This issue is a huge obstacle for me.(look at my other forum posts), and a common topic here, as I have yet to make my own threads on this issue even. Every time I go to pray, I find myself angry at God, saying, “God, why did you do this to me? , why did you create me and put me at risk for hell?? I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t want to follow your will if you have put eternal hell as a possibility! Why Lord, Why?”
I most certainly wish I had never lived so as not to assume the risk of hell. God took an eternal gamble on my behalf by creating me, and I do not appreciate it!
But we all have a choice right? yes and no, we make some free choices, but in the end the fix is in, the stakes eternal, and the time very short. And most importantly, your actions before death on this earth, result in eternal consequence that cannot be undone, i.e. once you are in hell you can NEVER get out. eternal torture for eternity (a very long time).
Consider this: If God only created one human person, and no more, where would he choose to go, heaven or hell?? If he is a typical man like your or me, he could go either way, some days choosing heaven, and other days choosing hell. his final choice is supposed to be free and not compelled by God nor man, and he will make his choice.
The problem is we have no way of explaining why he chooses one eternal option over the other. From our existential viewpoint, the choice is purely arbitrary, and made freely, without a sort of probability to guide it either way, the choice is (not from the man’s perspective because he freely chooses), but from ours, and perhaps in a way even God’s, ** completely random**
In other words, what makes on person use his free will correctly, while another uses it incorrectly? The condition of a man’s soul which makes him use his free will in a certain way as opposed to another way, seems like it must be logically prior to free will itself, as it determines the course of free will. If free will is truly free, there can be no such thing determining free will, so I say it must be random then, because with nothing to determine free will’s action, what ever free will chooses appears to have no cause but itself, (an individual’s free will). A free will operating in this manner is naked, divorced from all influence one way or the other, but, because this free will has been created, and a choice for heaven or hell, it must indeed make, it makes one, necessarily by the fact of its existence. Nothing can explain why it makes one choice or the other, all we know is that it does. I see it as random, and that is why I do not want to worship this God, who sets my eternal stake on a randomness.
Now, if free will is not decided my randomness, it must be decided by some sort of probability.
something like this: God created man so that if you put every man in situation X, then 9 out of 10 men will choose option A, while 1 out of 10 men will choose option B. Of course for God to have knowledge of counter-factuals like this puts a damper on our free will already, more importantly it imposes a “difficulty level of attaining salvation” such that God has in his mind a final ratio of the number in heaven versus the number in hell, a ratio which is written into the nature of man, and therefore cannot be abolished.
This again is a rigging of the game, and a setting of odds. and we don’t know the odds. I will not tolerate one person in hell, with a setup like this.
OK.
I’ve kind of been jumping around here, and I’m still thinking through these ideas, and didn’t have time to explain it totally here. What I wrote above might not make sense, but it makes for part of my objection to an eternal hell, so if I want to praise God for all that he is, I must overcome these objections.
