God's love & Justice demands hell. Need to explain to Muslim friend

[GodHeals]

Hi,

I was debating my Muslim friend and it seems first they don’t believe in the need for a sacrifice, but believe the more good they do the better chances of going to heaven, or at least minimizing their time in hell. Seems they view hell as a sort of a purgatory… but the infidels or Christians will be there in hell for eternity.

My friend believes Love comes out of Justice. I tried to explain in my brief understanding that God IS… Love, and that justice comes out of love, not vice versa.

How can I explain there are two places, heaven and hell, and that we cannot get out of hell… and how God’s love and Justice demands hell.

Thank you and God Bless You,
Brian

 

[GodHeals]

ANY help with this conversion with my friend would be appreciated! Thank you and God Bless You!

ME:“worshiping Allah is the RIGHT PATH ! WHAT does Justice have anything to do with it?” – It has everything to do w/justice. If we were created by our Creator God to worship Him (it’s right & just to offer Him thanks & praise & worship Him), but instead use our freewill to do the contrary - worship self or anything else, we are committing an injustice against God. Does God deserve justice?

FRIEND: God wants justice from us???
WHAT kind of a weak God is that???

ME: Why do you see justice as being weak? That is interesting. Please explain.

FRIEND: God wanting Justice from us??? Thats a WEAKNESS ! ! !
Allah does NOT need Justice from us. He GIVES Justice which CANT be questioned cause its PERFECT ! ! !

 

[Tom_Baum]

Ever given any thought to God’s Justice and God’s Mercy as being so intertwined as to be One, justice without mercy can be nothing more than revenge, something to think about.

Love is not an attribute of God, Love Is God’s Very Being and all of the attributes that we can possibly attribute to God come from the “fact” that Love Is a Being.

Something else to think about, from the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them”, if you notice there is no * after them even tho there are many who seem to think that Jesus meant just “some of them”, the them in Jesus’s statement is ALL OF US since it was all of us who Jesus went to the cross for.

 

[Ion]

Hi,

I was debating my Muslim friend and it seems first they don’t believe in the need for a sacrifice, but believe the more good they do the better chances of going to heaven, or at least minimizing their time in hell. Seems they view hell as a sort of a purgatory… but the infidels or Christians will be there in hell for eternity.

My friend believes Love comes out of Justice. I tried to explain in my brief understanding that God IS… Love, and that justice comes out of love, not vice versa.

How can I explain there are two places, heaven and hell, and that we cannot get out of hell… and how God’s love and Justice demands hell.

Thank you and God Bless You,
Brian

I can’t think of a better explanation than the fact that He made us in His image …

 

[GodHeals]

Ever given any thought to God’s Justice and God’s Mercy as being so intertwined as to be One, justice without mercy can be nothing more than revenge

Something else to think about, from the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them”, if you notice there is no * after them even tho there are many who seem to think that Jesus meant just “some of them”, the them in Jesus’s statement is ALL OF US since it was all of us who Jesus went to the cross for.

That is interesting… justice without mercy is revenge. So mercy is similar to love then, right? God doesn’t have unrighteous anger or revenge, that is His punishments are just and righteous. I just don’t understand how to communicate my original question that God’s love and justice demands hell to my Muslim friend.

What does the * mean?

 

[Tom_Baum]

That is interesting… justice without mercy is revenge. So mercy is similar to love then, right? God doesn’t have unrighteous anger or revenge, that is His punishments are just and righteous. I just don’t understand how to communicate my original question that God’s love and justice demands hell to my Muslim friend.

What does the * mean?

The way I would put it is that we are asked to “repent”, repenting to me is taking responsibility for our use of our free will, when we repent, we are forgiven, it is that simple, as a matter of fact, it is so simple that many can not believe that it is so.

God, in His Omniscience, knew that not all would repent this side of death, therefore God came up with a Plan even before creation and God’s Plan, which includes the Incarnation and everything involved with this event, is for ALL, ultimately, to be with God in God’s Kingdom.

What I meant by the * (asterick) is that the word them means quite simply them, all of them, and that Jesus was also speaking to us so that the them in “Father forgive them” is speaking of all humanity.

Astericks are sometimes put in to show that whatever word it is placed by might not mean what it appears to mean, this is why I mentioned that there is no * (asterick) after them.

Jesus also said from the cross, “It is finished”, which translates as PAID IN FULL, He paid the price (the ransom as the bible puts it) for EVERYONE’S SINS OF ALL TIME.

This “price” that He paid included Him going to all of the hells of all since if one were to wake up in hell, they will come to the realization that they built it themself and have no one but themself to blame.

Jesus went to both hell and spiritual death and won the “keys” to both (the netherworld) and will use these keys in due time, God’s Time to accomplish what is written, “the captives shall be freed and the dead shall rise”.

 

[Qoeleth]

Hi,

I was debating my Muslim friend and it seems first they don’t believe in the need for a sacrifice, but believe the more good they do the better chances of going to heaven, or at least minimizing their time in hell. Seems they view hell as a sort of a purgatory… but the infidels or Christians will be there in hell for eternity.

My friend believes Love comes out of Justice. I tried to explain in my brief understanding that God IS… Love, and that justice comes out of love, not vice versa.

How can I explain there are two places, heaven and hell, and that we cannot get out of hell… and how God’s love and Justice demands hell.

Thank you and God Bless You,
Brian

You might respectfully quote to your friend the Koran (2:62):
“VERILY, those who have attained to faith, as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the CHRISTIANS, and the Sabians -all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds-shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.”

 

[GodHeals]

You might respectfully quote to your friend the Koran (2:62):
“VERILY, those who have attained to faith, as well as those who follow the Jewish faith, and the CHRISTIANS, and the Sabians -all who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds-shall have their reward with their Sustainer; and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.”

Thank you for the quote… interesting… i thought somewhere else in the Quran that it also said that Christians will go to hell though. i need to find that verse though. Seems contradictory.

 

[GodHeals]

The way I would put it is that we are asked to “repent”, repenting to me is taking responsibility for our use of our free will, when we repent, we are forgiven, it is that simple, as a matter of fact, it is so simple that many can not believe that it is so.

God, in His Omniscience, knew that not all would repent this side of death, therefore God came up with a Plan even before creation and God’s Plan, which includes the Incarnation and everything involved with this event, is for ALL, ultimately, to be with God in God’s Kingdom.

What I meant by the * (asterick) is that the word them means quite simply them, all of them, and that Jesus was also speaking to us so that the them in “Father forgive them” is speaking of all humanity.

Astericks are sometimes put in to show that whatever word it is placed by might not mean what it appears to mean, this is why I mentioned that there is no * (asterick) after them.

Jesus also said from the cross, “It is finished”, which translates as PAID IN FULL, He paid the price (the ransom as the bible puts it) for EVERYONE’S SINS OF ALL TIME.

This “price” that He paid included Him going to all of the hells of all since if one were to wake up in hell, they will come to the realization that they built it themself and have no one but themself to blame.

Jesus went to both hell and spiritual death and won the “keys” to both (the netherworld) and will use these keys in due time, God’s Time to accomplish what is written, “the captives shall be freed and the dead shall rise”.

Thank you for sharing… I am not familiar with the use of the word, netherworld. I also didn’t know there is a difference between hell and spiritual death. I am not sure what it means that Jesus went into hell. I thought he went into Abraham’s bosom or similar to set those free to heaven who were waiting on Him, or a sort of purgatorial place, since purgatory is a not a place but a state, or so i’ve heard.

i still am trying to help my friend see the need for hell, justice for God, and the roles of love and justice. Thanks!

 

[DanielJT]

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. . . .
. . .
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
**Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. **We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
(IV.i.179–197)

I read your post and this came to my mind. I do not know if it would help you at all since it is Shakespeare and not The Bible, but maybe it can help you order your thoughts a little.

It is from The Merchant of Venice. I bolded the part that speaks to justice, but the whole quote basically puts the value of Mercy over Justice. God is truly Just, but if His Love was only and striclty Just, would any of us make it to heaven? God’s Mercy is required. And His love is big enough to contain both.

 

[ffg]

Interesting OP.

I suppose my step 1 would be to get a confirmation from my friend that we can’t blame God for sin.

If he agrees, I suppose we would want to agree sin is a rejection of God.

If he agrees, I suppose the next confirmation would be around who is in heaven, if only pure folks reside there.

If he agrees, we would move toward confirming humans are not perfect, or pure as beings in and of themselves (sinners). So how does a human attain purity? Then discusss how this is not possible through a sinners own power.

So then if we agree humans are in Heaven, and those humans are now pure because they would have to be, if in Heaven, the only way for them to get to a pure state is through the help of God somehow. We can sum this up as ‘mercy’.

So if God is not responsible for sin, but is responsible for ‘mercy’ to allow for purity of an impure Human…

God is responsible for a human’s residence in Heaven.

Then who is responsible for residence in Hell? Logically, the sinner who continues to reject God (the human).

Thus the human is responsible for residence in Hell.

I suppose if I was able to walk through a similar conversation as above, my next question to my friend would be ‘did you notice we didn’t have to touch upon ‘Justice’ in the sense like God is doing something to the judged?’

Then I suppose, I would walk down a path back to the Love of God. If it is his desire to have us in Heaven and must use something called ‘mercy’ to get us there. Perhaps this ‘mercy’ thing is an example we should be sharing on earth.

 

[Michael19682]

I’ve heard it said but don’t know that Jesus is mentioned, possibly speaks, in the Qu’ran. If you friend is charitable at all, he should see the common person as at least some justification for our faith. That said,

Charity, or rather a lack of charity, gives some understanding of the existence of hell (if it is true according to common notions). Really, since God’s charity is inifinite, we would expect that anyone who at any time showed any charity toward any man or beast, or had any love in his soul, would not go to hell. I know the Church teaches that you don’t go there unless you want to.

1. it preserves free choice; otherwise earth is a joke because you can’t go wrong no matter what.
2. it looks like a very mature part of an ongoing revelatory process because as we begin to have a wrold in which different philosophies and religions come together, free choice can be seen to represent the Chirstians advantage in a world destined to discuss these ideas. He can brag of it (his ultimate freedom); but has to be careful personally, lest in bragging and truncating his own charity to zero digits, he winds up in the place he loathes.

I would begin with charity and love towards your friend. explain that you don’t think he is going to hell, but that possibly someone might want to, or be so miscreant that with no love in that persons soul, they get pulled there like in a vortex.