This is a really great question and one that deserves some serious thought. It makes great sense to me that any person considering the idea of God should first examine that God to see if he's really something worth believing in. Is he fair, loving, just and forgiving? These are all qualities we should expect a perfect God to have. How exactly does the Christian view of God fit into all this?The idea of God's judgment, by which some people go to heaven and others to hell seems to quickly call into question the extent of God's love. Sure his forgiveness and love are great for those that go to heaven but how could a loving God wish eternal torment and torture on anyone? How can a loving God send people to hell? Here are some of my thoughts:
#1 - God gave us the freedom to choose to love Him. God did not make us like puppets or robots who do exactly what they're told and have no other option. If we were made this way then loving God would not be love, it would be a preprogrammed response and would mean nothing to him. I can program a computer to tell me I'm great and a really nice guy but another person telling me these things means so much more. That's because, the computer must say those words where as the person chose to do so because they really meant it. God gave us choice because he had to or else loving him would impossible.
#2 - A perfect God must be both loving and just. I don't think there's a person alive who would say that they've never done a wrong thing. We've all lied, stolen, said mean words and done things that have hurt other people. I also doubt there's a single soul who does not believe in the concept of justice. Justice is the idea that people who do bad things should be punished. I think we would all agree that somebody who kills someone or robs a bank should be thrown in jail if not worse. So if we've all done bad things and should be punished for what we've done, then we're in trouble right? A friend of mine calls this trouble we're in "bad news". We all have some serious "bad news" and I'm one of the worst. I should be beaten and killed for the things I've said, done and thought but this is where God's love comes in.
He loves us so much and doesn't want a single one of us to be beaten and killed or given the punishment we deserve but somebody must suffer for the bad things we've done or else God would be unjust. Since he couldn't pardon us or let us off the hook he made another way by finding someone to pay the punishment we deserved. He sent his own son, Jesus, to be beaten and killed and punished in our place. And even though we all deserve to be killed, God, out of his love for us, has given you and I a second chance and a way to not die. He's made a deal with us that's hard to resist. If we believe that Jesus came and died for us, and accept God's loving deal, the punishment we deserved gets placed on Jesus and we are freed from our bad news. This is crazy I know and almost doesn't make sense. Can you imagine someone walking up to prisoner on death row and offering to die in their place? This is exactly what Jesus has done for us. He has put on our prison clothes and taken the lethal injection and chopping block the was prepared for us. Wow, that's love and that's good news!
Now that we've answered the question of how a loving God can send people to hell, the real question becomes what are you going to do with his amazing offer of forgiveness?
I really loved this post. Just a few questions
ReplyDelete1. You talk of a free will. I would like to know in what ways our will is completely free? If I wanted to fly or be nine feet talk, I would not be able to make this happen. That in itself makes our will limited. But im not really even worried about that. The part of our will i think your referring to is our spiritual will. It does make sense to me that we are robots, i agree with you there, or it would not be a real love. But Paul speaks of people being spiritually dead. and when i think of what can dead people do, the answer is nothing. Dead people do nothing. Not only that be no one is righteous... There is not even one. all have turned away. It seems to me like theres nothing we can do. God must predestine us, and call us, and justify us, and glorify us (end or Romans 8). And then leading into Romans 9, it just backs it up even more.
I think thats all I had... Thanks Drew and I loved your post
You have some amazing points thanks for mentioning them. I will try my best to explain how I currently understand free will although I struggle with these same questions myself and am not sure I understand many of these finer points of theology very well.
ReplyDeleteYou are right in saying that we are limited to do some of the things we want to in this world such as fly or grow. God has made the world and nature to operate according to laws that many times we have no control over. How does this translate to spiritual free will?
The theologian John Calvin first came up with the concept that man has absolutely zero free will. He believed God knew all things and made all things possible. I also think this is true. I think it is true that God predestines us, calls us, makes it possible for us to know him, and justifies us just as you mentioned. For example, even the words that come from a person's mouth to share the gospel are made possible by God. So do I think that we don't have free will? If you define free will as the ability to make a choice that surprises everybody, including an all knowing God, then yes. In order for man to truly have free will and be able to decide things that were not already known, then either there could be no God or God would have to not be all-knowing. In either case, God would not know what was coming next and the future of the world would lie in the decisions of humans. I don't want to serve a God like that and I don't think that type of God is consistent with the powerful God, I see working in our world both past and present.
Free will is a sensitive topic because the danger with saying that people don't have free will is the temptation to shirk responsibility and feel as though one's choices in life don't matter. If God's plan is inevitable what's the point of trying or caring in life? The point is that even if we don't have free will, we do have choice and God uses the choices we make to carry out his plan. For example, a dad could put a bowl of frosted flakes and a bowl of dead rats in front of his 5 year-old son and know what his son would choose. But in order for anything to happen the son still has to choose. For you and I choices are unavoidable. Even a person being mad at God for not giving them free will is choosing to be mad.
I like what C.S. lewis says about all this:
"When it comes to knowing God, the initiative lies with him and not with us. If He does not show himself, nothing you or I do will enable us find him. And in fact, he shows much more of himself to some people than to others- not because he has favorites, but because it is impossible for him to show himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favorites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one."
We shouldn't be concerned with who God shows himself to and who he doesn't because that's God's job. We know that our God is just and I feel confident that there will not be one person who is wrongly denied access to heaven on judgment day. If anything, far too many people will be let in who have no business being there. God's job is to be powerful, all-knowing, holy, just and loving and our job is to make choices that respond to him in the way we should through our mind, character and the condition of our mirror so we can reflect his glory.
Hope this was what you were asking for
-Drew