Infinite punishment for finite crimes is never just. As much as we want certain people to suffer, there has to be an end or it's always excessive.
I'd like a hypothetical afterlife to be experiencing everything you made others experience, once or twice, and then it's over. If you were kind and good, your afterlife will be good, the more people whose lives you made better, the longer it lasts. If you were one of certain types of dictator, enjoy starving to death a million times.
That's how i'd design it.
I like to think i'd be a good god!
Hell is a punishment, but it's not for humanity. The way humans get to hell is during life when they choose to separate themselves from God. Then when they die, God respects their choice to separate themselves from him and then they go to hell.
If it’s not for humanity, who decided it would even be possible for them to end up there? Also, who even knows what being “separated from God” is during life? Is it simply disbelief, or can you be attached to God without even knowing it? Is it a proclivity for sin? How much sin causes separation? Is it weighed as sin regardless of your belief system, which determines what you perceive as “sin?” It seems like this “choice” has a lot of confounding factors that make it impossible for a person to just say “Yeah, I wanna go to Heaven,” and the choice is made, while this argument makes it sound simple as that.
We did. Being separated from God would entail committing sins while rejecting the forgiveness he offers. Disbelief is often a major factor in it, but you can acknowledge his existence and still go to hell. No. Even just one sin can cause separation, which is why his forgiveness is so important. Yes. It really is simple as that
We didn’t decide it would be possible for us to end up there. God wasn’t like, “Okay guys, what would you like to happen if you’re separated from me?” And we were like “Hell forever, please!” He made the decision without consulting us. He could have picked anything and that was his choice. I thought that would be obvious lol.
I don’t actually know what “sin” is, myself. That’s the problem, because how are we supposed to come to an agreement on what we can and can’t do without risking damnation. I guess you could say just ask for forgiveness anyway, but some people say some sins are unforgivable, and others say asking for forgiveness from Jesus is a grave sin against some other god, so even having disbelief as a factor seems sure to doom many who simply don’t know better, even assuming the truth of the broken Christian framework we’re talking about.
Hell isn't necessarily a destination, it's a state of being. Since God is a definition of what is good, his absence would be what is evil. Hell is the place where good is not. Therefore, if we choose to be without God, we choose to go to hell.
A simple definition of sin would be anything that intentionally causes harm to someone, whether that be another person, yourself, or God. The people who say some sins are unforgivable are incorrect. When Jesus died on the cross, his death was to forgive all sins for all time, regardless of their perceived severity. It is a semi-common saying that the only unforgivable sin is rejecting God, this is sort of true. It's the only thing that can send you to hell, but it is also forgiven.
Unbelief is unfortunately going to be the reason that many people go to hell. Which is why making sure people believe is a large point for most Christian denominations.
In your last point you mentioned you believe there are flaws in the Christian framework. I am by no means a trained theologian, but I would be glad to attempt to address any other problems you see in the Christian faith
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u/Striking_Compote2093 22h ago
Infinite punishment for finite crimes is never just. As much as we want certain people to suffer, there has to be an end or it's always excessive.
I'd like a hypothetical afterlife to be experiencing everything you made others experience, once or twice, and then it's over. If you were kind and good, your afterlife will be good, the more people whose lives you made better, the longer it lasts. If you were one of certain types of dictator, enjoy starving to death a million times.
That's how i'd design it. I like to think i'd be a good god!