Innocents in Hell, Guilty in Heaven?

I think that Russ is going to present the facts in as articulate manner as any Christian would. I will also throw in my thoughts...First, this is by far one of the largest stumbling blocks for most thinking Christians. Your questions are certainly valid and should be answered.I will point out a couple things first,1) Do you not find it strange that you have A SENSE OF JUSTICE- demonstrated by the very posing of this question(namely, how could God judge someone who (as you would probably say) never has a chance of being introduced to Christ. I am curious where you think that sense of Justice comes from? Is it binding on how we should look at the world? If not, why does it matter that YOU THINK it is unjust for a God to do this. I as some of you probably know attribute this universal sense of justice to be evidence of God in and of itself. Namely, within atheism, the lack of justice is not a problem, since who are we to know what the standard of justice is-absolute and invariant justice does not exist within atheism. Note, I am not contending that atheists don't have a sense of justice-obviously they do. I AM suggesting however, that when you pose this very question, you are presupposing the Chrisitian worldview. That is, you are borrowing these non-material concepts from another world view. These universal invariant etities exist, however atheism can not account for them in any rational manner.2) The very existence of such metaphysical entities is further proof for the existence of the Christian God. I am talking about justice now. In other posts I have labored quite extensively the existence of morality along the same lines as well as the laws of logic(reason) being evidence for Gods existence. So in other words, since the existence of these things can not be accounted for within the confines of atheism, atheism is an improbable(even irrational) philisophical system. So, given the impossibility of the contrary, God must exist.3) So if you grant that a God exists (and I'm sure you won't but for arguments sake, assume there is one), and it is demonstrated that more than likely, that God is the Christian God with characteristics proposed via revealed theology, then this God is by definition the standard of justice.4) So if you grant an all just and all moral God exists(evidenced by the very posing of your questions-- namely you are presupposing the Christian worldview, in that you are assuming absolute truths and justice exist), then you would trust that His decisions are righteous and just, for in doing anything to the contrary, He would be behaving contrary to His nature. He can not do this since He would then be lying. We are finite beings and God is infinite. IT IS NOT UNREASONABLE TO CONCLUDE THAT WE DO NOT HAVE ALL THE FACTS (btw, I'm not shouting just trying to get the important point clear-we all tend to not read other posts carefully). Again, it is not an unreasonable statement to say that in light of all the evidence proving the existance of the Christian God, we can say we do not know all the facts concerning these types of questions.5) So the rational is as follows, God must exist. This God must be moral and just and logical, else the world would be irrational and illogical. This God says that I am but a finite creature and that His ways are not my own(Not unreasonable since He is infinite I am finitite, I can approach this God but never truly reach Him). Since I know that God is moral,just and logical, I can trust that His decisions are such(even though it might seem that they are not at times to finite beings).6) By this I mean to imply many things.... One of which is that we can rest assure that God is just and righteous in the decisions He makes. I could produce any number of ways that God could deal with this alleged problem. Both are valid explanations-but looked at from two different theologies.This is probably how most Christians deal with the issue:
1) Christians deal with this alleged problem in many ways(btw, I'm looking forward to see how Russ deals with it). I believe it is in Luke somewhere where God indicates that He has placed everyone in the place they are in(africa,USA,4000BC,etc) by His will.
-- Perhaps these people would never have accepted Christ even if they were in the USA.
--Why should anyone assume that this theological question is reason enough to conclude that God is immoral or unjust if he even does exist? There is just as much reason to assume that these people never would have accepted Christ had they been preachers kids.
--The very posing of the question demonstrates that this God must exist. So it is certainly possible that God allowed someone to be born in Africa, or in 4000BC or wherever because they would have never accepted Christ anyway.If you don't like that one, here is another(this is more along the lines of how I personally deal with this issue-from a reformed(semi- Calvinist) perspective)2)
--God is soveriegn and holy,righteous,etc.
--Man is depraved and deserves eternal seperation from God(hell). Upon examination of all of our own hearts, we would more than likely see that we are primarily guided by our own selfish desires.
--God is merciful in that He has provided a way to secure mankind from this wicked state man finds himself in.
--God has demonstrated that grace to all. If left to their own devices, man will reject this truth.
--God has secured some from this damnation and holds them in His grace.
--These "elect" are incapable of pulling themselves out of His hands, even though they would rather if given a choice.Now, these are two ends of the extreme, the reformed(Calvinist) and the Armenian. The truth is somewhere contained within this spectrum. Both theologies can fit within the pale of Christianity.It is my humble opinion that we should not speculate on those that seem beyond hope, rather we should examine our own hearts and make decisions from our experience and trust the lost to our all knowing God.Even still, I have provided two reasonable explanations that could be true. I lean towards the reformed-Calvinistic, but would certainly allow for the first as well.So in the end, without God, this discussion is impossible. No concepts of morality, justice, logic/reason would exist.I might be a little slow to replies but will attempt to reach them all-busy time for me now."Christe eleison"[This message has been edited by grace2u, 11-25-2003][This message has been edited by grace2u, 11-25-2003]