Here be my problem with "God"

Can I change your wording? You don't like the answer to that particular question anytime, because if it were up to you, you wouldn't send good people to hell. Who's that person--that parent, friend, cousin, aunt, neighbor, teacher, dentist--that's such a wonderful, nice person, but they haven't accepted Jesus into their heart? Get them clearly in mind.Are you picturing their face? Now, it's up to you, not God. Do you send them to be into burning flames, moaning in pain and gnashing their teeth in loneliness, forever, so that after ten million years of this torture, their time is still just beginning, and after seventy years--a lifetime--of this agony, they're still a very small portion of the way to that first ten million years.Maybe you should hold your hand on the stove and let it smoke and make the room stink while you're thinking about it. That shouldn't be a problem, as you'll only have to do it for five or ten minutes while you're thinking, and they'll have to do it for seventy years times 77 times 7 times forever.Do you still like God? I'm a believer. I believe God made me. I believe, like you just said, that God knows what's truly in people's hearts. In fact, I believe he made our hearts, and he knows how they think.Let me tell you a couple Bible stories. In one, a young Jewish man finds out that his fiance is pregnant. The Bible says, "But being an UPRIGHT man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly."He was UPRIGHT or GOOD for not wanting to make her a public example. Is this what the law taught him to do? In the law, if he found out the night of their wedding that she wasn't a virgin, then he's to show the sheets, with no blood on them, publicly. That's the law, and this was worse, because she was actually pregnant. But because Joseph was UPRIGHT and GOOD, he did not do what the law requested.Why was it a big deal for the Pharisees to throw down the adulterous woman before Jesus? Don't Christians tell the story in such a way that we all think that they were trying to make Jesus look like a meanie by saying she should be stoned? Yet the law says she should be stoned!Christians are worse than the Pharisees in that story! They take the woman and throw her at Jesus' feet, and they tell the world that Jesus will not just have her stoned, but that he will have her tortured with fire for all eternity. (Do you still have your hand on the stove? Can you still smell your burning flesh? Because otherwise, you're really not listening to me correctly.) In fact, they tell us that Jesus, supporter of adulterous women, would throw her in hell for merely being human (and thus born in sin, not perfect, etc.)!!!I vote for an UPRIGHT and GOOD God. One who is as UPRIGHT and GOOD as you, Angeldust, not worse. You wouldn't sear your friend's flesh off forever in hell, and I'm telling you God wouldn't, either. God is as UPRIGHT and GOOD as you are and as Joseph, husband of Mary, was, and as UPRIGHT and GOOD as Jesus was with adulterous woman. That story was told for a purpose!"The anointing remains within you, and you know all things, and you don't need that any man should teach you." Thus says 1 Jn 2:27. So what exactly, when you block out what people have told you the Bible says, is that thing withing you telling you, Angeldust? That you ought to roast that friend, teacher, aunt, etc. forever and that God would, too?I believe in judgment, and I believe in justice. I believe in the death penalty, and I would support public flogging. Roasting someone alive, however, seems pretty extreme for any crime, and it seems extreme even knowing that people can survive it for only a few minutes. How much worse when it goes on forever, without the person dying.Maybe, just maybe, the Bible doesn't mean what you've been told it means (there's LOTS of people throughout history who have thought so), and God isn't any more of a beast than you are.

Well, I was a Christian, but I've evolved into a new species (unnamed as of yet), and my scientific base isn't very wide, but I do have a proposition :-).Our "sin nature" is our body. It is called the flesh, after all. Evolution encourages selfishness, after all. (Now, hang on, I'm not saying belief in evolution encourages selfishness. I'm saying evolution itself encourages selfishness.) What's necessary for long-term survival of my genes? Food, shelter, and sex. Really, not much else. In the opinion of my genes, society is okay as long as it helps provide food, shelter, and sex.God has called us to rise above selfishness. To take no thought for what we'll eat and what we'll put on and to flee fornication and consider marriage as a secondary consideration (a bit of a paraphrase on 1 Cor 7, that one), but to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness--to prosper spiritually rather than physically.Our own body opposes that message, because it is trained by evolution to SURVIVE. Try taking no thought for what you'll eat or what you'll put on. Try setting aside selfish ambition. Try fleeing fornication. Your body will not be a willing accomplice. From a Christian standpoint, your body is quite pro-self, while we are trying to crucify self.Anyway, I think the sin nature is in every gene--the SELFISH gene, as Richard Dawkins called it.Jesus had it, too, though, which is why he had to say, "Not my will, but thine be done." A virgin birth didn't help him in that respect. Nope. He got a body that the Scriptures says was like ours in every respect. Thus, he is a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.

Thanks for your answer, Angeldust. For some reason I never saw that there was a reply, so I'm just seeing your post today. I appreciate your openness. It's refreshing. I like to think that I'm willing to change, too, when I believe God has a stance that's different from mine. I hope that's true.I hope, too, that you caught that I appealed to Scripture in my post, not just to what I think, because I know that you make Scripture your "primary source."

Totally different question than the one I was addressing. Just because I believe Stalin or Hitler should be punished does not mean that I think they should bubble and boil in a lake of fire for all eternity. Punishment and hell are not synonomous. 1. Keeping us from him for all eternity is not the same as being tortured for all eternity.2. I don't agree that this is what the apostles taught. Do you have any Scripture for "any sin at all is enough to keep us from him in eternity"? You may be able to find a couple that you think suggest that. I wouldn't mind discussing them.

Hi, godsmac: What do you do with Rom 2:6-8, especially the part where it says that those who patiently continue to do good will reap glory, honor, and immortality? Also, what about 2 Pet 1:9,10, where it says "if you do these things you shall never fall, for so an entrance shall be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ"?And then there's Paul's statement in Galatians 6, "Do not grow weary in doing good, for in due season you will reap, if you do not lose heart." The context, from the previous verse, shows that he's talking about reaping eternal life, and that from "doing good"!

Look who's talking!By the way, how do the fundamentalists know this? I'll tell you how, the same way they know everything. They say so!Worse yet, you say so with them, so you might as well be a fundamentalist yourself, having abandoned reason and clear thinking along with them. Oh my God! Do you read your own posts????? How about putting complete faith and stock in an untenable interpretation of 2 Tim 3:16 put out by third party testimony 2000 years after the event, which is what you have done???? And you say you're not a fundy, but an agnostic. You'll forgive me if I don't believe you.Actually, you should be grateful I don't believe you, because I'd have a much lower opinion of an agnostic who believes the fundies and acts like them than I would of the fundies themselves, whose mindset I understand, because I was one.Hey, Ned, have we ever started a thread for worst posts ever? I have one to nominate!Oh, sorry, I guess I'm being insulting.

Well, I can't argue with your point here.Actually, my quote sounded really awful to me pulled out of the context of my post. I was trying to make the point that I think the fight with "sin nature" that is in the Scriptures is a fight with the body's desires. Living in love means setting aside your own desires for the sake of another person or persons (or God).I don't think the paragraph you quoted was very well said. It was a little embarrassing reading it and realizing it was mine. I wish I had simply said that I believe the "sin nature" is "the flesh" or "the body," as the Scriptures put it, not some nature separate from us that can be removed.It was probably my sin nature that made me write it.

Me, too. While I agree with your overall point, this illustration of it seems awfully picky. The oldest person ever, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, was only 122 last year, and most Christians (not that I accept their interpretation, but I'm just pointing out it's open to interpretation) consider that statement to mean that there was 120 years left for man until the flood came. They say it took Noah 120 years to build the ark. (Like I said, I don't agree with that interpretation, but from my experience as a literalist and with literalists since, that's the more common interpretation.)