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Mar
10

Dialogues of Disbelief

For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.

- Proverbs 1:32-33

I’m finding discussions with people who have doubts about God very exciting and thrilling. I didn’t always feel this way  but I think that’s because I hadn’t explored the questions that others were raising. This left me feeling very unequipped to answer and usually ended with me running away with my tail between my legs. Needless to say, I was not as ease or secure.

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve figured out everything there is to know about God, the Bible, Jesus, and the Gospel. But as I compare conversations that I am able to have now (without fear, but excitement) with those of past, I’m thrilled to find that my pursuit of knowledge and understanding in the last year or so has not been in vain. Having shaky questions and doubts transformed into solid Truths I can stand on has lead me to  feel secure and at ease.

To anyone who is interested in this kind of thing, I thought I’d post a dialogue I had with a person yesterday. This wasn’t a conversation, but a general statement by them (on Facebook) and a response from me. Hopefully this is helpful to you somehow. Even if it just raises some questions and doubts of your own, I think it would be worth the read.

“We are told we have free will, but if we choose against him, we are punished forever.—- This is my problem with christianity.

Christianity sets up an unrealistic standard where simply being human is wrong. We are only bound to fail and this sets us up for the guilt, self-condemnation and can lead to depression because we cannot possibly transcend our humanity.

Examining humanity from a very different perspective and without the lenses of Christianity to blur the focus, I no longer have the black and white, wrong and right thinking that Christianity perpetuates. I embrace humanity for what it is and that is neither good nor bad…. See More

Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement. There is nothinng wrong with making bad choices and failure is part of life. Give yourself permission to fail because without failure you can’t learn from your mistakes.

i have a few problems with blindly following a religion:
Hell—why would God condemn us to hell for something as menial as lack of faith? If he is not infinitely more so loving then me, why would hell even exist? Any true loving being would never condemn his own children to everlasting torment, especially one that proclaims himself to having the very essence of forgiveness.

FREE WILL—It is also written that I was given free will with which to choose if I will go to hell or not. How can you possibly deem something free when you must fear consequences? That completely conflicts with the definition of free. If I were to hold a gun to your head and say “you have free will to not give me your wallet, but if you attempt to defy me I will kill you.” Does it really feel as if you have a choice in the matter? Of course not. Free means to give or receive something with out an expectation of return. The whole free will concept is self defeating. Call it Circumstantial Will, for that is what it truly is.

Despite this, I have still had the displeasure of debating with those Christians who accept hell as a rational and fair wrath of God. They defend Jehovah’s creation of hell with the opinion that those who are committed to hell go voluntary, as if it is a consequence rather then a punishment. That indeed, we as children of God, chose rather to be hell’s inmates then God’s disciples in heaven. It’s an interesting idea. However, you don’t have to hurt anyone to get into Hell. All it takes, according to Scripture, is knowing about Jesus and not accepting him as Savior. It doesn’t matter how virtuous you are, how much good you do, how happy an environment you create for others. Given this, the voluntary entry argument doesn’t make sense.”

A response:

I have been wrestling with many of the questions that you’re raising. They’re great questions and in my studying, I’ve found some of the answers.

I think the first thing you touch on is the condition of humanity. Whether or not you agree, Christianity believes that the condition of man is broken– a result of sin entering the world through Adam and Eve. Now, I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it only makes sense when we can understand the relationship between man and God. Man was not created and designed to operate in isolation without God. We were created to be with God and to worship God to increase his glory, as it says in Isaiah 43:6-7… See More

With this in mind, “choosing against him” is like choosing against water. Our bodies need it and are designed to use it and to live off of it. It’s no surprise that Jesus refers to himself as living water in John 4. That’s where the notion that denying Him in life is like denying water as you run a marathon– it will absolutely suck and you will die.

You also touch upon good and bad and conclude that there is no good or bad in the judgment of humanity. This is also a rehash of the assertion that there is nothing that is true, and nothing that is false. There are no absolutes in truth. Now I don’t know what this implies philosophically, but I know what it implies logically… which is a fallacy. Now I know this can’t be how you really feel because if you did, there would be no reason to argue over anything, since there is no absolute truth to what you’re arguing. On some level, you must agree that placing a shotgun to a child’s head and blasting away is “bad.” Rape is bad. Genocide is bad. It cannot be neutral to murder an innocent person.

Now I know you agree in the existence of “good” because you use the idea in your next assertion that, “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. There is nothing wrong with making bad choices and failure is part of life. Give yourself permission to fail because without failure you can’t learn from your mistakes.”

I agree with all of this but I would challenge you to open your eyes to another truth– experience can also come from good judgment, not just bad. This is the principle of Wisdom– either you can heed the warning of wise people to make a good judgment, or you can ignore it to make a bad judgment, suffer, then learn from it. The crux of Christianity is your last statement about giving ourselves permission to fail. We MUST give ourselves permission to fail and understand that we have failed in order to receive and understand the restoration that God offers to us. Like C.S. Lewis says, “who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease?” No one, including you, will need Jesus UNLESS they understand that they have failed where Jesus has succeeded.

I love discussing this stuff because I believe that God is real and in his realness, he makes sense. I mean think about it… if God actually wants to be in a relationship with us (which is what Christianity believes), then He must interact with us through reason and logic, since this is how man relates. When we honestly ask questions with open hearts for answers, God replies and satisfies our desire for understanding.

Here’s my last response to your thoughts on free will. It’s a complicated topic that many theologians spend their entire lives trying to fully understand. At the core of your question is a lack of understanding (or experience) that Christians like myself do not choose to run AWAY from Hell, but run TO Jesus. This is not a lose-lose situation like you have drawn where you either lose $100 from your wallet or die, depending on your decision. It’s a free will situation where you can GAIN $1,000,000,000 or die.

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