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purplejackmama
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We EO believe that hell is not a punishment at all: when we pass into eternal life, we all experience the love of God more fully, more intimately; for those who've loved Him, this love will be the fulfillment of every longing, but those who've rejected Him will perceive His love (which it is important to note is unchanging, as He is unchanging) as a burning flame. This is like Katie's analogy of the child and the stove--God doesn't will our suffering, we have willed it ourselves.

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Well, no V8 bonking of the head. More falling down in worship and repentance. But otherwise, yes. I'm not the only one that thinks so. 

 

So you would agree with the conclusion that faith in this life--and our actions, for that matter--have no spiritual and/or eternal significance at all since the vast majority will see God upon death and THEN worship Him?  Yes, I know that universalism, or a version of it, is a thing.  (Unless this isn't what you mean?)

 

(I appreciate your post, Caitilin--sorry, wasn't sure how to multi-quote--since I didn't know much about that view of hell or EO.  I looked into it further, thanks!  Interesting.)

 

I was reading the book The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell last night and came across this on page 100; made me think of this thread and your post, ktgrok, and the concept that it's OK with God for people to reject Him their whole lives and only accept Him upon seeing Him as they enter eternity:

 

Once, long ago, she'd allowed herself to think seriously about what human beings would do, confronted directly with a sign of God's presence in their lives.  The Bible, that repository of Western wisdom, was instructive either as myth or as history, she'd decided.  God was at Sinai and within weeks, people were dancing in front of a golden calf.  God walked in Jerusalem and days later, folks nailed Him up and then went back to work.  Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question:  If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or © recognize God?  A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.

 

("Anne" is an agnostic/atheist, btw.  LOL)  I just thought it was interesting and somewhat apropos! 

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So you would agree with the conclusion that faith in this life--and our actions, for that matter--have no spiritual and/or eternal significance at all since the vast majority will see God upon death and THEN worship Him?  Yes, I know that universalism, or a version of it, is a thing.  (Unless this isn't what you mean?)

 

(I appreciate your post, Caitilin--sorry, wasn't sure how to multi-quote--since I didn't know much about that view of hell or EO.  I looked into it further, thanks!  Interesting.)

 

I was reading the book The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell last night and came across this on page 100; made me think of this thread and your post, ktgrok, and the concept that it's OK with God for people to reject Him their whole lives and only accept Him upon seeing Him as they enter eternity:

 

Once, long ago, she'd allowed herself to think seriously about what human beings would do, confronted directly with a sign of God's presence in their lives.  The Bible, that repository of Western wisdom, was instructive either as myth or as history, she'd decided.  God was at Sinai and within weeks, people were dancing in front of a golden calf.  God walked in Jerusalem and days later, folks nailed Him up and then went back to work.  Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question:  If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or © recognize God?  A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.

 

("Anne" is an agnostic/atheist, btw.  LOL)  I just thought it was interesting and somew

 

See that may be where we are talking at cross purposes. I'm not talking about someone who believes there is a God and just doesn't like the idea and refuses to believe. Not that I know anyone like that anyway. I'm taking about people who sincerely WANT to believe, but just can't. I know several such people. They live out there lives in a way that is glorifying to God, although they don't intend to for that purpose. And I know people who have had incredible misunderstandings about religion and what they are rejecting is not really God at all, but the frailty of the the human church. 

 

My own son is agnostic. He does the right thing and believes in right and wrong, he lives out the kind of life a Christian would live, but he is unable to find faith. He's got Aspergers and I hear that is common. He's not rejecting God, he just doesn't think there is one. Which is different. 

 

I think if people have tried their whole lives to do the right thing, and tried to find religion but failed, when they finally see God they will fall down in worship and God will lovingly embrace them despite their faults. 

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I'm going to attempt to answer this, but please keep in mind it is only my belief and the way I see things.  This doesn't mean that all Christians would answer this way and may strongly disagree.  That's perfectly okay.  I have not read any other responses either. Due to the complex nature of the question and my answer, this will be a long one so I apologize in advance. Please feel free to skip over it if it's too long.  Here we go...

 

Breaking down this very broad question is how I resolved it in my own mind.

 

God chose to create...but why and what?  From reading the Bible (Genesis) we get the sense that God wanted to create beings who would be his representatives on earth (imagers: created in His image).  We were to have dominion over the earth, subdue it, tend it, rule over it (Gen. 1:28) as He ruled in heaven.  Another aspect we pick up from reading Genesis is that God wanted to care for and commune with Adam & Eve (Gen. 3:8).  He saw that Adam had no helper, so He made one – woman. He provided them with food and everything they needed within a lush and beautiful garden to fulfill the task they were assigned. From what we read of the “curseâ€, it didn’t seem that tending the garden prior to the fall was a hardship, but rather utopia. Only after the fall was the sense of toil, drudgery and hardship introduced. The act of God actually walking in the Garden, seeking them out doesn’t seem to be unusual to Adam & Eve.  What seems unusual was their need to hide from God because of their nakedness (shame) which wasn’t an issue beforehand.  This indicates that God wanted to be with Adam & Eve

 

So we get this picture that God cared for his imagers (man & woman) and wanted to be around them.

 

After studying the first three chapters of Genesis, I basically understood why God chose to create man the way He did even knowing how that would turn out.  Let me explain.

 

 With my finite brain, as I see it, God had three potential choices for the way in which He created Adam and Eve. 

  1. Without free will, which would result in automatons who just did the task they were created for without caring one way or the other
  2. With free will, but innocent (initial creation) as in His image, so they could feel joy, love, & satisfaction in the task they were given
  3. No created beings at all.

 

If He had chosen the first option, those beings would not have been created in God’s image.  Throughout the Bible we read about God’s feelings and choices (love is a major theme).   Automatons would have none of those feelings. They would simple do as they were told.  Without free will to make choices, God could not say to them “Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth†(Gen 1:28) because choices in day-to-day matters would have to be made.  Automatons are told what to do. Eve would never have been created.  Adam would not have cared whether or not he had a helper.  In fact, there could just have been several hundred Adams.  However, there was a purpose to an “Eve†rather than several hundred Adams, as we will read about later.

 

No created beings would mean God could not commune with someone on earth. No created beings meant no reason to bother with earth in the first place.  God already had his heavenly abode, His divine council, & heavenly host.  He didn’t need earth or Adam and Eve.  He wanted them. So despite the other choices, only #2 makes sense.  This choice most reflects God’s desire to create beings “in our imageâ€.

 

Now we get to the part about blame.  I think many of us confuse what the fall actually entails.  It’s not just that Adam and Eve “sinnedâ€.  It’s much more than that.  It’s more a matter of condition.  Prior to the fall, mankind was in a totally innocent condition-pure.  Adam and Eve had no concept of evil or wrongness.  They were pure in body and spirit…divine like God, but without the supernatural and other attributes of God.  Remember, God cannot commune with sin; cannot even look at sin because of His pure, divine nature.  Once the decision was made to freely choose to perform an action directly opposed to a command from God, to freely choose to do something “wrong†= evil in God’s sight, they could no longer commune with God or be in His presence.  Their condition had changed.  They were no longer pure; their bodies and souls became corrupt.  Once purity is lost, it cannot be restored or passed on to children because the bodies of the parents are corrupt, impure. Corruption cannot beget purity.

 

As to foreknowledge, God, knowing Adam and Eve would be approached by the deceiver, warned Adam and Eve ahead of time “…but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.† God’s foreknowledge shows Him all possibilities which, I believe, prompted Him to issue the warning in the first place, but the free will choice belonged solely to Adam and Eve.

 

This brings up another interesting fact about the so-called evil “snake†of the garden. The ancient Hebrew word for that entity was “n-ch-sh†(ancient Hebrew had no vowels), translated as nachash.  In English, this actually translates as “serpent†not snake.  There was a big difference between the two in ancient Mesopotamian civilizations.  In addition, depending upon its use, nachash could act as a noun, verb, or adjective.  Most biblical scholars believe and cite other biblical passages to make the case that in Genesis, the word nachash utilizes a combination of all three grammatical forms, translating to divine shining serpent.  This was typical language of the time to describe a divine throne guardian.

 

Why is this important?  Well, it means that the entity speaking with Eve was not a talking snake.  Adam and Eve were used to seeing divine beings.  God, we read, walked in the Eden and communed with Adam & Eve.  God ruled the divine council of the heavenly host (see Psalm 82; Psalm 89:5-7; Job 1:6; Psalm 97:9). The council members would present themselves before God. This does not preclude them from being around God in Eden. Divine, supernatural beings were embraced by ancient Mesopotamians.  They would have understood what we call a “snake†to be a divine being.  In addition, there are no snakes today that eat dirt.  The curse place upon this entity referred to being cast down to earth, most probably down to Sheol beneath the earth.  This language was also very common to ancient Mesopotamians.  Other biblical references compare earthly princes and kings to this same Edenic serpent and its fate, as recorded in Ezekiel 28:12-13 where God compares the prince of Tyre to the entity in the Garden of Eden and again in Isaiah 14. Therefore, as indicated in the wording of the passage, Eve wasn’t surprised or see anything strange when a divine being spoke with her regarding the tree.

 

Now the serpent in this case was jealous of humanity.  He aspired to become the most high, yet God goes and creates these “inferior†beings who will eventually be “higher than the angelsâ€.  The serpent knows he must destroy them in order to further his own agenda.  To do that, God must destroy them himself.  In order to get God to condemn humanity, they must become corrupt and impure because then they must be forever removed from God’s presence.

 

Obviously the serpent achieved his goal in the short term but not with the immediacy he expected.

 

God was, indeed, obligated by His very just nature to condemn humanity and expel them from Eden and His presence. In addition, Adam and Eve would eventually die, as expulsion from the garden meant they no longer had access to the tree of life. They were no longer immortal or pure, unblemished beings.  However, because of God’s foreknowledge of all possible outcomes, He planned for this as well.  Although the second part of God’s curse (Gen. 3:15) is veiled, it holds great significance. Humanity would indeed die, but it would also, through Eve who had the ability to give birth and produce successive generations, at some future date produce a descendant who would save humanity (if those descendants chose Him through their own free will) and restore God’s Edenic plans.

 

So yes, we are all corrupt in sin.  However, because of God’s foreknowledge and great love for us, He planned in advance to circumvent the disaster precipitated by the first poor, free-will choice. He arranged for our future salvation.  God had a plan for us. It didn’t involve the devastation it became, but He is working around that to bring us full circle and restore His initial plan – A new heaven and earth for those who freely choose to participate out of love for Him.

 

If you still have doubts about our inherent guilt, all you have to do try to discover just one person who has never, ever sinned in their life: never stolen anything; never intentionally hurt someone; never coveted; never used foul language or used the Lord’s name in vain; never committed adultery; and so on and so forth.  There are none righteous, no, not one.

 

DD and I are reading an extremely fascinating book right now for our Apologetics class that sheds so much more light on the Bible and how it should be viewed. The author, Dr. Michael Heiser is an expert in ancient near east languages, specializing in biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, & Greek.  My DD is enthralled and it is grounding her faith.  The book is “The Unseen Realm†and it’s well worth reading.  

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