If Jesus died to forgive us, then why is there a Hell?

@InfraBlue,

You did make your opinion of me clear already but I was hoping you had something interesting to say.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

You did make your opinion of me clear already but I was hoping you had something interesting to say.

That's y0ur defense of your post? Reason and objectivity indeed.

1 Reply

@Caesar,

What is your understanding of "Hell"? In other words, what type of place is it supposed to be?

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

Leadfoot wrote:
You did make your opinion of me clear already but I was hoping you had something interesting to say.

IB said:
That's y0ur defense of your post? Reason and objectivity indeed.

One does not have to defend oneself from opinion, especially an ignorant one.
Say something worthy of Reason and I might.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

One does not have to defend oneself from opinion, especially an ignorant one.

You won't or can't explain yours, though.

Leadfoot wrote:

Say something worthy of Reason and I might.

I have.

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

Quote:

Leadfoot wrote:
I understood it just fine.

IB said:
No you didn't. Tortured here is used, not in the sense of physical or mental pain or anguish, but in the sense of overworked, misinterpreted, and distorted, things absent in reason and objectivity.

Leadfoot wrote:
You are welcome to point out anything you think is 'unreasoned rationalization' in my reasoning.
If you are intellectually honest, it is your duty to do so.

IB replied:
Dutiful, intellectual honesty coming up.

On the one hand, there is the “eternal” fire described in Matthew, but then you refer to temporal effects, e.g., dust and gasses that result from the combustion of fuel, that result from fire’s temporal sense, a process not mentioned in the Matthew passage.

Again, I understood just fine.

The closest you came to pointing out my 'tortured' logic is claiming Matthew didn’t mention that fire results in smoke and dust. If you want to claim that people of that time didn’t know that fire burns things into dust and smoke/gasses and were eternally destroyed as a result, then I have no further need of your ‘intellectual honesty'.

1 Reply

Caesar wrote:

If Jesus died to forgive us, then why is there a Hell?

Because not everyone repents for their sins.

Those who do not genuinely repent, should not be forgiven, and should be punished.

This is not an argument that there is an afterlife (I hope so, but I have no idea). It is also not an argument about the nature of an afterlife if it exists (again I have no idea). It is just my argument for why there should be a Hell. Whether or not there actually is, is above my pay grade.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

I cannot imaging a more ‘teeth gnashing' yet appropriate punishment than being confronted by the reality that you lived your entire earthly life trying to ignore or deny the obvious signs that you and the universe were created, and then seeing what could have been. Hell/the second death would be a relief after that.

Nothing personal here, just my thoughts on the matter.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

I can't imagine a more vindictive spirit than that of those who would gloat over the condemnation of others to eternal torture because they were reticent to commit themselves to a derivative belief system based on old stories with nothing in the way of convincing evidence.

3 Replies

@hightor,

Sending someone to hell over something trivial is wrong, but I balk at the idea of Adolf Hitler enjoying his stay in Heaven.

There is likely a gray area of cases where people will disagree which direction a given soul should go. However, I think there are cases where most people would agree on what the just outcome would be.

Assuming there is some sort of divine judgement awaiting us all, it won't be up to any of us which direction each soul goes anyway. But as long as the judgements are reasonably fair, I'll be happy with the system.

1 Reply

@hightor,

Quote:

@Leadfoot,
I can't imagine a more vindictive spirit than that of those who would gloat over the condemnation of others to eternal torture because they were reticent to commit themselves to a derivative belief system based on old stories with nothing in the way of convincing evidence.

Since you addressed this to me I can only assume you thought it applied to me.

This does reinforce my theory that what you (et al) react to, is not what is said, but the box you've put them in. If you hadn’t done this, you would know that I agree with what you said.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Quote:

Since you addressed this to me I can only assume you thought it applied to me.

No need to go on the defensive. You made yourself clear:

Quote:

Nothing personal here, just my thoughts on the matter.

You're reacting not to what I said, but to the box you've put me into, as someone with a persecution complex might do.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

Quote:

There is likely a gray area of cases where people will disagree which direction a given soul should go. However, I think there are cases where most people would agree on what the just outcome would be.

That question bugged me until I did what I think was an objective reading John's 'Revelation'.

The story as I recall, starting just as JC returns, has all the dead people who got a passing grade and the living 'good' people meet him in the air. The 'Rapture' people think this is on the way to Heaven, but that’s not in the book. It says JC is on his way HERE, to live among these 'maybe good enough' people for a thousand years. As a bonus, Satan and Co. is bound up so they can do no mischief during this time.

So my point is that there is 1,000 years for any of those gray cases to figure out which side they are on. That seems more than reasonable to me. If we turn out to be an asshole after all that, I figure I’d deserve the second death.

1 Reply

@hightor,

Projecting again?

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Are you? I was agreeing with you.

1 Reply

@hightor,

I form my impression of people as a cumulative total of what I’ve heard from them rather than just their most recent word.

That was the context I read your post in.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Again, I understood just fine.

Not as evidenced by what you wrote you didn't.

Leadfoot wrote:

The closest you came to pointing out my 'tortured' logic is claiming Matthew didn’t mention that fire results in smoke and dust.

The passage in Matthew does not mention smoke nor dust.

You're conflating ideas involving smoke and dust with the Matthew passage.

Leadfoot wrote:

If you want to claim that people of that time didn’t know that fire burns things into dust and smoke/gasses and were eternally destroyed as a result, then I have no further need of your ‘intellectual honesty'.

That is not my claim.

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

Still not feel'n the need.

0 Replies

@Leadfoot,

There's also the added complication of premillennialism vs postmillennialism. That is, has Jesus already made the world peaceful up to 1996 (I picked that number arbitrarily, because of all the jerks on Facebook wanting to stifle freedom of speech online by voting for a law they don't understand) and after that we're living in end times? Or is Jesus about to come, and then everything will be Peachy?

All of this is interesting but it doesn't address the answer to the question, which is Hell doesn't really exist, but we who are sinful can fall under a "strong delusion." We can decide to hear " God loves everyone and wants everyone to be with him" as "If you don't choose God, you are going to BUUUUUUUUUUUURN..." It doesn't say that. This is the delusion, that God has already condemned you, so you might as well ditch that scene. This delusion literally causes any shiny happy cloud world to appear like flames. But read the story of Lazarus again. CAREFULLY . It says that Lazarus and the rich man are able to see each other, but just as there is social distance on Earth, so also is there a gulf/chasm/void that seems to be there between Lazarus's plight and that of the rich man. But it's the same place.

There isn't a Hell. There is an Afterlife. And this Afterlife is a bit like the spot in Yoda's forest where if you bring weapons or fear or hatred, that's what you'll see. If you bring love, calm, and peace, that's what you'll see. Jesus didn't just die for all of our sins. He lives in all of us potentially through the Holy Spirit.

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@Caesar,

I think of it this way at times. If Christ Messiah died for us, why do we need to procreate?

1 Reply

If Jesus died to forgive us, then why is there a Hell?

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