I cannot, in all honesty, come to a truce with you until we resolve this.
As for the matter of Hell, I'm actually glad you bring it up.
"Please tell me how an omnibenovlent all powerful, all knowing god lets people spend forever in pain and misery because they didn't believe in him.
Pain and suffering and anguish, and your God would know about it. Omniscience remember? He'd know exactly how they felt, and since he's all-powerful, he could stop it all in the time it takes most of us to blink.
But he doesn't.
By the way, I don't care how wicked the people were or are. I don't think anyone should suffer for all of eternity for any reason at all. No one deserves unending pain and hopelessness."
This is what you believe, and here's what I believe.
He is perfect. Perfect beyond the reckoning of human understanding. So perfect that anytime an angel hears His name, they bow in eternal humility.
Mmkay, here's where the idea of Hell comes from.
If God is perfect, and He created everything that we see, and everything that he created is good, and Hell is NOT good, then we can only come to one conclusion. Hell was NOT created by God.
It came into existence by the ABSENCE of God. By creating Heaven and Earth, anything not created by him was amalgamated into that big mass of horrid unpleasantness that we call Hell. Anything that is not good. Anything that reduces what we are as people. Anything that defies or challenges the Will of God. Anything that is not pleasing to Him, and fails to change into something pleasing to Him by the time it dies.
God is pure, and clean, and sinless and perfect. In fact, He is SO sinless, SO just and SO Holy that, in his infinite perfection, he can't even look upon imperfection. (Habakkuk 1:13)…. We can't even look upon His face and
live, since Adam and Eve's sin in the Garden.
Okay, now that we've seen that part of the equation let's continue to connect the dots. If God cannot be seen by mortal eyes without the human dying, then how can He stand to have them live with Him in all eternity (in Heaven) if they are full of the very thing that He can't stand (or rather, that can't stand Him)? Answer: It can't. It has to go somewhere. This is Why Hell exists. It is the supernatural compendium of everything that rejects, contradicts, hates or tries to outsmart God. These things are covered in sin, which is basically the equivalent of wearing a gasoline-soaked pajama suit, and trying to stand, oh, say 2 inches from the Sun. Yeah.
But...here's the kicker. God gives us the entire span of our life to try to figure out about Him, find out who He is, accept who He is so He can purify you of the sin that clings to you, and then make your way into the afterlife.
Think of it as a Test (which it basically is).
1) First, He hands you your test sheet (the life set before you)
2) He makes sure that you have all the materials (the parents you have, and other environmental influences; the good ones you take as examples, the bad ones you learn to NOT follow)
3) He makes sure that you're sitting next to ALL the smartest people in class
4) He has teacher's assistants trying hard as they can to inconspicuously hint at the answers (angels, which we call conveniently our conscience)
5) He 's letting you use the Book for EVERY ANSWER (should be obvious which one I'm talking about)
6) He even gives you a nice big example on the board, for how to do EVERY problem (Jesus living His perfect life, being killed unjustly, and then resurrecting after three days' time; truly accept Him as your Lord and Savior, and He will pardon your sins, allowing you start over, and be forgiven for your sins if you ask)
And yet, here we have some people reading from the WRONG BOOK, throwing the Book AWAY, giving up the use of books COMPLETELY and hoping they can BS their way through (which you CAN'T), looking on with other people who have the wrong book, and even just giving up and walking out of the test before their time (hope you're getting the metaphors, that last one was suicide). So unfortunately, by the time the timer's rang for that particular person, you turn your test in. No ifs, ands or buts. And He doesn't grade with a curve. He can't KINDA let you into Heaven. If you have Sin on your resume, you're done. sad, but true.
As for the problems of the world. You must understand that not only do people influence problems, problems influence people. As for the Omniscience argument, the answer is just that simple. His insight is INFINITELY beyond ours, and so He can not only see how one situation will turn out, He can see how the turnout of one situation can influence the turnout of another, unto infinity. Therefore, He MUST allow your Grandmother to die. Otherwise, how would you mourn her death, search for an answer, question God, and come to know Him? In the same way, He must allow you to break your arm, or be born a paraplegic, or be mentally impaired. It's the Butterfly Effect, and God set it up from the very beginning to work PERFECTLY. Your life influences another, influences another, forever until the end. Make sense?
God is good. I have proof. I've suffered so much throughout my life, and made it through it all. I've kept my faith, and tried to instill faith in others ever since I was 7 years old, and I gave my life to the Lord. I just hope this strikes a nerve with you and lets you see the whole equation, instead of seeing the Bible as a contradictory, useless book of fairy tales, as do so many others.
Now, to deal with that whole thing with Job.
"What about Job's story?
He lost everything he had. Even his children. Oh suuure the devil did it, but God let him.
And Job did get twice as many children after it, but does that make up for the ones he lost?
Is that Ok?"
Again, you are seeing this from a purely mortal perspective. Here you see that God let Job lose everything that He had, but did you ever think of the psychology behind the whole thing. The entire deal was a TEST. Job was so holy and righteous and upstanding, that not only did God's account of Job, in the Bible, call him upstanding, He called Job PERFECT! "So, why would He let Job suffer?" is what I first wondered when I first read this.
But upon reading it further and further, and contemplating it and praying about it, another injustice came to mind: Jesus. Why would He suffer the injustice He did? Why would GOD in Heaven allow pain and harm and suffering to come to his earthly manifestation as Jesus? The answer: it served a purpose.
Job lost everything he had; his money, his livestock, his health, his kids. But the one thing he didn't lose? His wife. Why didn't she DIE? Or leave him? Hm? She served a purpose. When she remained, she was worldly, and spoke venom in His ear against God, telling Job, "Just curse your God and die."
Hm. "YOUR God"? Well, that means God wasn't HER God, and if we go by the logic of the Bible, then just who was HER god? Belial, Beelzebub, Lucifer, the Fallen One. Satan.
The therefore, you can conclude that the test at hand was: "When life deals you a harsh blow, and you are thrust into times of desperation, how much do you love me? Does your love fade for me when I don't bless you, or even when I let the DEVIL overwhelm you?"
God says that He will never give us more than we can bear, and in the end, that turned out to be the truth; Job withstood the temptation to give up on His life, and he was rewarded for it. And his kids, I'm assuming, were ready to go, their purposes having been served, and they went to Heaven, therefore to die was actually not a bad thing at all. And even if they didn't (which I doubt), they still got what they deserved, because Hell is brought about by the person, not God, God doesn't make you sin, and He certainly doesn't cause you to reject His only begotten Son, Jesus.
Now, what's your email, so I can ask why you dislike, or don't trust, or don't want to follow God?
“…Judge not what a man has done, but judge what he could have done if he was a different bloke altogether. For art thou a leper? And a leper can changeth his spots…” --Rudy Wade, Misfits (Series 4, Episode 8)
Locked
Maybe.
