Unbelievers - You're dead and before God on Judgement Day

[Donny Pauling]

Stewart,

If you'd promise to read it I'd love to send you a book called Blue Like Jazz. I really identified with it, and I bet you would too.

I am a Christian, Stewart. But I've only come back to God a short time ago. September 25th, to be exact. I still have a lot of anger, bitterness, and flat out hatred towards many Christians. And guess what? It's okay. I'm working on it and God is patient.

Christians have done so much evil in God's name. They were way wrong and way off base. Please let me apologize to you for all of that. I've only recently come to realize that it's true: most of God's "saints" don't reflect him at all. I let my bitterness towards them crowd out my ability to actually see him for what he is.

I welcome you here, Stewart. Don't go anywhere. You're here only because you're looking, whether you want to believe that or not. I know, because I've been there. I've written horrible things about Christians and produced pornography, in part, to piss off the Christians from my past. God was there through it all, holding my hand and not judging me. He loved me despite who I am and what I did.

The same is true for you. Let me send you the book. My email address is:

photography4me@hotmail.com

Let me know where to mail it. I promise that will be the only thing I send to you and I'll never share your address.

And if you are interested, check out my blog. There's a "start here if you're new" link at the top and on the top right side column as well. Browse through that if you wish.

Again, I'm glad you're here.

[secondeve]

What would you say or do before the Supreme Judge who holds you accountable to His holy standards? Hypothetically?

I would say that, for good or ill, I had only ever acted with the best intentions. If my understanding of the world was flawed, it could only be because I, as a human, was flawed, and while it is within my power to regret and to apologise for the mistake, because no human being can be perfect, it would be beyond my abilities to apologise for being imperfect in the first place. I would say that I had tried to live a good life and to treat others well, even though I fell short of the ultimate standard, and that accordingly, as I had made the decisions in my life, the consequences would be on my head.

[Floatingaxe]

How dare the potter blame the pot when it has been poorly thrown?

If your standards are so high, why have you made vessels so flawed? And how dare you then hold them accountable.

You answer ME first God. You tell ME about the countless generations of misery on this planet. You explain to ME about the suffering that has gone on.

When you destroyed the earth in the flood, explain to ME about the suffering of the little children as they drowned, crying out to their mothers as the waters rose around them.

When you hardened the heart of pharoah in Egypt, you explain to ME about the first born that were slain and the anguish of their parents.

All the innocents that have suffered horribly and died. In their millions. In every earthquake, tornado, fire. Every traffic accident, every illness and disease.

How dare you judge me. I stand before you, and I condem you God. For your impotence. For your inconsistancy. For your feeble attempts to communicate to your creation. I condemn YOU.

You are not worthy. Do your worst.

Seconded. Hypothetically, if the Christian god existed, and everything in the Bible was literally true, he would be accountable for those instances of genocide.

Why would God be accountable for genocide? He is sinless. This is the territory of Satan--He's the one who should be blamed! He is sitting there laughing at all the misdirected blame.

[Emily~Anne]

How dare the potter blame the pot when it has been poorly thrown?

If your standards are so high, why have you made vessels so flawed? And how dare you then hold them accountable.

You answer ME first God. You tell ME about the countless generations of misery on this planet. You explain to ME about the suffering that has gone on.

When you destroyed the earth in the flood, explain to ME about the suffering of the little children as they drowned, crying out to their mothers as the waters rose around them.

When you hardened the heart of pharoah in Egypt, you explain to ME about the first born that were slain and the anguish of their parents.

All the innocents that have suffered horribly and died. In their millions. In every earthquake, tornado, fire. Every traffic accident, every illness and disease.

How dare you judge me. I stand before you, and I condem you God. For your impotence. For your inconsistancy. For your feeble attempts to communicate to your creation. I condemn YOU.

You are not worthy. Do your worst.

Seconded. Hypothetically, if the Christian god existed, and everything in the Bible was literally true, he would be accountable for those instances of genocide.

Why would God be accountable for genocide? He is sinless. This is the territory of Satan--He's the one who should be blamed! He is sitting there laughing at all the misdirected blame.

AMEN!!!!!

[apothanein kerdos]

First, I apologize for all that have been attacked on this thread. Let's face it, one of the biggest problems in Christianity is that of theodicy.

I would encourage all of you to read Christian Theodicy in Light of Genesis and Modern Science.

The reason is that it provides a good reason as to why God has allowed evil to exist. It certainly is not an end all and the author (some of you will be familiar with Bill Dembski) is developing it into a book. However, I give you the article because I can answer questions on it and more importantly it gives a good foundation.

I would then encourage another article by him entitled The Reach of the Cross This is written in a speaking format (it was a sermon) but also explains why God allows for evil. You can read either first (the former is much shorter than the latter), but I encourage you to read both.

[apothanein kerdos]

Why do you presuppose that God is at fault for the faulty creation? Don't ignore the fall of man and that we CHOSE to fall. You can come back and say this negates perfection, but if we could not fall this would ruin any freedom of choice - if we could not choose then we could not be perfect because it would mean we were not responsible enough to choose in the first place. If we are not responsible then we are not perfect. That being said, perfection allowed for choice, we merely chose to give up our perfection.

[ayin jade]

None of our actions are good. All of humanity is sinful. It is that sin that condemns everyone. The Lord knows this and provided the means by which our sins can be forgiven, forgotten. All you have to do is accept Jesus, repent, turn away from your sins and commit to Jesus. You refuse to do so. That is your choice. Then you blame God. Adam didnt get away with that, so why should you?

[apothanein kerdos]

Stop being rude. Don't say "I don't get it" when I have studied this area (and I don't mean by reading a McDowell book or some other, "Here is the easy answer for Christians book"). If you can't be polite, then don't bother discussing, I won't tolerate it.

Listen. Freedom of choice is a good thing when there are more than one good options to choose from. But if these options are "Go to Heaven" and "Go to Hell", then you would be insane to choose the second option. You must be imperfect to choose the second option.

You are attempting a strawman - the consequence was unknown to Adam and Eve. Instead, they had not "known" sin which means they had not experienced it. Likewise, a perfect being can choose an imperfect option if he chooses to give up his perfection. This creates a problem - if a perfect being cannot choose an imperfect option then how is he perfect? I am not saying he has to, but he must contain the ability to do so. With this, he can also choose to give up his perfection.

You still don't get it. Perfect creatures won't choose to give up their perfection. That is an imperfect choice.

Why won't they? Why can't a perfect creature choose to become imperfect?

Because he created us, and we are faulty. Even if God gives his creation choices, only faulty creations will make faulty decisions. You cannot blame faultiness on the choices themselves.

This assumes we are faulty to begin with. Again, we were perfect to begin with (though we did not have perfect epistemology) in that we had not experienced sin. We chose to engage in sin. How does this lead back to God? Likewise, even if it does, He has offered a solution, so how would we not still be guilty for rejecting the solution?

Did you read the articles I supplied? I will not continue this discussion until you have read them because I will be drawing upon them. I want you to have background knowledge in this discussion.

[Smalcald]

What I mean is that we do have horrible death and destruction that we have created on this earth, the millions of babies that have died the wars that have killed so many innocents, on and on. Without God, those people are dead and in hell, for hell are but the grave, eternal doom, the blackness of darkness forever.

If there is an earthquake, it is not anyone's fault. Nobody made the earthquake happen.

During the earthquake, a building collapses and a 6 month old baby is trapped and takes a day to die. In pain and agony. Broken bones. Starvation. Thirst.

The baby is innocent. God could have done so many things. he could have had the baby's mother take it for a walk. He could have had a beam fall strategically, forming a barrier to protect the baby till the rescuers came.

It's a hypothetical baby, but something like it has happened. In differing ways, in differing circumstances.

The point is that there is needless suffering of innocents. Caused by no-one. And not prevented by the omniscient, omnipotent God.

And. If ever I am before him. I will want him to explain it to me before he condemns me.

But don't you see Stewart, without God, that baby IS indeed in the death of hell, gone forever. With God, the baby has life, eternal life even with that earthquake. This earth today is only a tiny percentage of our life, and yes it does contain some suffering. But most of our life, the vast vast expanse of our time will not be spent on this earth, and neither will that baby, who is now with Christ.

[billie]

Another Christian fallacy: Praying for people to get "saved".

If you can pray for people to get saved, that means that God could make them believers at his discretion. There are so many problems with this. If it is at his will, why doesn't he just make everyone a believer? If praying to him to save someone will make him save someone, does that mean that God only saves people who have other people praying for them? It's just so ridiculous.

This can only mean that God doesn't want everyone to be a believer, since if he did, he'd just make everyone a believer. Christians admit he can do this by "praying" for people's salvation. So the only explanation is that God wants to make it intentionally hard to "weed" out the people who don't "truly" love him. Which once again contradicts him wanting everyone to go to heaven.

Either that, or it's a fairy-tale with many holes and fallacies, with the intention of scaring people so that they could be controlled.

It isn't a fallacy.

Praying for people to be saved is asking the Holy Spirit to woo them, calling them spiritually. This doesn't mean a nonbeliever can't ignore this call, or will respond. It simply means the Holy Spirit will draw them. He won't make anyone come. He wants us to love Him of our own free will.

He does want to weed out those who don't truly love Him. The beauty of this is that He is the one who puts this love inside of us. It isn't something we can will ourselves into, like waking up one morning and saying, "I'm going to be totally in love with God for the rest of my life!" It doesn't work that way. We get to know Him through prayer and the Bible, but ultimately, it's He who enables us to love Him the way He wants us to. If we truly want to love Him, He will truly give us that.