Did they just say that?

[Moxie]

[Moxie]

[Moxie]

[Moxie]

[Moxie]

[Wertbag]

The hell doctrine is just horrific on so many levels. It was one question I've never heard a good answer to; if you believe god is just and merciful then surely He won't punish people who had no way to know Him? African tribesmen who have never seen a missionary for example. If they are only judged after death then the best answer to save the most souls would be to burn every bible, remove every church and never speak of it again. In one generation no one would know god and hence all would be saved. Teaching children is the thing that damns them to hell. 

[AliT]

2 hours ago, Wertbag said:

The hell doctrine is just horrific on so many levels. It was one question I've never heard a good answer to; if you believe god is just and merciful then surely He won't punish people who had no way to know Him? African tribesmen who have never seen a missionary for example. If they are only judged after death then the best answer to save the most souls would be to burn every bible, remove every church and never speak of it again. In one generation no one would know god and hence all would be saved. Teaching children is the thing that damns them to hell. 

That's a thought I frequently had. Along with others such as the following one that may offend or hurt members. In which case I apologise in advance. 

 

Logically, abortion must be a good thing. Why? If life begins at conception, and the child is subsequently aborted, then they must go directly to heaven as God would not judge them. 

 

If, however, they live in a non-Christian environment and never become a Christian then they will go to hell. 

 

Logic therefore states that in "eternal" terms it is better that they are aborted. 

 

I know we could get into arguments about lost potential and the likes, but that is speculation and the Bible is truth to Christians, so the logic, to my mind, stands. 

 

Happy to be corrected or my post deleted if it offends. 

[TruthSeeker0]

2 hours ago, AliT said:

That's a thought I frequently had. Along with others such as the following one that may offend or hurt members. In which case I apologise in advance. 

 

Logically, abortion must be a good thing. Why? If life begins at conception, and the child is subsequently aborted, then they must go directly to heaven as God would not judge them. 

 

If, however, they live in a non-Christian environment and never become a Christian then they will go to hell. 

 

Logic therefore states that in "eternal" terms it is better that they are aborted. 

 

I know we could get into arguments about lost potential and the likes, but that is speculation and the Bible is truth to Christians, so the logic, to my mind, stands. 

 

Happy to be corrected or my post deleted if it offends. 

No, logically, your argument makes sense. I've thought of that too. According to my former beliefs, any and all children who die before the age of being confirmed as adolescents, automatically go to heaven, even if they haven't been baptized.

 

My church handily escaped the argument that god is evil for never bringing people to be exposed to the faith or to him by arguing that every person in this world at some point in their lives has a choice to either pray to god to be saved, and god will indeed save them if it's his will by miraculously leading them to this tiny sect, with a tiny percentage of members, in a few selected countries, the only people who are going to heaven - forget all the other xtians! Ah, but there's that all important aspect in there, if it's his will, he will save them.

 

It boggles my mind how easily these believers go about their daily lives, not giving a care about the 99.9% of people around them, including other xtians, who are supposedly going to hell.

[1989]

4 hours ago, AliT said:

 

Logically, abortion must be a good thing. Why? If life begins at conception, and the child is subsequently aborted, then they must go directly to heaven as God would not judge them. 

 

When I was a Christian I came to the opposite conclusion.  In Psalms, David says that he sinned from the moment of conception.  Therefore unborn babies are just as sinful as children who were unsaved and both went to Hell when they died.  Jesus said the only way to the Father was through the Son.  There's no middle ground or exceptions noted.  Christians will say that since God is good then He wouldn't let that happen, but AFAIK there's no real evidence of that in the Bible except for people's word.  His actions speak differently.

[◊ DestinyTurtle ◊]

59 minutes ago, 1989 said:

 

When I was a Christian I came to the opposite conclusion.  In Psalms, David says that he sinned from the moment of conception.  Therefore unborn babies are just as sinful as children who were unsaved and both went to Hell when they died.  Jesus said the only way to the Father was through the Son.  There's no middle ground or exceptions noted.  Christians will say that since God is good then He wouldn't let that happen, but AFAIK there's no real evidence of that in the Bible except for people's word.  His actions speak differently.

Pretty much the same here. For the most part it was assumed all dead infants go to hell. There really isn't room for a middle ground, except for simply copping out of the debate by suggesting that it's not something for mere mortals to contemplate or presume about. I come from a Calvinist household... so it didn't pose a particular contradiction to an idea of God's goodness since it was assumed that most people were created solely for the purpose of burning in hell for eternity for God's glory ( and if that contradicted your idea of goodness you were probably one of the people who exist to burn in hell ). The problem of people not being given a chance to be saved doesn't exist if your theology is based on the idea that no one has ever had a chance to decide one way or another.

[AliT]

Interesting replies to my comment. It just shows that they can't get their stories straight. 

 

Thanks for the replies. 

[RealityCheck]

This is the type of conversations that kept me awake at night.  Imagine if you will a Jewish child born in Germany right before the Holocaust.  That child would have just a few years of a normal existence before being forced to into a concentration camp.  There this kid would be withered away to almost nothing for months before death. Instead of relief, there would be nothing but eternal torment for eternity ahead.  Let's take this a bit further though.  Imagine a girl born in Sub-Saharan Africa in a war torn region.  She spends most of her childhood fighting disease and starvation but makes it to adolescence.  A warlord comes into the village, murders her family, and drags her off to be a sex slave and she spends the next 10 years in the most brutal, dehumanizing conditions imaginable.  Because of the nature of her situation, her demise comes from contracting HIV from rape by an infected soldier and ends up dying a horrible, slow death.  This woman's life has been hell every since she was born, she must now face the actual place as death offers no relief.  For most of human history, this scenario has played out with millions if not billions in some form or another.

"It's all in God's plan" your pastor from some cushy US church might say or worse "God knew your destiny even before the creation of the world".  Let that sink in for a second, God can create a person solely for the purpose of suffering.  I brought this point up to pastors and spiritual leaders and by far the worse response was "this will somehow bring glory to the Lord".  Somehow I was expected to worship this monster to cheesy upbeat music every Sunday morning.

 

[Moxie]

Funny how the guy tried to avoid the question by mentioning Messianic Jews. Come on, man.

[1989]

3 hours ago, Bookworm said:

Funny how the guy tried to avoid the question by mentioning Messianic Jews. Come on, man.

 

Yeah, when you believe in Hell doctrine and bring up the Holocaust there's a definite amount of verbal juggling and squirming involved, as well there should be.

[Moxie]

These people are impossible!!!

 

 

[Moxie]

This is the most recent conversation I've had:

 

Spoiler

 

[1989]

What the hell does, "the Holy Spirit convicts all to be saved," even mean?  That's either a cop out or speaking in tongues or something.  The rest is garbage.  I've gone into Free Will and Omniscience before, and my take is pretty much like yours.  I like that no one mentions that the Jews are written to be God's extra-special peoples when replying about Orthodox Jews.  Maybe they don't know.  It's only the entire Old Testament.

[Moxie]

What got me was the last part, "perhaps being tortured they were more open to salvation."

 

That's a whole new level of demented.

[1989]

7 minutes ago, Bookworm said:

What got me was the last part, "perhaps being tortured they were more open to salvation."

 

That's a whole new level of demented.

 

It's definitely something.  As if the Nazis were offering bibles and psalms to disenfranchised Jews.  Their paradigm simply doesn't allow them to see what they're saying, so they get confused and stuff when they're called on it.