Great discussion just now on hell...Think of the Christian view this way: God has created 2 eternal paradises. 1 for those who love & follow Him and 1 for those who hate, feel indifferent, or at least trust in someone/thing else. God lives in the first one with those who want to spend the rest of eternity with Him. This place is called Heaven. God doesn't live in the second place. After all, teh people there don't want anything to do with God. If you think about it, from the perspective of this life, it's actually paradise for those who want to be free from God. No church. No preaching. No Xns. No Jesus. In other words, it's exactly what the people who live there want--the eternity they would choose for themselves. The absense of God and everything having to do with Him. That place is waht the Bible labels "hell." The Bible says says "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from athe Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." (James 1:17) What we fail to realize is that the source of all love, compassion, mercy, goodness, community, joy, et al. good things is sourced in the person of God Himself. Remove God and you remove all trace of the goodness He gives. The point is that hell is NOT at all about moral behavior. Moral behavior does not factor in at all. Heaven and hell, salvation, our eternal destiny is all about how we relate to the person of the Benevolent Creator God who has soveriegn authority over the earth and those who live in it because He invented it and us. None of this changes the aweful reality of hell, but it does totally change our understanding of why people go there or not.
2 comments:
You wrote in your blog! =) But I loved it and it is a really neat perspective. Being on Summer Project has lead to some conversations with people that if you are a Christian you are condemning the rest of the world to hell. But God's gift is for everyone. They condemn themselves by not accepting his desire to have a relationship with us. John 3:17 talks about that too. Thanks P. Steve!
Hey Steve! ^_^ Thanks for that wonderful insight. Just a quickie word of advice, though. It's "awful", not "aweful" ;oD
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