The Fear of Hell

[oldcelt]

and just who are you thanking when you say “thankfully”

The initial creator, the first cause of the universe, whatever you’d like to call it. Not a predestining, controlling entity.

 

[Magdalena59]

The initial creator, the first cause of the universe, whatever you’d like to call it. Not a predestining, controlling entity.

So you are giving thanks to an event that happened a long time ago? Okay.

 

[Bahman]

So you limit God to your thoughts.

God Bless

Well, God should be definable for any intelligible beings otherwise the act creation is against divine justice!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Well, God should be definable for any intelligible beings otherwise the act creation is against divine justice!

Would you be an authority on divine justice?

God is definable. The evangelist John said, “God is love.”

But wouldn’t you first have to meet him up close and personal to go there?

 

[Bahman]

Would you be an authority on divine justice?

God is definable. The evangelist John said, “God is love.”

But wouldn’t you first have to meet him up close and personal to go there?

Hence John was wrong. God was consciousness. It is absence of presence now.

 

[onenow1]

Well, God should be definable for any intelligible beings otherwise the act creation is against divine justice!

God is definable, His thoughts are not our thoughts, if they were we would be gods.

Job 38
1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2 "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
4 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Above: Don’t you think God is having a little fun with Job.

God Bless

 

[oldcelt]

God is definable, His thoughts are not our thoughts, if they were we would be gods.

Job 38
1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2 "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
4 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Above: Don’t you think God is having a little fun with Job.

God Bless

No, I think the story of Job shows the pettiness and cruelty of the Christian God. He is willing to sacrifice one of his most faithful, essentially to win a bet with his greatest enemy. A god such as this,is certainly not worthy of any praise. He is an enemy god.

 

[BarbTh]

"Imagine several prisoners who have been chained up in a cave for all of their lives. They have never been outside the cave. They face a wall in the cave and they can never look at the entrance of the cave. Sometimes animals, birds, people, or other objects pass by the entrance of the cave casting a shadow on the wall inside the cave. The prisoners see the shadows on the wall and mistakenly view the shadows as reality.

However, one man breaks free from his chains and runs out of the cave. For the first time, he sees the real world and now knows that it is far beyond the shadows he had been seeing. He sees real birds and animals, not just shadows of birds and animals.

This man is excited about what he sees and he goes back to his fellow prisoners in the cave to tell them about the real world. But to his astonishment, they don’t believe him. In fact, they are angry with him. They say the shadows are reality and that the escaped prisoner is crazy for saying otherwise."

There is possibly another analogy in the above. besides that attributed to Plato… God is The Absolute Other - totally and absolutely different to our human nature. We can only know and reflect upon what our human nature presents to us and this might have some relation to He Who Is (God) but it can only be a very pale relationship and reflection - never the reality itself as long as we are “prisoners in a cave” or alive and on earth in our fallible and faulted human nature. God is Ultimate Reality.

The prisoner who escapes to return to tell his fellows in the cave about reality itself could be likened to Jesus who Incarnated to tell us about God and the road to Him. Very often, Jesus is not believed either just like the escaped prisoner.

Oldcelt posted :No, I think the story of Job shows the pettiness and cruelty of the Christian God. He is willing to sacrifice one of his most faithful, essentially to win a bet with his greatest enemy. A god such as this,is certainly not worthy of any praise. He is an enemy god.

The above is certainly a perspective on the story of Job and as such is valid. My perspective is that God knew that Job would persevere in Faith no matter what Satan did. It was not about making a bet with Satan - God knew the answer - it was God setting out to prove to Satan and in Satan’s terms that Job’s Faith was greater and stronger than the wiles of Satan. Furthermore, it was a statement to all of us that our Faith can be stronger than anything Satan can get up to and to therefore persevere in life. Job became God’s witness to the strength of Faith for all generations.

Life on earth is not free of pain, rather pain is intrinsic to life and through the Suffering and Death of Jesus we understand that suffering can indeed be redemptive and not at all necessarily a negative in life. Rather regularly in life, suffering just remains suffering. It can be a question of knowing how to work through suffering and with a positive attitude. Many indeed of our saints tell us that they have born suffering and the cross Joyfully - their stories are well worth reading and reflecting upon. How did they arrive at suffering with Peace and with Joy?

Why didn’t God eliminate suffering from this life? That is a type of shadow in our cave upon which man continually reflects knowing he is reflecting on mystery. God is Mystery. The Ultimate Mystery. We do know that we cannot eliminate suffering totally from this earthly life, but we can indeed learn much by reflecting about it.

rcspirituality.org/ask-priest-god-allow-much-pain-suffering/

Seeing suffering in others, especially the smallest and weakest, should prompt us to action. We can offer our prayers and material support. We can also help a person to see his suffering through supernatural eyes. Illness, says the Catechism in No. 1051, “can also make a person more mature, helping him discern in his life what is not essential so that he can turn toward that which is.” (For further reading, consider Making Sense Out of Suffering, by Peter Kreeft.)

CCC #309 "“If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.”

Suffering is the anvil on which we can be forged into more-compassionate people. Suffering can make us more humane and more sympathetic to others. In the process we discover our own capacity for love. A silver lining in a dark cloud, if ever there was one.

 

[oldcelt]

There is possibly another analogy in the above. besides that attributed to Plato… God is The Absolute Other - totally and absolutely different to our human nature. We can only know and reflect upon what our human nature presents to us and this might have some relation to He Who Is (God) but it can only be a very pale relationship and reflection - never the reality itself as long as we are “prisoners in a cave” or alive and on earth in our fallible and faulted human nature. God is Ultimate Reality.

The prisoner who escapes to return to tell his fellows in the cave about reality itself could be likened to Jesus who Incarnated to tell us about God and the road to Him. Very often, Jesus is not believed either just like the escaped prisoner.

The above is certainly a perspective on the story of Job and as such is valid. My perspective is that God knew that Job would persevere in Faith no matter what Satan did. It was not about making a bet with Satan - God knew the answer - it was God setting out to prove to Satan and in Satan’s terms that Job’s Faith was greater and stronger than the wiles of Satan. Furthermore, it was a statement to all of us that our Faith can be stronger than anything Satan can get up to and to therefore persevere in life. Job became God’s witness to the strength of Faith for all generations.

Life on earth is not free of pain, rather pain is intrinsic to life and through the Suffering and Death of Jesus we understand that suffering can indeed be redemptive and not at all necessarily a negative in life. Rather regularly in life, suffering just remains suffering. It can be a question of knowing how to work through suffering and with a positive attitude. Many indeed of our saints tell us that they have born suffering and the cross Joyfully - their stories are well worth reading and reflecting upon. How did they arrive at suffering with Peace and with Joy?

Why didn’t God eliminate suffering from this life? That is a type of shadow in our cave upon which man continually reflects knowing he is reflecting on mystery. God is Mystery. The Ultimate Mystery. We do know that we cannot eliminate suffering totally from this earthly life, but we can indeed learn much by reflecting about it.

Again, mystery is no answer at all. Most likely, we are on our own and evil is in the nature of some humans. They must be contained.

 

[BarbTh]

Again, mystery is no answer at all. Most likely, we are on our own and evil is in the nature of some humans. They must be contained.

We are literally often surrounded by natural mysteries in life. Mystery means there is something we cannot understand - we may come to understanding in the future or whatever may remain mystery. Some of what we feel we can understand is only theory, not proven fact.
Some of the big mysteries we cannot (as yet?) understand in life news.com.au/technology/science/the-worlds-biggest-mysteries-scientists-still-cant-solve/story-fnjwl1aw-1227045377722

Before I am able to respond to the second part of your statement, I need a definition please. What do you precisely mean by “evil” in some human beings and what do you mean by “contained”?

 

[GuyNextDoor]

Again, mystery is no answer at all.

So is human being a mystery to a fish. Humans can do things that defy every logic in the realm of fish who live in water.

“What? Humans walking on two limbs, that’s impossible!”…“What? Humans do not have gills to breathe, that’s crazy! That defies everything we know to be true.”…“Humans fly to outer space?? I don’t even know what is that. That’s nonsense!”

The issue with many people is they try to get too intellectual for their own good and often try to equate their intellectual capabilities with God’s. They cannot seem to accept the Church’s position on certain areas as mysteries. I was one of such people and it had cost me greatly. They demand that they must have all the answers from the Church… else the Church is false.

They ended up going anywhere and everywhere to seek information pertaining to their questions, then they reasoned within themselves just to have all the pieces of the puzzle ‘fit’ somehow and most of the time, using science or philosophy as the tool. They forgot again that information is not knowledge and knowledge is not at all wisdom. All they did was stray away from the Truth.

If there is a God, then God is above nature, the laws of nature, science, and philosophy. There is no way of measuring God or His ways, especially with the limitations of human intelligence.

When the Church announces something to be a mystery, it is a mystery. There will be no reasoning, philosophy or science that man can concoct up to explain a mystery. The Church does not declare something to be a mystery lightly without the Holy Father, their doctors and philosophers agreeing on it. Why do we need to carry the extra burden on ourselves and choose to reason within ourselves, using secular information and ended up somewhere else far away from the Truth? Christ told us specifically to carry only His yoke and His yoke is light. Its really up to people to choose that yoke or the chains of the secular world.

Note: Post inspired by Vericast’s podcast
Defending the Pillars of Faith by Tim Haines

 

[BarbTh]

edited post… Most likely, we are on our own

Since you state “most likely” it is something that you cannot assert as true, there is some doubt somewhere or you would assert it as truth with some proof at hand. It is your theory only. There is something somewhere you cannot understand and prove i.e. mystery.

 

[oldcelt]

So is human being a mystery to a fish. Humans can do things that defy every logic in the realm of fish who live in water.

“What? Humans walking on two limbs, that’s impossible!”…“What? Humans do not have gills to breathe, that’s crazy! That defies everything we know to be true.”…“Humans fly to outer space?? I don’t even know what is that. That’s nonsense!”

The issue with many people is they try to get too intellectual for their own good and often try to equate their intellectual capabilities with God’s. They cannot seem to accept the Church’s position on certain areas as mysteries. I was one of such people and it had cost me greatly. They demand that they must have all the answers from the Church… else the Church is false.

They ended up going anywhere and everywhere to seek information pertaining to their questions, then they reasoned within themselves just to have all the pieces of the puzzle ‘fit’ somehow and most of the time, using science or philosophy as the tool. They forgot again that information is not knowledge and knowledge is not at all wisdom. All they did was stray away from the Truth.

If there is a God, then God is above nature, the laws of nature, science, and philosophy. There is no way of measuring God or His ways, especially with the limitations of human intelligence.

When the Church announces something to be a mystery, it is a mystery. There will be no reasoning, philosophy or science that man can concoct up to explain a mystery. The Church does not declare something to be a mystery lightly without the Holy Father, their doctors and philosophers agreeing on it. Why do we need to carry the extra burden on ourselves and choose to reason within ourselves, using secular information and ended up somewhere else far away from the Truth? Christ told us specifically to carry only His yoke and His yoke is light. Its really up to people to choose that yoke or the chains of the secular world.

I’m not one to accept another human being telling me that something is a mystery when I can see a simple answer to the problem. Declaring something a mystery is basically saying that a person should believe a doctrine because they say so. These questions are too important to allow for such statements to stand unchallenged.

John

 

[oldcelt]

oldcelt;12749612:

edited post… Most likely, we are on our own QUOTE]

Since you state “most likely” it is something that you cannot assert as true, there is some doubt somewhere or you would assert it as truth with some proof at hand. It is your theory only. There is something somewhere you cannot understand and prove i.e. mystery.

Exactly, but I do not declare my beliefs to be infallible doctrine. Big difference.

 

[oldcelt]

We are literally often surrounded by natural mysteries in life. Mystery means there is something we cannot understand - we may come to understanding in the future or whatever may remain mystery. Some of what we feel we can understand is only theory, not proven fact.
Some of the big mysteries we cannot (as yet?) understand in life news.com.au/technology/science/the-worlds-biggest-mysteries-scientists-still-cant-solve/story-fnjwl1aw-1227045377722

Before I am able to respond to the second part of your statement, I need a definition please. What do you precisely mean by “evil” in some human beings and what do you mean by “contained”?

Evil is a break in the social mores of a particular people. They vary greatly through time and place. What was okay to a Viking would be considered to be evil by most today.

 

[BarbTh]

The problem might be a question of “chalk and cheese”.
One is coming from religious Faith, the other coming from no religious Faith or a completely different religious Faith and beliefs.

But Truth cannot contradict itself and so one has to be right and the other wrong.

( It could be compared to one only understanding Latin, the other only understanding Greek…or similar)

 

[BarbTh]

Evil is a break in the social mores of a particular people. They vary greatly through time and place. What was okay to a Viking would be considered to be evil by most today.

Thank you - we can now come from the same place or definition of “evil”.

And what do you mean by “they must be contained”?

 

[BarbTh]

BarbTh;12749729:

Exactly, but I do not declare my beliefs to be infallible doctrine. Big difference.

It is a difference in religious beliefs or the doctrines of one’s faith. “Chalk and cheese”. As a Catholic, I can claim the words of 2,000 year old approximately texts to support my belief that issues of Faith and Morals in The Catholic Church are infallible.

How do you support your doctrines?

 

[Magdalena59]

No, I think the story of Job shows the pettiness and cruelty of the Christian God. He is willing to sacrifice one of his most faithful, essentially to win a bet with his greatest enemy. A god such as this,is certainly not worthy of any praise. He is an enemy god.

It sounds more to me that you are NOT someone who doesn’t believe in God but are someone who DOES believe in God but you are angry at Him for some reason. Reading some of your past posts they do not seem to show an argument of why you believe there isn’t a God but more that you think God is mean, which shows that you have a misunderstanding of who God is and do not understand God’s love.

I hope and pray you continue reading and learning and draw closer to Him.

 

[oldcelt]

oldcelt;12749738:

It is a difference in religious beliefs or the doctrines of one’s faith. “Chalk and cheese”. As a Catholic, I can claim the words of 2,000 year old approximately texts to support my belief that issues of Faith and Morals in The Catholic Church are infallible.

How do you support your doctrines?

With logic and reason, and remember, the are religions on earth that precede Catholicism. So, the texts of writers who are attempting to prove their beliefs are of little use to those of us who do not share their basic concept of god.
The Church claiming infallibility on faith and morals is quite suspect, given its own history. Plus…when did they get the memo that they are infallible? Or did they reason it out based on their existing belief structure?