, is he commits non-believers to eternal hell.
Hold on.
Consistency, please!
If a non-believer is sent to hell, at Judgement Day, he most likely won't know it anyway.
If hell is the ultimate separation from God, and a non-believer is willingly separated from God already in his life on earth -- then he probably can't tell whether after death, he goes to hell or not. So, to a non-believer, hell would be much like his life on earth.
It's the "you don't know what you're missing" argument, basically.
I will let Bertrand Russell explain.
Russell reeks of unbased lovey-dovey humanism.
"You will find that in the Gospels Christ said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell." That was said to people who did not like His preaching."
He who thinks that different people can live together in harmony is a blind romantic fool.
On one hand, Russell is advocating humanism, on the other hand, he shuts his eyes so as to not see that "all different, all equal" does not result in harmony, not on this earth, much less is it possible to sustain the "all different, all equal" situation.
Jesus only points this out.
"There is, of course, the familiar text about the sin against the Holy Ghost: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him neither in this World nor in the world to come." That text has caused an unspeakable amount of misery in the world, for all sorts of people have imagined that they have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, and thought that it would not be forgiven them either in this world or in the world to come. I really do not think that a person with a proper degree of kindliness in his nature would have put fears and terrors of that sort into the world."
These people's fears suppose that God does not their minds, and that God is not benevolent.
Russell judges God by the reponses people have made towards God.
It's like saying, "You, Stretched, are a bad person, and this is true because I said so."
" Then Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth his His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the goats, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He continues, "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty."
Yes, Russell believes we have the right to make mistakes but they should have no consequences for us; moreover, we have the right to do whatever we please, but this doesn't make us guilty.
I bet he'd even say we have the right to demand forgiveness.
Or face the consequences of their choice as indicated above.
I do think this needs more explaining.
The non-believer has quite a hellish existence anyway; but since he is so immersed into it, so conditioned into it, he finds nothing wrong with it.
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Jenyar said:
There is no way to receive love other than by accepting its source. If the source is not accepted, you won't even know what comes from them, good or bad. If you do not accept love from them, or forgiveness from them, where will you look for it so that it can still come "from them" in spite of your resistance?
Remember our discussion about gifts?
Some people wish to take, but without any obligation whatsoever to the giver.
It is not the giver who has the problem; it the greedy taker that has the problem: he wishes to receive, thinks he has a right to receive, but gives nothing.
