Fundys do that to me.
First let me say that I don't revel in anyone spending their eternity in hell. We are to love everyone and pray for the salvation of all, even though that's a pretty hard thing to do sometimes . . .
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But there's always been people who reject Jesus and His incredible offer of grace, mercy, restoration, and salvation. And as I read one article after another about avowed secularists, atheists, evolutionists, jihdists, and other "ists" that boldly and defiantly shake their fists at God, I know that one day, as God's Word says they will, bend their knee, and with their tongues, proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father. I can't help but think about Osama bin Laden, a murdering jihadist and hater of Israel, bending his knee to a Jewish King Jesus.*Or Hockmydinnerjacket**, who furiously shakes his fist as a hate-filled Holocaust denier, kneeling before a Jewish Carpenter sitting at God's right hand and confessing with his tongue that the very God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob (all of Israel) is the one True God and that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God.
I think about Richard Dawkins, an avowed God-denier, atheist, and evolutionist as he kneels before the very one that he led so many away from, as he confesses Jesus Lord to the glory of God the Father. I can go on and on. And as they are each sadly led away to an eternity of horror, punishment, and torment that our minds cannot even begin to comprehend, they will have full cognition of the truth of who God is and all that they have done and the punishment that awaits.
Christianity, it's all about the love. and the eternal torment. and watching the eternal torment. lovingly.
I am forced to the conclusion that most "born again" Christians actually look forward to being able to say (in their hearts, of course, not out loud, which might be seen as the sin of Pride) "See, we told you so!" even more than the realization that their myth afterlife actually turned out to be right.
ReplyDeleteAlso in the other classic work of snuff porn.
ReplyDelete7:50 And the dwellers of the Fire cry out unto the dwellers of the Garden: Pour on us some water or some wherewith Allah hath provided you. They say: Lo! Allah hath forbidden both to disbelievers.
That's just one. It's a meme that repeats constantly.
At one level, I'm continually appalled that they could believe this sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteAt another level, I'm cheered by their good behaior. They believe in a God that is ok torturing people for eternity simply for not thinking that it existed. Yet at the same time, they don't want that to happen. They missionize to prevent that. In an odd way, they are more moral than their deity.
And as they are each sadly led away to an eternity of horror, punishment, and torment that our minds cannot even begin to comprehend, they will have full cognition of the truth of who God is and all that they have done and the punishment that awaits.
ReplyDeleteWell, if Thomas Aquinas was right, your Christian minds will not have struggle with imagining the torments of Hell: you'll be able to watch the writhing damned from the comfort of your cloud, presumably on your Hellevision set. Tommy deduced this from the fact that our bliss in Heaven must be as blissful as imaginable, and of course watching the heathens burn would increase any Christian's bliss, by making her realize how lucky she is to not be burning, and to satisfy her sense of justice- and maybe just a smidgen of schadenfreude.
Clicking on that and reading the thread made me throw up a little. Delusional much?
ReplyDeleteJoshua: In an odd way, they are more moral than their deity.
ReplyDeleteThat was one of the key realizations that led me to dump Christianity. I had all these friends who were supposed to be sent to eternal hellfire but I realized that if it were up to me I wouldn't do it because they were all just trying to make it through life as best they could and their bad qualities were balanced (or over-balanced) by good qualities. One day I realized that if I could see people that way and and god couldn't, then I was more loving and forgiving than god was.
Of course that would lead people to say, "But god is also just and justice must be preserved!" To which I reply, "How is it that anything a human could do in a hundred years of life is justly punished by an eternity of torment?"
The sad thing is that I actually understand that argument better than anyone I've ever heard throw it out. To me it just further proves that the Bible is an invention of bronze age man. Because it used to be that the more disparity of power between parties, the more disparity of justice there was. So if a commoner hurt another commoner the punishment was less than if that commoner hurt a member of the elite. Obviously, then, if you're in a system that contains an infinite being you're going to have to create an infinite punishment for any person who wrongs that being. It's a bottom up approach to justice.
If there were truly an infinite god reflected in the pages of the Bible we'd see more that indicates Paul's admonition that there are neither slave nor free, Greek nor Hebrew, man nor woman. We'd see more examples of the story of the Good Samaritan. Because if there is an infinite, compassionate god then that god would look past the petty divisions that humans place between themselves. The fact that the Bible only serves to magnify those petty divisions means it did not come from on high, but from down here.
Er... I clicked the link. Eewww.
ReplyDeleteVbf seems to have a bizarre tongue fetish.
ReplyDeleteNow if you'll excuse me, I have some fist-shaking to do. At God.