RE: I Bet You Thought God Wanted To Send You To Hell
Wonderful post again. A very sensitive topuc @humanearl.
Just because God is loving, does not mean that he loves everything—there are some things that God doesn’t love, that in fact he hates. So he doesn’t love murder, or abuse, or selfishness, or pride. Actually, if he is loving, then he will hate these things. It wouldn’t be very loving of God to look at something like child abuse and say: “Well, I’m not really that bothered.”
So God is loving—and yet he doesn’t love everything.
We actually all deserve to be punished. We all deserve to go to hell. None of us are perfect—so none of us should be in God’s perfect kingdom.
Now as I say this, I know it’s not an easy thing to hear. It’s not an easy thing for me to hear. But just because we don’t like something, doesn’t mean that it’s not true.
And it’s not something that Jesus says flippantly or lightly, without caring. He doesn’t say it just to scare us. But he does say it to warn us—and to help us see how amazing it is that he offers us a way out.
Because this is the amazing news—that even though we all deserve punishment, even though we deserve to go to hell, Jesus—God himself—has provided a way out for us. He doesn’t do this by leaving things unpunished, and so forgetting about justice. He does it by himself taking our place; in his death taking our punishment and himself experiencing hell so that we don’t have to.
It seems to me as if this is a truly loving God. He loves the world enough to punish wrongdoing, and he loves people enough to take the punishment himself.
He loves us enough to give us a choice: we can to ask him to be part of our lives now, and so avoid hell and look forward to enjoying his perfect eternal kingdom.
Thank you @humanearl. Its lovely to read and talk about your posts .
You put it plainly. Because he loves us so much he hates evil because it is in fact harmful to us. People don't seem to understand this concept.