12 thoughts on “About hell”

  1. leaveblank1986 says:
    January 19, 2013 at 04:16

    interesting concept! I disagree of course.

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  2. leaveblank1986 says:
    January 19, 2013 at 12:38

    It wouldn’t change your mind. My disagreement is formed entirely from the Bible’s description of God.

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    • makagutu says:
      January 19, 2013 at 20:04

      Whether I agree or not is not the point, the reason why you disagree would be important. Just saying it is based on the bible’s description of god without telling me this description is not helping, do you agree?

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  3. leaveblank1986 says:
    January 19, 2013 at 21:51

    God is, first and foremost, a triune being with love at the centre. To say that any outward manifestation of God’s character would be like, ‘hell’ to him is to simply misunderstand just what God is.

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    • makagutu says:
      January 20, 2013 at 20:00

      How do you know what god is?

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      • leaveblank1986 says:
        January 21, 2013 at 00:48

        because the bible tells us.

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        • makagutu says:
          January 21, 2013 at 08:28

          The bible says many things about god and we can also infer so much more.
          I will give you a few examples, so you can take your pick.
          1. that god is all loving and merciful yet he drowns everyone except 8
          2. that god is evasive. when confronted by Job why he is suffering, he evades the question and only tries to awe Job with his clothes
          3. we are told he is all knowing but seems several times to forget. he forgets that Noah and co are in the boat and so on
          4. he is malicious. he hardens pharaoh’s heart to get an opportunity to kill Egyptians
          5. tribal:- he chooses people over others without reason
          6. he is evil:- he says he is the author of good and evil and also the author of confusion. he does this to confound the people as they are building the staircase to heaven.
          I will stop with a few of this examples, I know you can list several where he does positive things but what that will show is that the nature of god is incoherent.

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          • leaveblank1986 says:
            January 22, 2013 at 14:53

            1. that god is all loving and merciful yet he drowns everyone except 8

            You are assessing God’s righteousness according to your own standards. God is above your standards and mine.

            2. that god is evasive. when confronted by Job why he is suffering, he evades the question and only tries to awe Job with his clothes

            Keep reading Job till the end. You will see exactly why God works in the way he works. A question for you, is Job a real account of a real person or more a contextual moral story? Please don’t forget that the bible is not, cover to cover, a literal history of the world. It comprises of many literary tropes including: historical narrative, allegory, metaphor, morality play etc.

            3. we are told he is all knowing but seems several times to forget. he forgets that Noah and co are in the boat and so on

            I disagree, I certainly didn’t get that impression reading Genesis. Can you reference some verses for me so I can more accurately refute this argument.

            4. he is malicious. he hardens pharaoh’s heart to get an opportunity to kill Egyptians

            Who are you to judge God as malicious? Think outside of the human box. Why did God do all of this ultimately? What was the bigger picture?

            5. tribal:- he chooses people over others without reason

            Just because you fail to see God’s reasons doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. A tree still makes a sound when it falls in the woods, regardless of wether or not you are present. Again, think about the bigger picture, what happens when God chooses one person over the other, what is the end game God is playing?

            6. he is evil:- he says he is the author of good and evil and also the author of confusion. he does this to confound the people as they are building the staircase to heaven.

            I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (NKJV)
            Are you living in medieval times man? Let’s look at some more accurate translations shall we:

            I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things. (NIV)

            Or

            I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things. (ESV)

            The Hebrew word that is used there is, “Ra” this word carries the following connotations: “sorrow,” “wretchedness,” “adversity,” “afflictions,” “calamities,”
            Note that, at no point, does the word evil crop up.

            The king James Version uses evil because it was the best word at that time to describe the above list.

            Evil is Sin, the affects of sin etc. “sorrow,” “wretchedness,” “adversity,” “afflictions,” “calamities,”, are all Righteous and justified responses to the evil of sin.

            As for the tower of babel:
            The people had begun, yet again to rebel against God. God’s command was to go, not to remain still. The people decided to stay and build the tower. God’s response was perfectly Just. In changing their languages the people had no choice but to scatter thus, going about with what God had commanded in the first place.

            In almost all of these cases, a little context goes an awfully long way. I would certainly recommend not picking and choosing, it is so easy to take a verse out of context and make it say anything you wish it to. This is where things like the established church come in, pick out a few verses, build a doctrine, rule over people with that misunderstood doctrine. Taking the bible out of context is a religious thing and not a Christian thing.

            Hope you are well,

            Joe

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        • makagutu says:
          January 22, 2013 at 22:09

          Somewhere in this blog, search Genesis 7 then start from there, that is the beginning of Noah’s story with the ark and go one or two chapters you’ll notice that god really must have forgot that they were floating rudderless, sail-less and without a compass.
          Who I my to judge god. Am not being judge, am only making deductions about his character from what is claimed to be his word.
          Joe, you are going to help me here, I need to know what parts to consider allegorical, parts that are historical and the ones that I can throw out of the window.
          I don’t quote the bible out of context, at least I try to understand the context in which a particular author was writing. I will write a post on Paul later and we can pick it up then.
          Am not a student of language, besides I don’t which of the 800+ versions of the bible is the correct one, maybe some guidance from your part would be useful here don’t you think?
          Joe on a side note, do you believe before they began the construction of the Tower of Babel, they all spoke the same language and that languages have diversified because god confounded them?

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          • leaveblank1986 says:
            January 23, 2013 at 17:17

            “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.: (NIV)

            But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.
            (ESV)

            I’ll assume this is what you mean by God forgetting. Please take note here that it does not say at any point that God forgot. Ever hear the phrase, ‘remember the fallen’? Well that phrase might help us unpack this verse!

            When someone says remember the fallen, they are not assuming you have forgotten that there have been horrible wars in our history where many people have given their lives. Of course you haven’t forgotten that there were wars. What they are instead asking is that, at that moment you direct your attention to those that have given their lives in war.

            When God remembers Noah, it is not that God has forgotten about Noah, merely that, at this point Gods attention is brought fully onto noah’s situation and he alleviates it.

            This is a classic example of reading the bible beyond the text. You read a word, ‘forget’ that simply wasn’t there.

            “Who I my to judge god. Am not being judge, am only making deductions about his character from what is claimed to be his word.”

            Fair enough although, there is a subtext to this. you are making deductions based on a heavy bias. Your bias is that the bible only claims to be God’s word.
            Of course, you can retort that I have the exact opposite bias. You would be right, I do! However, when you view the bible in the light that it IS God’s word, it becomes apparent that it is far beyond us to postulate anything about God that isn’t explicitly outlined in the bible. To call God, ‘unfair’ is beyond me. God is above me and, although I may disagree with his decision based on my perspective, I cannot argue that it is unfair because God is the very definition of fair.

            “Joe, you are going to help me here, I need to know what parts to consider allegorical, parts that are historical and the ones that I can throw out of the window.
            I don’t quote the bible out of context, at least I try to understand the context in which a particular author was writing.”

            See my response in another post to this same question from you.

            “which of the 800+ versions of the bible is the correct one, maybe some guidance from your part would be useful here don’t you think?”

            Great question!
            Well, you can discount the vast number of translations that are in another language as they will be of no use to you. Now, what we have left are various translations made by different people or groups of people for different reasons.

            One thing you will notice immediately is that all these translations, whilst maybe contending tiny points, seem to agree on the general impression.
            Therefore, they are all, “right”.

            As to which one you choose, well that is entirely up to you.
            If you are the scholarly sort then you will probably opt for a handful of translations including: The King James version, The New international version, English (or American) Standard Version, and the aramaic bible in plain english.

            If you are more a visual thinker and are somewhat book-shy then, perhaps a translation such as, The message (in which it is conveyed idea for idea rather than word for word), is a better choice.

            There are different translations that cater for different needs. Some written very recently (therefore, having access to more and more source material as it turns up -dead sea scrolls in the 40’s-)are very accurate translations whereas, something like the King James, has some very dated language that does not take on the same meaning in a modern context (think about what the word, ‘gay’ used to mean and what it now means etc.)

            “Joe on a side note, do you believe before they began the construction of the Tower of Babel, they all spoke the same language and that languages have diversified because god confounded them?”

            I don’t visualise a logical reason not to believe it. The theory of evolution itself would perhaps support a babel like language account.

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  4. an ongoing discussion | Random thoughts says:
    January 24, 2013 at 18:28

    […] of a fine gentleman to share a discussion we have been having on this blog here, here, here and here. The reason we agreed to do this is to consolidate the different arguments in one place. I must […]

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