Zeal Ex Nihilo
Restricted
Originally posted by Schecter
i'm of the state of mind that punishment just for the sake of itself is evil. what i mean is, if he simply destroys their souls because they are iredeemable, im fine with that. if emphasis is placed on unnecessary suffering, however, just for the hell of it (pardon the pun), wouldnt that be evil?
It's not God administering punishment, exactly.
Hell is the place where the unsaved go. When we're born, we're all headed to hell because of sin. Even those who obeyed God before Christ could not enter into heaven because, although they atoned with blood sacrifice, their sacrifices were as imperfect as they were (thus they waited around in Abraham's Bosom until Jesus got back).
Because God is just, God will deny anyone access to the kingdom if he has sinned even once--which means that we're all screwed. God does this because no one, not even the most faithful servants of God, deserves to be in His perfect and holy presence. So, even the most devout are headed to hell even though God loves them and they have lived a God-fearing life.
In order to keep us from having to be sent to hell, God sent the perfect sacrifice of Christ to atone for all sins. Now, one could argue that God could just change (read: lower) his standards, but that would be a pretty poor example for a judge to set.
Oh, and Urizen: Shut the f*ck up. I answered your goddamn questions, but you just threw yourself because I didn't puss out and give you some namby-pamby answer.
What happened is this: You read about my description of God, and you got pissed because I spoke like one of the so-called "Fundies" that you abbhor. You then became irrational and ignored how I explained that hell, being a separation from God (something I know I have explained in the past, along with the idea that there are "degrees" of hell), is the punishment for not being saved--a separation from the glory of God and His righteousness.
With your rebuttal, you state that you're not interested in Christ, the crucifixion, etc. By ignoring these things, you set up a straw man argument that is easy for you to refute--Christ's sacrifice is so intertwined with heaven and hell that, to ignore it, is the undermine the entire concept of God being all-loving.
You claim that I'm irrational, but I explained to you--logically--how an omnibenevolent God can exist alongside of hell. You, in your own emotional state of irrationality, starting pissing, moaning, and calling me irrational.
Then you attack me for allegedly being selfish and egocentric. I didn't say I didn't love my mother; I said I might not care when finally able to understand God by being in His presence.
Quite frankly, I don't care that you would hate to have me as a son. I would hate to have some sl*t like you, someone who has acted as a whore--a literal whore--in the past as part of my lineage. Do you think I would like someone who has done pornography as my father? Do you think I would like someone who is so unrestrained with his sexuality as my father?
Shut the f*ck up.
You didn't like what I wrote because it wasn't some debbiejo/Shakyamunison post about how we can't possibly understand the nature of God because God is so enormous, that we humans are so trivial that God doesn't care about our actions, and so you got pissed.