Carbuncle

That's just sad . . . thinking that God is responsible for our deaths. Please, allow me to state what I believe.

First of all, God is a holy being. He has no sin (VERY basic Christian belief). Now, we, on the other hand, do have sin (also very basic). As such, our sin deserves punishment. Now, what kind of God would God be if He didn't care about punishing us? That's like saying, "Oh, adultery? That's fine. Murder? That's fine."

You accuse God of commiting murder or worse when he sends someone to hell. Well, according to the Christian belief, sinners deserve to go to hell. And all humans are sinners. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but that's what I believe. Remember: God is perfectly holy. In otherwords, He is without sin, while we, who have sin, cannot even bear to see Him in His glory. His holiness burns us, because we are sinful. A prime example of this is Isaiah chapter 6, where Isaiah has a vision of God in heaven, and instantly he weeps and cries out, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." (Isaiah 6:5)

God is guilty? I think not. Rather, God is just for having done so. If God did not care about sin, then He would not be worthy of our worship. Rather, we worship Him because He is holy and just, but also because He is merciful. He sent Jesus Christ to die upon the cross for our sin, and in doing so, Christ imputed His holiness upon us.

We all deserve hell, but God has shown mercy.

Thank you for your time.

reddhedd

Carbuncle

Wait! Did you say that sinners are the children of God? Really? Well . . .

In flesh, we may be created by God. But those that go to hell do not have the spirit of God. They have the spirit of the devil. So in other words, their spirits are not the children of God, but in fact, the children of the devil. It is not the flesh that suffers in hell, but the spirit.

What does the Bible say? It says that children will act according to their father. Well now, if we live in sin, are we acting like God, or like the devil? Our sin nature is of the devil, and as such, sinners could not really be called "children of God".

Only when we recieve the spirit of God could we be called children of God.

Thank you! I hope that helped! ^_^

Wyz_sub10

I suppose it depends on what you define as a sin. In any case, there is that "garden of eden" thing to get back to, and the inexplicable story of how sin existed although god didn't create it, and it was unknown to Adam or Eve before they ate of the fruit (which, because they did not know sin, they would not have had the ability to discern as wrong in the first place).

Would you ever punish your pets (let alone your children) in the way god supposedly punishes man? Yes or no?

Speak for yourself. I love this rationale that eventually leads to "all people created by god in his image deserve to go to hell".

What the hell kind of loving god makes up those rules?

It sounds simultaneously illogical and malevolent, but that's what I believe.



He is supposedly these things, but "holy" becomes a meaningless word if you are only saying "he makes the rules, he can break the rules - which then become the new rules."

"Holy" does not, therefore, seem to be a desciptor of anything.

Well, I doubt this ever happened. But even if it did, isn't Isaiah only saying that he recognizes his sin, and not that he is physically impraired by god?

I think yea.

So because god creates humans - all of whom deserve hell - and those humans strive to labour toward avoiding sin and temptation in order to avoide offending god, and further sacrifice a measure of rationale and embrace one faith among thousands in order to receive salvation, he becomes worthy of worship?

Sounds like we do all the work and make all the sacrifices to avoid a situation he put us in to begin with. Maybe what you really think is that he is worthy of worship because "power is in the muzzle of a gun."

I think it's quite clear that the benefits of worship are to avoid eternal torture and everlasting torment (which you feel is apparently what loving entities do to teach us something - which, by the way, we could never learn from, as the punishment is eternal and without end).

Well, that stopped man from sinning, didn't it? No wait...

What did it do that god could not have done otherwise? What sacrifice was made? None, really. If Jesus was god then he wasn't going to really die in any case. So it's a zero sum equation - god was never "losing" or "sacrificing" anything.

Maybe you feel you do, but you should probably speak only for yourself.

If god was merciful, he could start by addressing all the needless suffering in the world.

How any being that creates living things worthy only of eternal damnation, of which less than 25% can actually escape this result, can be called "merciful" is beyond me.

I remember vividly my days of Christianity - so eager to make excuses for god's alleged behaviour, the way a mother makes excuses for her adult son who can't keep out of trouble with the law.

Somewhere along the line I realized that the mythology I had been spoon fed for 25 years wasn't consistent with what I knew was "right" and "wrong" - namely, that people aren't inherantly evil and worthy of eternal damnation.

How sad that so many people believe this. Is it a wonder that the world is in the state its in when billions of people harbour feelings of self-loathing and loathing for those around them?

Volker

Well, maybe we deserve punishment. But here is the question:

Why do we punish people?

1. To stop them doing crime.
2. To make them better people.
3. For revenge.
4. To repair the damage they've done.

Now what of these reasons will god have?

Killing people will stop them doing crime but a god should have better measures, it won't make them better, it won't repair any damage.

So god punishs for revenge and revenge only. Doesn't sound like an all-loving mercifull beeing.

Being punished in hell is just revenge and nothing more. And it is VERY unjust placing an infinite penalty on finite crimes.

And the same goes for not giving eternal lief.