A Good God would not send a decent Atheist to hell.

[marketandchurch]

This was the post that got me banned on Christian Chat:

Then God doesn't care about the goodness and decency of an atheist, a buddhist, etc. And if that is the message you are telling me, then there is no point to being a good person. There is no point of fighting on behalf of the oppressed, as America did, in WWII. The only purpose of fighting the Japanese, and beating back the Nazi's should have been so that we could bring more people to christ...is that what your saying? Should America be sending food and aid to heathens in Haiti? Should America be helping out muslims in disaster relief fallowing a natural disaster, unless it is to bring them to Christ? Is a person's only value to you, there potential to become a convert? They have no humanity beyond that?

You have an old testament my_adonai, and you are to be as obsessed with its obsessions, as you are with the new testament's. And the Old Testament's preoccupation is fighting evil, championing the good, and making a more ethical existence, during this lifetime.

And unless you think Christians alone can make this lifetime a little better, a little less genocidal, with a little less starvation, a little less torture, etc, it is an unethical message to peddle, that a good God would demand goodness, unless one doesn't believe in his son. Then one's goodness is pointless. One might as well not care about not gossiping behind other people's back, destroying someone's dignity in public, sleeping with a coworker's wife, extorting an elderly couple that one was hired to help, raping a pre-pubcescent child, killing another human being because of their skin color, etc, etc, etc.

Apparently, I was challenging people's faith, and was just there to be anti-christian, in saying that a Good God would not send to hell decent people, simply because they do not believe in his Son. I got all sorts of less then appetizing replies, saying I'm screwed for eternity, if I don't accept Jesus. I feel that I am not alone, even within the Christian community, in thinking this as I've heard many catholic priests, and mainstream protestant pastors, while I was growing up, distancing themselves from such a belief. I don't know where people on this forum stand, but I'll put it up for debate:

• Topic of Debate: A Good God would not send to hell a decent person, simply for not believing in his son.

If you agree with me, and are a Christian, please square your response with the rest of the New Testament. What I'm looking for is scriptural consistency to back up your position, and more importantly, how one will then re-read the entire message of the New Testament, if one wants to hold that position. I say this because I don't want you to drop scripture, simply because it doesn't conform to your own personal beliefs, but I am looking for how one can reinterpret the New testament, if one drops that central tenant, & for the rest of us, impediment, to everlasting life. Is there room for this? Or is the New Testament rigidly in the affirmative about Christ being the only way to heaven? Which is fine. That's their theology, but let's see where this goes.

[instantc]

I'm really going to learn well from being sent to eternal torment! Right?

first mistakes should not have eternal consequences

First, according to some views, there is no actual torment in Hell, it is merely a place where those who willingly choose to sin rather than to love God are left stranded. God cannot take anyone to heaven against their will. Some might say that this contradicts the scripture, but there is no reason why 'torment' as used in the Bible couldn't be allegorical and meant to describe what it is like being left out without God's love.

Secondly, who is to say that the eternity of Hell is a choice of God rather than the choice of those who inhabit Hell. Since those people chose sin over God in this life, one would think they keep making the same choice in the next life as well. Perhaps some people get saved from Hell, that wouldn't contradict the Christian beliefs.

[otseng]

Why don't you at least attempt to apply some critical thinking to these unbelievable story.

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[otseng]

I'm not permitted to call you a pathetic fool and so I won't. But when did you understand the difference between obedience and disobedience? When did you become aware of the difference between obeying a wrongful command and disobeying it?
You are so frightened of my questions I can hear your knees knocking. There is no rational response to my questions and that is why you have run faster than Usain Bolt from answering them. You are in excellent company, just about every theist confronted by these questions pulls out the coward ticket and runs away. I'm rather chuffed that you have kept their record in tact.

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[Iam]

Why don't you at least attempt to apply some critical thinking to these unbelievable story.

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The comment was generic and not in the least personal, any interpretation of such must be construed as biased by any impartial observer. I reject your comment under those grounds. If you wish to discuss it further, please do.

[CalvinsBulldog]

I am pleasantly surprised to see a reasonable theological question raised in a respectful manner. Thank you.

Apparently, I was challenging people's faith, and was just there to be anti-christian, in saying that a Good God would not send to hell decent people, simply because they do not believe in his Son.

You begin with the premise that people are "good" and "decent"; and even though you do not say so, you imply that belief in God's Son does not really accomplish anything and is practically an addendum to the business of being a good person.

Your premise, theologically, would be rejected by all orthodox Christians who know their scriptures. Christians maintain that all people are fundamentally bad, not good. In fact, when I did not believe in God, the one thing I was absolutely sure of more than anything else, was this fact.

Human beings manifest selfishness of many kinds; we are subject to lust, to lying, to speaking unjustly about other people. We all engage in unjust behaviour at some point in time. If we look outside of our insular Western bubble, we see that the world is pretty awful. Almost half of all nations on the planet have relatively unstable governments; drug cartels litter the streets of Mexico with bodies; in North Korea people live in abject fear of their rulers. Over the past century, human beings have developed sophisticated means of exterminating all life on this planet. Murders and thefts are common-place activities in all nations, such that they are even quantified statistically.

Christians ask the question, "Why?" Why are there wars? Why is there domestic violence? Why deliberately engineered famines, and why do people experience violent rage toward each other? Why do people get stoned; or turn to alcohol? Why do people damage their own bodies and love the latest DVD's more than their neighbours?

The answer according to the scriptures and to the Church is that we are fundamentally damaged by sin. It is an irreparable damage, and its highest and gravest manifestation, ironically, is the inability to believe in God and recognise his lordship all around us. Atheism, according to the scriptures, is evidence of unspeakable foolishness; of tragic and terrible blindness, which on the one hand arrogantly asserts its superiority over belief, but in reality is a real delusion. The Apostle Paul says, referring to unbelievers: "They have been blinded in their minds so they cannot believe the gospel."

As all sin is a violation of God's nature, God intends to bring his justice upon all sinfulness. In the same way that our bodies reject a splinter; or our immune system tries to eradicate viruses that violate our being, so God will do the same against all forms of moral impurity and corruption. Of course, this means that all human beings are headed for the hot place because none of us measure up.

The way God has chosen to reconcile both his justice and his desire to show mercy to a damaged creation, is through Jesus Christ. Those who believe in Christ have their sins imputed to him, and he imputes his righteousness to them. A divine transfer occurs, since on the cross, Jesus, on our behalf, pays the penalty for our moral criminality. Faith in Christ is thus the only means to access the forgiveness of sins and the mercy of God. But, such faith cannot be self-manufactured. Faith itself is a gift from God which he gives to those he chooses for everlasting life. Those he rejects to everlasting destruction will never believe. Developing a saving faith is quite impossible apart from God's intervention.

All of this will, doubtless, be nonsense to you. This is in accordance with the orthodox Christian teaching that apart from God we are all utterly dead to him, including in our faculties of reason. The gospel is therefore "foolishness to those who perish". It is utter idiocy; the Greek word Paul uses in his Letter to the Corinthians is the base of the word "moron". What the Apostle is saying is that the Christian gospel is literally moronic to the unbeliever. But for those of us who are being saved, it is the very wisdom of God.

I got all sorts of less then appetizing replies, saying I'm screwed for eternity, if I don't accept Jesus. I feel that I am not alone, even within the Christian community, in thinking this as I've heard many catholic priests, and mainstream protestant pastors, while I was growing up, distancing themselves from such a belief. I don't know where people on this forum stand, but I'll put it up for debate:

Novel "Christian" beliefs are epidemic in the 21st century. Those priests and pastors would be at odds with the views of the Church for the last 2,000 years, and could, of course, not reconcile those beliefs to the text of the New Testament itself.

If you agree with me, and are a Christian, please square your response with the rest of the New Testament. What I'm looking for is scriptural consistency to back up your position, and more importantly, how one will then re-read the entire message of the New Testament, if one wants to hold that position. I say this because I don't want you to drop scripture, simply because it doesn't conform to your own personal beliefs, but I am looking for how one can reinterpret the New testament, if one drops that central tenant, & for the rest of us, impediment, to everlasting life. Is there room for this? Or is the New Testament rigidly in the affirmative about Christ being the only way to heaven? Which is fine. That's their theology, but let's see where this goes.

The latter. The scriptures provide no scope or warrant at all for believing that salvation is possible outside of Christ.

[Iam]

I'm not permitted to call you a pathetic fool and so I won't. But when did you understand the difference between obedience and disobedience? When did you become aware of the difference between obeying a wrongful command and disobeying it?
You are so frightened of my questions I can hear your knees knocking. There is no rational response to my questions and that is why you have run faster than Usain Bolt from answering them. You are in excellent company, just about every theist confronted by these questions pulls out the coward ticket and runs away. I'm rather chuffed that you have kept their record in tact.

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You may need to explain what it is you consider the attack you perceive in this post, because any fairminded person would fail to see it. Since I am a fairminded person I fail to comprehend your attack on me.

[McCulloch]

Alright, second time through, they cannot plead ignorance, but first mistakes should not have eternal consequences.

Adam and Eve's first mistake caused a curse over the world that wouldn't be eternal, but would cause God to eventually restore things for those who have been faithful to Him. Today, a person's first mistake (sin) will have eternal consequences unless they are forgiven.

Adam and Eve made a mistake a long time ago (thousands or is it millions of years ago), and it was not corrected for many many generations, about 2000 years ago. And even then, the forgiveness is very limited in scope.

To carry on with the golf metaphor, why wouldn't a God give a mulligan to someone who is just beginning to learn the game on his very first round, who is prohibited from looking at the rules and is given a bad caddy?

God provides an ongoing mulligan for anyone who believes that Jesus is Lord.

Yes, that is the very limited scope that I mentioned above. Why not provide the mulligan to the actual players involved at the time, rather than thousands of generations later? Why provide neophyte players with such a poor caddy? Why prevent them from accessing the rule book (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil)?

Adam and Eve sinned, but they weren't sentenced to hell for it. The curse was an inclination toward sin, they'd have to work (no more paradise), child bearing would be more painful, etc. Some would say that was a mulligan because the penalty for sin is death... and instead of letting them live full lives, God could have taken 'em out on the spot.

So your earlier statement that God does not give mulligans is false. Did Adam or Eve believe that Jesus is Lord?

[aglassdarkly]

Alright, second time through, they cannot plead ignorance, but first mistakes should not have eternal consequences.

Adam and Eve's first mistake caused a curse over the world that wouldn't be eternal, but would cause God to eventually restore things for those who have been faithful to Him. Today, a person's first mistake (sin) will have eternal consequences unless they are forgiven.

Adam and Eve made a mistake a long time ago (thousands or is it millions of years ago), and it was not corrected for many many generations, about 2000 years ago. And even then, the forgiveness is very limited in scope.

Anyone can be saved.

That's the widest scope possible.

To carry on with the golf metaphor, why wouldn't a God give a mulligan to someone who is just beginning to learn the game on his very first round, who is prohibited from looking at the rules and is given a bad caddy?

God provides an ongoing mulligan for anyone who believes that Jesus is Lord.

Yes, that is the very limited scope that I mentioned above. Why not provide the mulligan to the actual players involved at the time, rather than thousands of generations later?

Everyone that lived before Jesus died had the opportunity to respond faithfully to God's revelation... like Abraham. The faithful of 2000+ years ago were put in paradise after they died, and ascended with Jesus into heaven after his resurrection.

Widest scope possible... anyone could be saved.

Adam and Eve sinned, but they weren't sentenced to hell for it. The curse was an inclination toward sin, they'd have to work (no more paradise), child bearing would be more painful, etc. Some would say that was a mulligan because the penalty for sin is death... and instead of letting them live full lives, God could have taken 'em out on the spot.

So your earlier statement that God does not give mulligans is false.

God's standard doesn't simply allow a mulligan (a do-over with no consequences). God currently provides what feels like an ongoing mulligan for anyone who believes Jesus is Lord because Jesus already took the penalty for sin. It's not an actual mulligan because there were consequences for sin.

[bluethread]

The problem is the premise. Paul refers to the principle espoused by Yesha'yahu when He says, (Rom. 3:10) "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:". It is a matter of proximate cause. If a man is headed for a brick wall, does he hit the brick wall because he was headed for it, or because he did not call onstar and have them turn off the engine? In that case would one fault onstar for only saving those who call?

But I don't think that current levels of righteousness is not the only barometer of measurement that God will assess us by, as he has our entire lifetime to weigh. He has our thoughts, and more importantly, the behavior that are inspired by those thoughts, over the course of a lifetime. And especially if one comes around to making an impact on the life of others and being a moral force for good, God sees this, he sees context, and I'm sure this all weighs into what reality one ends up after this one.

For example, a catholic woman who whored herself to a German officer in WWII, to keep quiet about a group of Jews she was hiding in her basement, does not, or should not, share the same fate as an unethical German, who rounded up Jews for the concentration camps. She is a moral giant, even if her means were not pure or ideal.

I have been out of the loop for the weekend. So, excuse me if there are posts after this one that introduce parameters that I do not address here. With regard to this post. Your presumption is one of balancing good and bad and judging based on relative weight. However, HaTorah is not based on relative weight, but the Promise. This mortal life is indeed effected by the consequences of the sum total of the blessings and curses that we have brought upon ourselves. However, again as Yesha'yahu tells us, (Is.64:6) "All of us are like someone unclean, all our righteous deeds like menstrual rags; we wither, all of us, like leaves; and our misdeeds blow us away like the wind." Or, as Kansas puts it, "All we are is dust in the wind." Yeshua asks, (Mt 6:23) "(If) you have an evil eye' your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Moshe' also tells us. (Deut. 7:7-8) "ADONAI didn't set his heart on you or choose you because you numbered more than any other people - on the contrary, you were the fewest of all peoples. Rather, it was because ADONAI loved you, and because he wanted to keep the oath which he had sworn to your ancestors, that ADONAI brought you out with a strong hand and redeemed you from a life of slavery under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." In conclusion Paul tells us, (Titus 3:5) "It was not on the ground of any righteous deeds we had done, but on the ground of his own mercy. He did it by means of the mikveh of rebirth and the renewal brought about by the Ruach HaKodesh," So, it is by the Promise of Adonai that we have life. Arguing over which of the dead suffers the most is of little consequence. As Yeshua said, (Mt 22:23b) "He is God not of the dead but of the living!", so, (Lk. 9:60) "Let the dead bury their own dead; you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of Adonai!"

[bluethread]

The problem is the premise. Paul refers to the principle espoused by Yesha'yahu when He says, (Rom. 3:10) "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:". It is a matter of proximate cause. If a man is headed for a brick wall, does he hit the brick wall because he was headed for it, or because he did not call onstar and have them turn off the engine? In that case would one fault onstar for only saving those who call?

So not one of us is without sin. It is impossible to live without sin (or at least so improbable that it has never happened). It is in our very nature to sin. Yet god, who gave us our nature, is punishing us for having the very nature he gave us. Where is the sense in that?

We got our sinful nature by freely choosing disobedience over obedience. A sinful nature is God's punishment. And a sinful nature doesn't mean we must sin, or are forced to sin, but that we tend to sin. Each sin is a choice and is still punishable.

1. How can one be disobedient without knowledge of the difference between obedience and disobedience? This claim made by some "christians" is completely assinine. Why don't you at least attempt to apply some critical thinking to these unbelievable story. Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil until they ate the fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Obedience is a choice between good and evil and it's possible to disobey and still choose good. Without that knowledge how could Adam and Eve have possibly disobeyed and would disobeying the serpent constitute doing evil if you don't know the difference?
2. The rest of humanity is punished by this allegedly most just god, the omnibenevolent god for the sole purpose of sacrificing his son on the altar of his hubris, for an error that could only be laid at this gods feet and no other.
3. This sin that is so abhorrent to this god was created by this god and he lives with it eternally and yet the believers claim that he cannot exist in it's presence. Is that just another of this gods lies. Or is it more likely the attempts of ancient "MEN" to improve and exert the authority they possessed as leaders of the ignorant tribes they lead?

This whole line for reasoning has gone far afield from the point I was making, because certain assumptions have been made and expounded upon. I interject at this post, because it is the last in a series in which I am quoted.

1. Man was given the ability to choose from the beginning. This is clear in that man chose names for all of the animals. Man already had the knowledge of good, ie. Adonai's ways. He chose evil when he chosen not just that which is not commanded, but that which was forbidden. Thus, man had the ability to choose evil from the beginning. He just did not know the full nature evil until he chose it.

2. I know of nowhere in the Scriptures where it says that Adonai is omnibenevolent. Adonai has no obligation to do anything more that to treat us as the dirt that we are.

3. Again, I know of nowhere in the Scriptures where it is said that Adonai can not exist in the presence of evil. On the contrary, evil is the choice not to live according to Adonai's ways. Therefore, it is the evil ones who choose not to live in the presence of Adonai. So, why should Adonai be faulted for granting them their wish?