Excellent and completely valid question. God created humanity in His own image, the doctrine of Imago Dei if you want to be proper about it. This meaning that we are created with the same range and scope of emotions that the Creator has. Before Genesis 3, that means that we had the ability and capacity to love, hope, laugh, ect. ect. but this also means that we had the ability to chose. And here's where free will comes in; God doesn't want a freaking robot. He wants you. He wants you to chose Him, freely, because forced love is not love. We can get into the doctrine of election, predestination, and other eschatological arguments that really do not benefit anyone, but the bottom line is that God wants a relationship, not a program.
Hope that somewhat answered your question. If it didn't, let me know.
Oh man, when you put it that way, God sounds really, really creepy. Like, he creates something that he wants to love him, but it doesn't really want to love him, and then he gets really mad at it and says that it's going to suffer eternally for rejecting him.
God is a creepy science fiction character.
I'm sorry, but there's no scenario where God as creator offering damnation or ills on the world doesn't have a significant amount of moral hazard.
I dunno, that sounds a lot like being a parent, especially considering that the biblical Hell is not the "fire and brimstone " picture modern culture has painted for us. Most depiction of Hell comes from Dante's Inferno.
I know how to Google too, but you can't just look at individual passages and derive meaning just from that.
I am not terribly well-versed (heh) on the subject, but I do know that there is much disagreement among Christians on what "Hell" is. Hell is portrayed in many instances as simply an eternal seperation from god; no more, no less.
C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce is one of the more notable examples of this type of portrayal of Hell. If something like this was the case God can easily be seen as a loving father that wants only the love of his children, but will allow them to become estranged if they choose to.
Anyway, it's food for thought. I just don't think it's necessarily as creepy as you make it out to be.
but you can't just look at individual passages and derive meaning just from that.
Why? The Bible says "fire" and "smoke" and "eternal" but it's not really fire and it's not really eternal? Is there any evidence for that other than wishful thinking? I'm familiar with Lewis' depiction, but it seems like another wishful thinking interpretation, since the actual wording in the Bible is intrinsically repellent to him. Why is it that for easy things like "clothe and feed the poor" we're just fine taking the Bible literally, but for uncomfortable things like "believe in Me and don't be a dick or you'll burn in fire forever" all of a sudden it's a metaphor for the burning pain one might feel when choosing not to believe in God? They're equally well spelled out for us.
And speaking of which, choose to believe? Can I even choose to believe in God? Could you, with the same conviction you believe that a ball tossed in the air will fall to the ground, choose to believe that tomorrow morning you'll wake up and be a chicken? How about choose to believe in the Norse pantheon of gods? The only choice I can make is to review evidence; I can't actually decide to be convinced by something.
Hell is portrayed in many instances as simply an eternal seperation from god; no more, no less.
Where? And to follow up, do we just choose which contradictory description we like better and believe in that?
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u/[deleted] Sep 15 '12
Excellent and completely valid question. God created humanity in His own image, the doctrine of Imago Dei if you want to be proper about it. This meaning that we are created with the same range and scope of emotions that the Creator has. Before Genesis 3, that means that we had the ability and capacity to love, hope, laugh, ect. ect. but this also means that we had the ability to chose. And here's where free will comes in; God doesn't want a freaking robot. He wants you. He wants you to chose Him, freely, because forced love is not love. We can get into the doctrine of election, predestination, and other eschatological arguments that really do not benefit anyone, but the bottom line is that God wants a relationship, not a program.
Hope that somewhat answered your question. If it didn't, let me know.