Mountaineer wrote:
doodle wrote:
As far as going to hell, Mountaineer has said it on many ocassions....here is one such example:
Do I have homosexual friends? Sure. Are they in general "nice" people? Sure. Are they doing what is right in their own eyes? Some say yes, some say no. Should I love my homosexual friends? Sure. Should homosexuals have the same Civil rights as hetrosexuals? I would think so. Should I love my hetrosexual friends? Sure. Are we all sinners? You bet ya! Should I tell my homosexual friends that they are not doing God's will? Sure. Should I tell my adulterous hetrosexual friends they are not doing God's will? Sure. Are my unrepentant homosexual friends going to Hell? Yep. Are my unrepentant hetrosexual adulterous friends going to Hell. Yep.
doodle,
Actually I never said YOU PERSONALLY are going to Hell (or the place of the dead, or Sheol, or Hades, or Gahenna, or eternal damnation, or eternal torment - whatever you choose to call it it is pretty much the same thing), or if I did, I misspoke. I don't know if you will receive the gifts of repentance and belief in the promises of Jesus before you croak. That is God's business.
... Mountaineer
Mountaineer,
That's just semantics. Yes, you haven't said doodle is going to hell.
This is like me saying,
"Mountaineer, people who are actively practicing Christianity are going to die via a legitimate Islamic Jihad against them."
And to that you say, "Moda, you're essentially saying I should rightfully die in a Jihad. It's hard to debate with you. I'm disgusted by your assumption."
And I said,
"Mountaineer, I never said YOU PERSONALLY are going to die in a legitimate Islamic Jihad. I don't know if you will receive the gifts of Muhammad's Word and belief in Allah & the Koran before you are visited by one of Allah's Jihadist disciples."
Now, I'm not really offended by your belief that I will go to hell. What sort of confuses me is the inconsistent "rules" of getting into heaven or hell. We've been through this a bit, but here are some questions that demand our asking, if your version of Christianity is the correct one...
If a baby who doesn't know ANY religion dies, does he go to hell?
If a Buddhist toddler who has never experienced Christianity dies, does he go to hell?
If belief in Christ as our savior is the standard of getting into heaven, what happened to all the people who died in the years following his Crucifixion that had never heard of him? What about the people who HAD heard of him, but hadn't had any real chance to explore Christianity before death?
It would be one thing if we were given the "gift of life," only to suffer a bit on earth (I can acknowledge that pain could very well be part of a human existence under a "just God.") but not anything beyond that. It is something else, entirely, to give someone the "gift" of life, which could very-well be filled with a very short period of pain before his mamma's "boyfriend" chokes him to death... only to then spend eternity in hell because he didn't "find Jesus" yet, or because Jesus didn't "find him."
I know we've discussed this before, so sorry if I'm re-straw-manning here, but if this is the way God operates, I believe it to be ego-maniacal. Perhaps a lot of people are not worthy of life, or not necessary worthy of a happy physical life, but holy shit an eternity in hell for not accepting Jesus as your savior? That's just too much to either believe or side with. I don't think the humble Jesus that I read and heard stories about would ever be that rigid.
And let's not forget, if God truly is all-knowing and all-powerful, HE has set up all these rules. It is no accident. He's not a victim of happenstance here....
Perhaps he attempted to engineer mystery for himself by inventing a conscious species that he can't predict the future of, but this means, in the face of children going to hell and his son having to die for our sins, he decided not to rewrite the rules even a little bit... oh but manipulating reality to speak to Abraham to test him by telling him to kill his son? That's fair game. Cause a flood that buries humanity under the sea? No big deal. But little Buddhist toddlers dying from disease or natural disaster going to hell for ETERNITY? Well, "God works in mysterious ways."
Ugh I'm getting pissed again just thinking about it. Please remind/inform me why my analysis is deeply flawed, because to me it seems logically pretty air-tight.
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."
- Thomas Paine