When faced with Eternity what do you do?
I found myself just thinking about hell today, not only because we were covering it in class but because, it's just something I spend time to think about. I'm going to try and show how God in the Christian sense can be thought of as good, yet still have people going to Hell. I find it interesting when people talk about God being bad because he sends people to Hell. Have they ever thought about it for a long time? have they really even entertained the thought? or is it some push over reason to say no to God, any Christians who are pushy bigots 7/8Th's of the time. But we need to look at this question, is God good? Does he send us to Hell? The worlds view of hell is a fiery vast place where your burned forever in torment. The thing to remember here is that throughout the bible fire is used as a symbol for judgment. Most people when talking about Hell view it as a place where people are sent to be punished for their wrong deeds, or are forced to go. The Christian view that I understand is that we are not forced to go at all, and if there is any choosing of where were going, it's up to us. Let us presume the teachings of the bible, God is purely good, and only good, he can not tolerate evil in the least. Lets take me, i've sinned, and I still view myself as a good person, but God can't be with me. If I walk around saying I hate Gordon, he's an ass, do you think gordon will want to be my friend? No of course not, and it's the same with me, even if God views me as a fairly good person, i'm still going around half the time saying I hate God (this is why we try to sin less so we say I HATE God less) and his desire for me to be perfect, but, I do have the ability to be perfect. Yet, I'm not perfect. However God will forgive all that, isn't it interesting. There is only one unforgivable sin, and that is blaspheming against the spirit. Or in normal language, not accepting God (which includes Jesus[but how can you acknowledge someone if you have never heard of him? God judges us on our knowledge of him, He is in nature too.]) for who he is... Hell is separation from God, and that is only because we reject him. So he honors our choice and lets us leave him. Of course I believe this is the absolute worst thing that there ever could be, but to those who don't like God, it's not so bad right. It is after all only getting what we want right? Some people believe that God eventually turns around and accepts everyone. well I don't think this is right, manly because it's not giving the people what they want, which is what God promised us. Let us suppose that God loves us, now in human terms sometimes loving someone means letting them do harm to themselves. Normally this is to teach themselves a lesson and is controlled. But God is love, were not perfect at all. Gods love is pure, that means he loves us with an inconceivable amount of love which never ends, so when God gave us a choice he loved us so much as to let us actually make it. Not just make it and then have Him turn around and stop us from choosing the "wrong" one. He loves us so much as to respect our choice even if it means our destruction or painful death in the dessert or by flames or anything. He promised to give us a choice and he will carry our choice out for us. But don't just think that, God loves us, and so to send us away to hell is probably harder on him then us seeing that he knows everything about us and loves us. Isn't that something crazy?
But, truly amazing!
Perhaps I sound a little lovy dovy, perfect fuzziness, cute God, but I am deathly scared of Hell. I'm just trying to explain this so God is seen as loving, not some tyrant, but who's going to say to God, you can't do ____ to me! What right do we have to say that? And, what less do we deserve but Hell.
God's one thing for us is to love him, recognize his presence, and to become a friend... more then a friend, a lover, and being who is to join in perfect unity and companionship forever.
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2 comments:
Ahh, hell... oh, hi Bryce. Nice to find your blog. It's amazing what you can find when you have hours with nothing to do but mess around with your computer:)
I've been thinking a "hell" of a lot about Hell lately, because the idea bothers me a lot. It seems to me that you are saying that people, in effect, choose Hell for themselves? Anyway, I can't tell you what to believe about hell because I don't know. I wrote a bunch of stuff on my blog about hell recently if you are interested.
gee, I've just said "hell" a lot...
After reading your post again, a couple of comments on what you wrote:
There are a lot of "Christian" beliefs about hell, not just one. Some people believe in a literal hell with physical torment, some believe the flames are metaphorical and "stand for judgement", some believe that hell is temporary, and so on.
The "conscious rejection" belief, that people choose hell for themselves by rejecting God, is a common one. This allows, I think, for some people who we don't think of as "Christian" to still go to heaven.
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