Why are we judged on such a brief flicker of time?

[Neoplatonist]

You’re thinking of eternity as if it were infinitely prolonged time. But it isn’t. It’s something else entirely.

This is all the time we have. It isn’t a tiny sliver of our total time. It’s our time, period.

Edwin

You may be right. A great point. However, in that case, any discussion of it becomes moot and most of the theological tradition pretending we can make any sense of any of the metaphysics should be tossed in the fireplace with another brick of peat.

If, on the other hand, we want to try to grasp it to the extent possible with our intellect, as surely we ought, we must try to make sense of it as being at least analogous to the models of time and existence that we understand.

 

[JaredR]

To be a stickler, we may say that 70 years is like a blink compared to eternity, but that is true of any amount of time. In fact, even if you add 7 trillion years to a human lifespan it will remain a blink compared to eternity.

I do believe the time we have is sufficient, whether it is short or long, as Eric said. I would also add that humans were meant to have much longer lifespans, but disease and faster aging are commonly believed to be effects of the fall, in which case it is Adam’s fault we don’t have more time.

 

[Jon_S_1]

You’re thinking of eternity as if it were infinitely prolonged time. But it isn’t. It’s something else entirely.

This is all the time we have. It isn’t a tiny sliver of our total time. It’s our time, period.

Edwin

And the dialogue steps up a level again!

So true, intriguing and well said!

 

[Jon_S_1]

You may be right. A great point. However, in that case, any discussion of it becomes moot and most of the theological tradition pretending we can make any sense of any of the metaphysics should be tossed in the fireplace with another brick of peat.

If, on the other hand, we want to try to grasp it to the extent possible with our intellect, as surely we ought, we must try to make sense of it as being at least analogous to the models of time and existence that we understand.

The thing is Catholicism teaches about living here and now. About obeying the natural law given here and now.

All talk about the afterlife and eternity are very speculative and the Bible is rather silent on it.

Jesus taught about what to do here, he taught to do justice and have mercy and be humble and love as he loves.

He didn’t institute a plan of do xyz to get to heaven. Instead he taught us how to love God and how to pursue righteousness out of that love for God.

 

[Neoplatonist]

1.This idea that time goes off the rails is probably a whole different thread, but certainly different than the language I’ve ever heard used in Church or in the Catechism (maybe I haven’t seen the right part lately). Can anyone point me to a source that says “eternity” and “forever and ever” and “from the beginning of time” are supposed to be understood differently? I don’t get how we could pretend to talk about any of this in such a case, and the source might address that.

2.“sufficient” Sufficient for what? Sufficient for God to decide if we love him or not? That’s your conception of the most brilliant, beautiful world that could have been created by the most brilliant, beautiful mind? That he makes a bunch of puppies just for the sake of testing them to see which ones will love him and which ones won’t and then sending the ones who don’t off to some horrible kennel with poor food, intestinal parasites, and harsh living conditions forever (whatever that means)?

I say puppies because we are so far below him, but capable of intelligence and emotion in our own way. We are ‘in his image’, but we are not the same species, etc, so it is not quite the same as using the example of a father and children.

Is God so shallow that he needs to create adoring puppies to love him? How is the system he created good for them? All of them? I get how his loving goodness would flow out into the creation of other minds capable of loving goodness. Even we are more humane than to let a puppy suffer agonizing torment for a thousand years.

 

[ericc]

Please do not confuse my problem with eternal suffering as being a problem with allowing any suffering. By all means let there be consequences, but consequences that will improve the learning or increase it. (I sincerely hope God is a better teacher than our pathetically dysfunctional prison system.) And then give them a chance to benefit from the improvement to their learning and motivation. How does it benefit God OR people to a have a system where they go to a horrible stalag-prison forever after? What kind of parent would choose a system like that for their children, or think such a system was the only way for their children to exercise true freedom or responsibility??

Ah ha! So you are not a supporter of eternal suffering then. Then would you be a supporter of eternal happiness then? If you do, then it seems there is something patently unfair about the system, don’t you think so? Hell or suffering, temporary. Heaven, permanent. Those that chose hell, also got to go to heaven if they change their mind when they are in hell. May be that’s a system that you would design to match your sense of justice. If we were to go by your system, all fallen angels would be back up in heaven. The world will have no devils. Hurray!

Unfortunately, that is not how God plans it. Demons who were once upon a time angels, remained demons. Whatever it is, your creator says you can choose eternity hell or heaven. Now while you have the chance. No u-turn when you get there. But before you get there, you can u-turn. Your choice. And like everything else in this world, time is a commodity, 24 hrs a day. You choose how to use it. You don’t know when God will stop the stop clock, although one can stop the clock if one chooses. Heard of suicide? Suicide is in the same category of “Your will be done” rather than “God’s will be done.”.

Sorry I didn’t complete the analogy. What I meant was a vision of Hell or a feeling of the suffering that our evil acts cause that is as vivid as some of those other experiences have been described to be.

“Deserve to be punished.” No. What the hell is the point of that? For us or God to vent out our anger at what was done? If a child cuts themselves using bad knife safety, do they “deserve” to be beaten with a stick? What if they hurt another child because they were being unsafe with a knife, then should we beat them with a stick? That mentality is barbaric. What they “deserve” is to have someone teach them.

Who said anyone should be allowed to graduate without passing the test? I certainly didn’t. If they fail the exam, let them go work at some horrible job for a while AND have the opportunity to compare and contrast their lives and work with people who DID study and DID pass the exam, then give them a chance to study and re-test. How would that be so horrible?

 

[Neoplatonist]

Honestly, no, I don’t know what it means to say the angels and souls in Heaven “love” God if they are no longer free to choose, so I don’t think I would say the decision should be made once and forever in either case.

It is worth considering, though, if we consider not a choice of good or evil as if they were positive, but rather as a good and a privation, so we can use the analogy of knowledge and ignorance. Once a student has learned calculus or the rules of grammar at a certain level, could they somehow slip back down to a lower level? Sure. At least in our experience, things get rusty and forgotten if you don’t use it, and we fall into bad habits and poor style choices that override the rules we learned. Would they be likely to? It could happen (the fallen angels, obviously a rare occurrence).

You’re right, it would be hard to make sense of angels being screwed forever and remaining demons in my model. Have to consider that. Seems heartless in many of the same ways as the problem I have with humans being screwed forever.

 

[Jon_S_1]

1.This idea that time goes off the rails is probably a whole different thread, but certainly different than the language I’ve ever heard used in Church or in the Catechism (maybe I haven’t seen the right part lately). Can anyone point me to a source that says “eternity” and “forever and ever” and “from the beginning of time” are supposed to be understood differently? I don’t get how we could pretend to talk about any of this in such a case, and the source might address that.

2.“sufficient” Sufficient for what? Sufficient for God to decide if we love him or not? That’s your conception of the most brilliant, beautiful world that could have been created by the most brilliant, beautiful mind? That he makes a bunch of puppies just for the sake of testing them to see which ones will love him and which ones won’t and then sending the ones who don’t off to some horrible kennel with poor food, intestinal parasites, and harsh living conditions forever (whatever that means)?

I say puppies because we are so far below him, but capable of intelligence and emotion in our own way. We are ‘in his image’, but we are not the same species, etc, so it is not quite the same as using the example of a father and children.

Is God so shallow that he needs to create adoring puppies to love him? How is the system he created good for them? All of them? I get how his loving goodness would flow out into the creation of other minds capable of loving goodness. Even we are more humane than to let a puppy suffer agonizing torment for a thousand years.

Here are a couple quotes on the time issue :

"The transforming ‘moment’ of this encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of ‘short’ or ‘long’ duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The ‘temporal measure’ of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. To measure such Existenzzeit, such an ‘existential time,’ in terms of the time of this world would be to ignore the specificity of the human spirit in its simultaneous relationship with, and differentation from, the world.
. . .
"[Purgatory] is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints.
. . .
“Encounter with the Lord is this transformation.”…

–Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, p. 230-231

CCC 1028 Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”:

 

[Jon_S_1]

You may want to read the full series of General audiences of Pope John Paul II here: ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2heavn.htm

1. When the form of this world has passed away, those who have welcomed God into their lives and have sincerely opened themselves to his love, at least at the moment of death, will enjoy that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "this perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed is called “heaven’. Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfilment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness” (n.1024).

Today we will try to understand the biblical meaning of “heaven”, in order to have a better understanding of the reality to which this expression refers.

1. In biblical language “heaven”", when it is joined to the “earth”, indicates part of the universe. Scripture says about creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gn 1:1).

Heaven is the transcendent dwelling-place of the living God

Metaphorically speaking, heaven is understood as the dwelling-place of God, who is thus distinguished from human beings (cf. Ps 104:2f.; 115:16; Is 66:1). He sees and judges from the heights of heaven (cf. Ps 113:4-9) and comes down when he is called upon (cf. Ps 18:9, 10; 144:5). However the biblical metaphor makes it clear that God does not identify himself with heaven, nor can he be contained in it (cf. 1 Kgs 8:27); and this is true, even though in some passages of the First Book of the Maccabees “Heaven” is simply one of God’s names (1 Mc 3:18, 19, 50, 60; 4:24, 55).

The depiction of heaven as the transcendent dwelling-place of the living God is joined with that of the place to which believers, through grace, can also ascend, as we see in the Old Testament accounts of Enoch (cf. Gn 5:24) and Elijah (cf. 2 Kgs 2:11). Thus heaven becomes an image of life in God. In this sense Jesus speaks of a “reward in heaven” (Mt 5:12) and urges people to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (ibid., 6:20; cf. 19:21).

1. The New Testament amplifies the idea of heaven in relation to the mystery of Christ. To show that the Redeemer’s sacrifice acquires perfect and definitive value, the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “passed through the heavens” (Heb 4:14), and “entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself” (ibid., 9:24). Since believers are loved in a special way by the Father, they are raised with Christ and made citizens of heaven. It is worthwhile listening to what the Apostle Paul tells us about this in a very powerful text: “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-7). The fatherhood of God, who is rich in mercy, is experienced by creatures through the love of God’s crucified and risen Son, who sits in heaven on the right hand of the Father as Lord.
2. After the course of our earthly life, participation in complete intimacy with the Father thus comes through our insertion into Christ’s paschal mystery. St Paul emphasizes our meeting with Christ in heaven at the end of time with a vivid spatial image: “Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thes 4:17-18).

Sacramental life is anticipation of heaven

In the context of Revelation, we know that the “heaven” or “happiness” in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.

It is always necessary to maintain a certain restraint in describing these “ultimate realities” since their depiction is always unsatisfactory. Today, personalist language is better suited to describing the state of happiness and peace we will enjoy in our definitive communion with God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up the Church’s teaching on this truth: "By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has “opened’ heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ” (n. 1026).

1. This final state, however, can be anticipated in some way today in sacramental life, whose centre is the Eucharist, and in the gift of self through fraternal charity. If we are able to enjoy properly the good things that the Lord showers upon us every day, we will already have begun to experience that joy and peace which one day will be completely ours. We know that on this earth everything is subject to limits, but the thought of the “ultimate” realities helps us to live better the “penultimate” realities. We know that as we pass through this world we are called to seek “the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col 3:1), in order to be with him in the eschatological fulfilment, when the Spirit will fully reconcile with the Father “all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Col 1:20).

 

[Jon_S_1]

I also HIGHLY recommend you read Pope Benedict XVI brilliant work on eternity entitled Spe Salvi

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

1. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God’s judgement according to each person’s particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images—simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through “fire” so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast.
2. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ[39]. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice—the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together—judgement and grace—that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our “advocate”, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).

 

[Neoplatonist]

Thanks a bunch for the time stuff. That’s helpful, though, as even he admits, we should tread lightly in talking about any of it once we consider that fact (though, of course, like a true academic, he then proceeds to talk a whole bunch about it all!)

Of course, there is a whole stack of stuff that would take at least this much text to unpack, like “the specificity of the human person in relation with and distinction from the world” and “our insertion into the Paschal mystery.” Ug.

 

[ericc]

Please do not confuse my problem with eternal suffering as being a problem with allowing any suffering. By all means let there be consequences, but consequences that will improve the learning or increase it. (I sincerely hope God is a better teacher than our pathetically dysfunctional prison system.) And then give them a chance to benefit from the improvement to their learning and motivation. How does it benefit God OR people to a have a system where they go to a horrible stalag-prison forever after? What kind of parent would choose a system like that for their children, or think such a system was the only way for their children to exercise true freedom or responsibility??

Ah ha! So you are not a supporter of eternal suffering then. Then would you be a supporter of eternal happiness then? If you do, then it seems there is something patently unfair about the system, don’t you think so? Hell or suffering, temporary. Heaven, permanent. Those that chose hell, also got to go to heaven if they change their mind when they are in hell. May be that’s a system that you would design to match your sense of justice. If we were to go by your system, all fallen angels would be back up in heaven. The world will have no devils. Hurray!

Unfortunately, that is not how God plans it. Demons who were once upon a time angels, remained demons. Whatever it is, your creator says you can choose eternity hell or heaven. Now while you have the chance. No u-turn when you get there. But before you get there, you can u-turn. Your choice. And like everything else in this world, time is a commodity, 24 hrs a day. You choose how to use it. You don’t know when God will stop the stop clock, although one can stop the clock if one chooses. Heard of suicide? Suicide is in the same category of “Your will be done” rather than “God’s will be
done.”.

Sorry I didn’t complete the analogy. What I meant was a vision of Hell or a feeling of the suffering that our evil acts cause that is as vivid as some of those other experiences have been described to be.

It is the same. You are compelling that person to believe in the presence of God or Satan either way. You don’t need faith if you are shown all these. Some people still do evil because they choose to despite knowing the consequences. The Christian religion requires faith.

“Deserve to be punished.” No. What the hell is the point of that? For us or God to vent out our anger at what was done? If a child cuts themselves using bad knife safety, do they “deserve” to be beaten with a stick? What if they hurt another child because they were being unsafe with a knife, then should we beat them with a stick? That mentality is barbaric. What they “deserve” is to have someone teach them.

Judas was taught 3 years by Jesus himself. He knows what he did. He is not a child. So if Judas gets punished , isn’t that fair? If you sin against eternal God, the sin is eternal until repented and forgiven. Well, you can’t repent when you are dead. Children has no ability to sin because they do not know. At some age, we would know and the lock/score card starts ticking. Really, you are painting us as children as if we do not know what we are doing. You know when you sin. You know you shouldn’t yet you still do. When God deems people are over the limit such as in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he stops the clock on them when repentance is not in the pipeline.

Who said anyone should be allowed to graduate without passing the test? I certainly didn’t. If they fail the exam, let them go work at some horrible job for a while AND have the opportunity to compare and contrast their lives and work with people who DID study and DID pass the exam, then give them a chance to study and re-test. How would that be so horrible?

That is what people that promote reincarnation wishes. The chance to redo their evil again and again while holding a “get out of jail” card so that at some point in time, they can get off the wagon and rejoin those on the “Good” side. Next time I’ll be good. That’s what lots of people that sin promise themselves. Unfortunately, with each successive sin, it gets harder and harder to refuse temptation. It sure is sweet the fruits of sin. That’s what the devil precisely hope those guys actually fall for it. What they didn’t know or didn’t want to know that God doesn’t do reruns.

 

[Neoplatonist]

I guess it sounds weird to you, but no, I don’t see how Judas “deserved” to be punished. I think he was like an exceptional learner who failed to grasp the point(s) Jesus tried to get across. Why would we beat a child for being a difficult learner? Anyone who saw the beautiful would desire it, so if he failed to see the beautiful, was that somehow his fault? Why is that different than someone who fails to “see” the errors in their writing? Love urges help, correction, teaching - sometimes through the experience of undesirable natural consequences of the failure, but never by beating the student with a ruler.

What kind of weird teacher or parent never lets anyone see actual consequences, but just threatens you with them until one day, boom, you’re gone from the school and never heard from again?

Your view of human wrongdoing sounds a little harsh. Do you honestly think someone believes x is beautiful and chooses not-x unless there is some other desirable thing they think is more beautiful than x? Now they can be wrong, admittedly. How is that different than the student who incorrectly grasps the relationship of > and < when dealing with negative numbers or with mixed numbers? Their valuation is incorrect, and should be corrected. How can you claim to love them and not think that would be preferable?

Do you honestly think there is a possible act that could be committed that could not be redeemed by some conceivable experience in purgatory? If you had to feel what the victims of your actions had felt, would that not change their hearts? What if they then experienced the way a saints heart would feel, so they could experience the contrast for themselves? Would this not be like helping the child to see with blocks how one number really is taller than the other number? Making the child do some remedial work or breaking down and rebuilding is far different in goals and motives than ‘punishment.’

 

[Jon_S_1]

Thanks a bunch for the time stuff. That’s helpful, though, as even he admits, we should tread lightly in talking about any of it once we consider that fact (though, of course, like a true academic, he then proceeds to talk a whole bunch about it all!)

Of course, there is a whole stack of stuff that would take at least this much text to unpack, like “the specificity of the human person in relation with and distinction from the world” and “our insertion into the Paschal mystery.” Ug.

As much fun as it is to try and discern everything and theorize. I think there is a reason it is left to mystery.

God wants us to do something here. Now. He wants us to “love mercy and act justly and walk humbly with [our] God”. Micah 6:8 paraphrase.

Sometimes we let ourselves get in the way if living life that basic way he asks us to.

 

[Jon_S_1]

I guess it sounds weird to you, but no, I don’t see how Judas “deserved” to be punished. I think he was like an exceptional learner who failed to grasp the point(s) Jesus tried to get across. Why would we beat a child for being a difficult learner? Anyone who saw the beautiful would desire it, so if he failed to see the beautiful, was that somehow his fault? Why is that different than someone who fails to “see” the errors in their writing? Love urges help, correction, teaching - sometimes through the experience of undesirable natural consequences of the failure, but never by beating the student with a ruler.

What kind of weird teacher or parent never lets anyone see actual consequences, but just threatens you with them until one day, boom, you’re gone from the school and never heard from again?

Your view of human wrongdoing sounds a little harsh. Do you honestly think someone believes x is beautiful and chooses not-x unless there is some other desirable thing they think is more beautiful than x? Now they can be wrong, admittedly. How is that different than the student who incorrectly grasps the relationship of > and < when dealing with negative numbers or with mixed numbers? Their valuation is incorrect, and should be corrected. How can you claim to love them and not think that would be preferable?

Do you honestly think there is a possible act that could be committed that could not be redeemed by some conceivable experience in purgatory? If you had to feel what the victims of your actions had felt, would that not change their hearts? What if they then experienced the way a saints heart would feel, so they could experience the contrast for themselves? Would this not be like helping the child to see with blocks how one number really is taller than the other number? Making the child do some remedial work or breaking down and rebuilding is far different in goals and motives than ‘punishment.’

Judas did not just not learn.

He yielded to selfishness. He betrayed God. And his friend.

Hell is for people that are so inwardly focused that they cannot see beyond themselves.

So yes there is a sin that deserves hell. ALL of them.

Fortunately for us Jesus picked up our tab as long as we accept for him to do so.

Purgatory is not a place to work off unrepentant sin.

It is a place to transform from sinners to saints for those who love God and want to be with him.

It is in fact a gift. A gift that can be rejected.

Wasn’t Dante that described the lowest pit of hell as a cold frozen place. A place where everyone there is just frozen in their selfishness. I think that’s probably pretty close.

 

[Neoplatonist]

As much fun as it is to try and discern everything and theorize. I think there is a reason it is left to mystery.

God wants us to do something here. Now. He wants us to “love mercy and act justly and walk humbly with [our] God”. Micah 6:8 paraphrase.

Sometimes we let ourselves get in the way if living life that basic way he asks us to.

In all honesty, though, part of the obstacle is understanding what “love” and “justice” mean, when some of the examples and models we are given sound so brutal. Hence my effort to find a way to reconcile those. I always hope that I can see a way that God’s approach would be *more *compassionate and successful than ours, not less.

 

[Jon_S_1]

In all honesty, though, part of the obstacle is understanding what “love” and “justice” mean, when some of the examples and models we are given sound so brutal. Hence my effort to find a way to reconcile those. I always hope that I can see a way that God’s approach would be *more *compassionate and successful than ours, not less.

Since all goodness flows from God I don’t think you need to worry about him being less compassionate.

Animals are not concerned about love or justice.

We are.

Why?

Because God * breathed* life into us not them.

That breath of life is what differentiates us and gives us “our” sense of justice.

So it is really God’s justice no matter how you slice it.

Any confusion on the matter is on our end not his.

 

[Neoplatonist]

Since all goodness flows from God I don’t think you need to worry about him being less compassionate.

Animals are not concerned about love or justice.

We are.

Why?

Because God * breathed* life into us not them.

That breath of life is what differentiates us and gives us “our” sense of justice.

So it is really God’s justice no matter how you slice it.

Any confusion on the matter is on our end not his.

Aye, but hopefully I’ve opened up the thinking to see that maybe our model does, indeed, have some contradiction that needs to be resolved.

In particular, I think we need to sort out why we consider moral learning/ignorance, or lessons in human psychology that are part of that, to deserve less compassion and help than we bring to other areas of learning/ignorance like mathematics or grammar.

 

[Jon_S_1]

Aye, but hopefully I’ve opened up the thinking to see that maybe our model does, indeed, have some contradiction that needs to be resolved.

In particular, I think we need to sort out why we consider moral learning/ignorance, or lessons in human psychology that are part of that, to deserve less compassion and help than we bring to other areas of learning/ignorance like mathematics or grammar.

I am still not sure I see your fundamental contradiction. At least not as something so problematic that it changes Christianity. It seems more a confusion on defining terms and understanding ancient allegories that no doubt, like all allegories, fall short of reality.

It has been a fantastic discussion though.

I think there will always be a gap between mathematical type of certainty and morality since one by nature is black and white and the other is not so black and white, at least not as we could ever know it.

 

[Neoplatonist]

I am still not sure I see your fundamental contradiction. At least not as something so problematic that it changes Christianity. It seems more a confusion on defining terms and understanding ancient allegories that no doubt, like all allegories, fall short of reality.

It has been a fantastic discussion though.

I think there will always be a gap between mathematical type of certainty and morality since one by nature is black and white and the other is not so black and white, at least not as we could ever know it.

Irredeemable, eternal damnation and a compassionate, omnipotent God. That’s the apparent contradiction I’m after in this thread. Maybe you will have some additional thoughts at the thread about free will. I spun that one to tackle an angle of reflection that emerged in the course of this one.