What’s about rape as children? Constant rape as children? Violence against children and teenagers etc. I think has been studied and shown that early life childhood trauma is almost impossible to cure. A person just try to improve how to deal with it on a daily basis. So, relevantly to the thread topic, one might just trust Jesus as the redeemer and carrier of his pain, but that trauma will still stay there until he dies. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be helped or could just ‘move on’.
Recommend to read The Deepest Well by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris.
Yeah, it’s something many people object to because it’s not fair by any means. But that’s the point of grace and forgiveness. And if it was fair, perhaps we would all go to hell as we are imperfect and fallen and God is wholly good.
Anyone that says they fully understand it would be full of it. Many theologians also struggle with it, CS Lewis even says it’s the one thing he would change about Christianity if he could.
God can be in control but he wouldn’t always choose to be. For example he could have created humans as basically obedient slaves with no free will. But he did not, and as a result of allowing free will to do as we choose. We can also choose to reject God. If we didn’t have free will, there would be little purpose or beauty to life. But as a consequence we can also do evil, reject god and such. And also choose to do good means something.
So from the Christian perspective, God wouldn’t send you to hell because he wants you do be with him and accept him, always no matter what. As evidence of this love and grace, he sent the son to die for our short comings already. It’s already forgiven. But if you don’t want forgiveness, that’s your choice to be without God. As our wrong doings offend God and keeps us from him.
For example when Adam and Eve ate the apple in the story of the garden of eden. They hid, and when God asks where Adam is. He hid. God doesn’t need to ask where Adam is, he is god, he obviously know. But instead of choosing to be with God, Adam felt shame for trespassing against god and hid from him.
I give you free will, but if you don’t listen to me, I’ll send you to hell for all eternity. Nice free will, that.
So God loves you as long as you defy your sense of reason and bow to him, otherwise he sends you to hell. But he still loves you as he sends you to hell to suffer forever. Not feeling the love, whatever inexplicable steps he is supposed to have taken in the past to make his love clear to me.
They disobeyed the arbitrary command of a tyrant, so of course they were scared.
Whilst I respect anyone’s right to believe, It seems you are taking the existence of God , as being an irrefutable fact . That may well be your belief , and that is fine , but half of the World may not believe, which could make it rather difficult for them to relate to the arguments.
Heaven and Hell , in my opinion , were just constructs to control by fear, if you examine the Institutions that propagated the belief. Very effective if you hope for something “more”, which is a Human trait . Note : Hope to Hell I am wrong
I’m answering the question from A Christian point of view, how else can I explain it without forgoing the axiom of the existence of God in Christianity?
I guess you can’t . If another axiom is juxtaposed to your own , as you say , how can it be possible? I do understand , as I was brought up to be a Christian and see some values as being commendable, but I think the vision of the Hell/Heaven is debatable.
It would be the case if hell is a place to punish people but that’s not what it is.
The example I gave you before with the house.
If your father says he can always come into his house as long as you accept his love. But you don’t go in, he didn’t punish you by sending you out. You’re already out and you choose not to be with him inside.
What constitutes being in the house? You seem to view being in the house and accepting the (land)lord’s love as one and the same thing. I think for many people, that’s a non sequitur. If you reduce it to just the love part, that’s another thing.
Now that film is really bugging me, because I can’t remember the title! Anyone? @Rockefeller maybe?
It’s set in NY, made during WWII (there’s an ad for Victory Bonds at the end) but in color, the protagonist is a suave guy in the tradition of Rhett Butler or Casanova, and the premise is he’s just died and wants to be let into Hell because he thinks it’s more fun than Heaven. Most of the film is a flashback of his life.
While I’m at it, there’s another afterlife film I can’t remember the title of, also from that era (set in WWII but made in the 50’s?), with a British protagonist who goes to a kind of Limbo where he’s told he’s going to join his war buddies in Heaven but files an appeal because he thinks there was a mistake. It was parodied on Tom & Jerry.
These are comedies that Evangelicals might not care for. Andrew’s concept of Hell seems to be more like what The Rapture tells us is in store – that “Please say you love God!” idea.
Just to be without God on this earth can be like hell , the further you move away from God and his teaching then the faster your life will likely plunge into a “Living Hell” in this earthly realm.
There are definitely places on this earth that can substitute for it. Although hell is obviously a spiritual hell and there is nothing worse than a “broken” spirit. In my opinion
“A Matter Of Life or Death”, in a way , enforced the idea that Heaven was whatever the individual mind imagined it to be.
We are desperately weak creatures, who need to belong …to something .
Many of our perceptions are guided by Church commissioned Poets, Painters , writers and the Bible. I suppose that vision may give succour to many
