God the father

Hi SubbieI’ll have a go at this. I think the concept of God being anthropomorphized as father, (or parent if you like), is appropriate. With our own children we guide them in the direction that we want to see them go but in the end they are responsible for their own decisions. As parents we do all we can to help them, but in the end we have to accept their decisions both good and bad.Yes I agree that there is an ultimate judgement but I don’t see God’s judgement manifesting itself in the same manner as we would a court of law. If you go to an online concordance and enter the word heart and hearts you will see that there are just over 700 occurrences of this word with over 580 occurrences in the NT. The Bible when taken in its entire context is clear that what God desires of us is that we have kind, merciful, forgiving and loving hearts. Jesus came as the Messiah, the one who was to be King. And how did he reign? He reigned by humbly serving mankind. He took the lowest role of that era in the simple washing of the disciple’s feet.I think that we all agree that we have a conscience. How about we consider that conscience that we have as God’s still small voice speaking to us. We might even call that His Holy Spirit. We all make decisions on a regular basis that involve not only ourselves but that will also have ramifications for the lives of others. When we make decisions that are essentially based on selfish love it helps to form a pattern which makes it easier to make a similar choice the next time as well. If we make a decision based on loving unselfishly or even sacrificially, then it is more likely that we will make it more natural that we would choose unselfishly in the future. In other word over time we establish a trajectory of self love, (looking out for number one, or if it feels good do it) or we can establish a trajectory of loving unselfishly or sacrificially.Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10:

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"Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is constructive.

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It is not a matter of keeping any laws. As Jesus said, there is only the law of love. It all hangs on that. We can’t just decide to have loving hearts. It has to become part of who we are as we respond to that still small voice until it starts to become natural to us.It is my belief that when we act justly in kindness and love towards others we establish a trajectory that leads us to an eternal existence with our loving Father figure. When we act unjustly and unlovingly, we establish a trajectory that leads to eternal separation from God. We can speculate what either existence will look like but it is just speculation. The Jews often used the image of the local dump to represent what hell would be like. In the end we have the free will to make our own choices, and the choice is about a choice of the heart not a theological one.I think that Christians would agree that the greatest sermon even given was Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and it is plain in there with such statements as blessed are the merciful that it is about the heart and not the head. Jesus doesn’t dwell on what happens at the end of time but where he does in the separating of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 He is clear that the ones who are found to be righteous are the ones who looked after and loved the needy without understanding that in loving that way they were loving God as incarnate in Jesus.So in the end we choose heaven or hell. We can rise above selfishness and continually move towards Christ likeness or we can succumb to selfishness and continue to move further from God. IMHO God has chosen to use mankind as His stewards of creation and in the end His judgement will be accomplished by us as well. We will be the judges of our own future. As C S Lewis says:

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There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.

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Edited by GDR, : typo

I think I answered your question as far as I'm prepared to speculate. I see hell as being separation from God in an existence characterized by self love as compared to an existence in God's company and characterized by unselfish love.I know there are those who can quote Bible verses about fire etc but I contend that that is Jewish apocalyptic language describing something that is not only indescribable in human terms but essentially unknowable.I suggest that for most of us separation from God would constitute suffering but maybe not for all. We just aren't going to have all the answers in this life time.Frankly IMHO Christians should quit worrying about heaven and hell so much and focus more on living a life of service and love for others. That is what we are called to. In the end we are to have faith that there will be perfect justice as instituted by a loving God/Father and let it go at that.

It seems to me that the idea of God being omnipotent is a meaningless phrase from a human perspective. If God is the creator of the universe then it is obvious that his knowledge is so vastly superior to ours that we would be completely unable to comprehend any limits to his knowledge or power. My dog probably thinks I'm omnipotent.When the entire Bible is read in context it is clear that it tells of us that God works with us in time. The idea that God knows what I will have for lunch a week from Thursday is not consistent with scripture. Whether this is the case because of a choice on God's part or out of necessity is unknowable to us.What we can know that if we all lived our lives in accordance with the idea that we are to relate to all of God's creation, (including all of our fellow humans), with unselfish and even sacrificial love that the vast majority of the misery and strife in the world would no longer exist. That is a big part of the Christian message. Also of course if we all lived our lives according to that principle there would be no need to have a discussion of eternal suffering in hell because it would be uninhabited.

The reason all of this even comes up is that so many people buy into the fundamentalist view of Christianity and the Bible. Yes, I believe that God speaks to us through the Bible but that does not make the Bible inerrant in terms of it being factually accurate. Any kind of in depth study of the Bible that doesn’t start with the idea that it is dictated by God will conclusively show that it isn’t dictated by God.I suggest that the fundamentalists have made Christianity nothing but a proving ground for admission into heaven, which of course means hell for those who don’t make the cut. The God that we see incarnate in Jesus is so much bigger than that. I don’t disagree that in the end there will be those that are with God and those that aren’t but it will be, as the quote I used from C S Lewis earlier says, based on human choice. Frankly I don’t believe that we actually will know much about the next life except that the choices we make in this life have eternal consequences.I think that rather than worry about who goes to hell and who doesn’t we should be considering whether or not there is ultimate justice.Let’s consider this. In 1991 a young child named Michael Dunahee was abducted not far from where I live now and never seen again. Whoever abducted him was never found. There is virtually no doubt that four year old Michaal was murdered, and nobody wants to even think about what happened to him prior to that. Does anyone here not want to see justice in some form? If we assume that life carries on in some form after this one do we really think that there shouldn’t be justice for Michael and justice for the perpetrator of this heinous act? IMHO the Christian message is that in the end perfect justice will be done. Maybe the perpetrator was horribly abused as a child himself, so who with our human limitations, knows what that justice will look like.Instead of worrying about what hell is like and who is there, I suggest that we take the Christian message that we have a just God and put our faith in that. In the end I believe that we will all see perfect justice done. In the meantime, instead of worrying about the issue of hell we should all be getting on with the mission of being good stewards of all creation, which of course includes the concept of loving our neighbour.

IMHO the Bible is not a book dictated by God, but a collection of writings that tell the story of how God, working through human imagination, is bringing His message of love and forgiveness to the world. The Bible is one of the ways that God reaches out to us.In that light, if there is any message that we can take from the Scriptures it is that God is patient. The ancient Jews were forever turning to pagan gods whenever it suited them, and even when they turned to Yahweh they were incorporating pagan rituals and beliefs into their worship of Yahweh. God never gave up on them. Time and time again, even to the point of visiting the Jews through His son, He kept reaching out in love and forgiveness to mankind.In Jesus we see Him preaching a message of forgiveness and even making it central to the model of prayer He gave to us. Even as a Jew living in a land being brutally ruled by the Romans He told his followers that they were to love these bitter enemies. On the cross Jesus prayed that His persecutors were to be forgiven. Peter was forgiven. Paul after persecuting Christ's followers was forgiven.The point in all of this is that we have a loving, kind, forgiving and just God. The Bible tells us that we should be a loving, kind, forgiving and just people. In my view this is the Christian message. Therefore, if what I say is correct we have no need to concern ourselves with who goes to hell and who doesn’t because we can have faith that whatever happens it will be loving, kind, forgiving and just.I would also add, that anyone who is really interested should read C S Lewis’ book The Great Divorce.

Well in the first place we see He cared enough to create us. As I said in the last post that regardless of how badly the Israelites behaved He faithfully kept reaching out to them, and that all climaxed by the gift to the world of Jesus. In Him we have God’s message of love that focused all of His love, kindness, forgiveness and justice into one man.Jesus consistently preached a message of love and forgiveness saying that all of the law and the prophets were based on love of God and neighbour. In Matthew 25 He essentially tied in the love of God with the love of neighbour so that when we love those in need we are in reality loving God. As Rob Bell says in the title of his last book, Love Wins.As far as today is concerned we can focus on the evil that exists or we can focus on the good. We can focus on things like the tsunami or we can focus on the love of the world that reached out to the victims. We can focus on the hunger in parts of the third world or we can focus on third world relief. We can look at the evil of cancer or we can look at the wonderful advances in medical research. There is no desire for the vast majority of people to depart this life any time soon.Nobody is going to question the fact that the world is a not a perfect model of love, kindness, forgiveness or justice, but I would contend that it is closer to that model now than it was in the past. God has chosen the route of working through His human creation to bring His model to the world. We are a work in progress but we do seem to be progressing. Edited by GDR, : typo