Christian Theological/Philosophical Book Club discussion
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Is Your God a Failure?
presupposing your ethical standards of saving some and not others is ontologically immoral, no?
it certainly is intuitively immoral. My vote, that is if I believed in a hellish afterlife, would be that God is inept. But there's no shame in that; we all are.
It's because all of us are inept that one overseer has to be perfect.
David - God found out quickly from the Garden experiment that giving free will to humans was going to be problematic. Jesus was sent to help boost the occupancy rate of heaven. Sadly, humans remain obstinately self-centered and won't follow the instruction manual. Too bad, but what's a divinity to do other than make more elect which kinda defeats the purpose of the whole belief exercise.
David,I have to say this is the best question I have seen yet! Did you ever notice that Jesus wept when he prophecied the destruction of Jerusalem. He was so moved by the suffering they would experience. He was also moved with compassion many times at people's suffering. Yet, when he declared that Capernaum would be brought down to Hades there were no tears.
God is not afraid of the afterlife, nor is he one to inflict endless suffering. Heaven/Hell doctrine is actually unique to Matthew, the other gospels don't teach it.
To unpack all this there would be enough posts to fill a book, and it does, which is why I wrote one. This may look like a shameless plug (apologies to everybody) but I genuinely want to answer your question well and it's the only way I can.
My book "God of fire:The hope reformation" is available on my website www.hopereformation.com as a free pdf, or paperback. God really is good.
I realise I should provide a few scriptures for some of my statements. Psalms 30:5 "his anger is for a moment"
Isaiah 54:8 "with overflowing anger I hid my face for a moment, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you."
Isaiah 45:23 "to me every knee shall bow, every tongue swear allegiance"
Deut 32:22 "a fire is kindled in my anger that burns to the depth of sheol"
Zeph 3:8,9 "my decision is to gather nations... to pour out on them my burning anger... I will change the speech to a pure speech... that all of them may call on the name of the LORD"
Fire purifies. Fire brings peace.
Hi David,For my part I think Elihu had the best answer to this question:
"If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him? If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?"
If my sin sunders me from God, it is my loss alone, because it is my blindness to my maker that caused it. He is there, he has me, he is not robbed of anything by our sin. So I certainly wouldn't say that God is a failure for losing 96% of the population. If we are doing numbers I would say an omnipotent being who loses a single one is a failure.
But in my view salvation is for us, not for the sake of his success. It won't break his world if we don't come to know him.
That is why we say it is grace. He doesn't owe it to anyone to save us. Whereas if our sin represented a true and serious threat to his ability to make the world as he wills, then it would be incumbent upon him to save everyone - in other words it would be a duty and a debt, and not an undeserved gift.
That is my take at least.
Brent...maybe? I agree with Lee to some degree here. Say I walk by a burning building with 100 people in it. I am absolutely able to save all of them, but I only save 3. It is within my power to save the other 97 but I choose not to. Would any sane definition of the word "loving" apply to me?
I am sure the quick answer is that I am not God, his ways are not my ways. But if his ways are totally unintelligible to us, then what are we to do? Besides which, if our God does not look like Jesus then maybe we're already moving in the wrong direction.
Now, you could adjust my analogy to say I do not go into the building to save people but I provide them a way to move out on their own freedom. Perhaps this makes me a bit more loving but if only 3 take my way out and I am all knowing then...well then I am not sure how I would qualify as all-knowing.
Jake, you seem to take more of a free will answer - God doesn't owe us, we reject God, its our problem. I'd just wonder if only 3% are taking God's offer maybe God could have made it a bit more obvious?
I think (and my long posts a while back in a thread on hell) that questioning the traditional view of hell is one way out.
Another way out would be to refute the whole idea that only 10% of Christians are "real Christians". Why not just recognize that all 1/3 of the population on earth who claim to be Christians, despite their failures, really are. From there we realize that though 1/3 seems small, it is more then ever in history. Give another couple centuries, the Spirit works and Christians grow and we could soon see a world in which more than half who ever lived are saved. I am not saying that more than half makes God not a failure. I am just posing that numbers from God's perspective may be different.
Of course, the other way out is some sort of inclusivism where Jesus saves more people then we expect. Even take Jake's phrase, which he did not intend this way, and say if God loses even 1 then he is a failure and end up in a Christian universalism (good company there in Gregory of Nyssa and Origen).
I'm not sure which is the best way. But I think if we're honest with people, we should admit this makes us feel uncomfortable. At least, if we think 97% of the current population is destined for eternal torture and that doesn't make you feel uncomfortable, you're sick. Our model ought to be Jesus who weeped over Jerusalem.
If the small exclusive sect that I grew up in is correct, then only about 1 out of every 10,000 people are going to heaven. I could walk down the street and literally everyone I saw for miles was headed for eternal fiery torture. That should make anyone take the time to study the evolution of ideas about hell until it became obvious it was largely a human invention...just for the sake of one's sanity...but no, they all still seem to unquestioningly believe. Very hard to comprehend how people can be so apathetic.
Something is definitely awry with people who profess millions to be going to hell and do nothing. I mean we can all at least pray for the benefit of mankind.God said he loved the world. He also said His arm is not too short that He cannot save.
So is God a liar? Or does God have a twisted version of love that includes eternally tormenting people? Or is God not as powerful as He claims? Or did the concept of hell go awry somewhere between us and Jesus?
Ok I'm going to try, it's gonna be too brief but anyway.The word "Hell" was used by Jesus in Mark 9 he was contrasting the reward of eternal life with hell and suggested that eternal life was worth losing a limb to obtain.
He uses the phrase "worm does not die, fire is not quenched" which is a direct quote from Isaiah 66:24 which says
"and they shall go out and look upon the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me, For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh."
So we have the physical body dead, people are looking at the dead bodies and are disgusted.
We have the "worm" which does not die, it is in the fire.
Through the book of Isaiah fire speaks of God. In fact in chapter 33 God says
"who can dwell with the consuming fire, who can dwell with everlasting burning."
Consuming fire is of course a reference to God and the answer to the question is in fact the righteous.
So we note in the book of Isaiah the righteous dwell with everlasting fire and it is glorious.
The "worm" is in fact a theme of the decay of sin that runs through scripture it is often used to describe a person in abject condition (David and Job). Moses writes that upon death we return to God, who is described in Isaiah and through the old testament repeatedly as fire.
Jesus picks up this theme. After his admonition on hell he states "for everyone will be salted with fire." He then asks the rhetorical question he has just answered. "Salt is good, but if it loses it's saltiness how will you make it salty again." the answer is of course fire. Then Jesus says
"have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
hellfire is admonition, it is painful but brings peace, though at a great loss. This is why Jesus didn't tear up over Capernaum.
This theme is all through scripture, except in the law camp writings which major on rejection and suffering.
David's 100 people in the burning building would indeed be tragic if 97 of them didn't intentionally set themselves on fire and don't want to be saved.
what about those who have never heard, like the jungle people in Brazil? Or what about those that want to know God but have been sexually abused by "Christians" and turned away? C'mon lets not be naïve about this.
Fair point Robert. But I tried to address this in my analogy. Let's assume God desires all to be saved. Regardless of whether they want it or not. I know plenty of salesmen are able to hawk used cars, jewelry and all sorts of things people do not want. And these things are not the ultimate in life giving. God has the one product that truly brings life; if he is not able to make a more convincing sales pitch then I'd still hold he is a failure.Or, if 97 had set themselves on fire and did not want to be saved, I would argue that a brilliant orator could help such persons see that they do want to be saved, that life outside the fire is better.
To me, it would be tragic that God is the source of life and hope and joy and is only able to convince a few people of this.
Josh, I like what you are saying. I don't want to transform this into a discussion of hell (we've had those before, though I guess most people in that one are long gone) but would you say hell is purgatorial? Perhaps God continues to pursue people until all come to faith?
David - you seem to think Satan is just a powerless observer in this entire process. In reality, he is allowed to glorify and use every sin identified in Scripture as a recruiting tool. How successful is this?Seth and his immediate progeny were God-fearing, but by the time of Noah, EVERY mortal outside of Noah's own family was deemed Godless. Yes, God could limit Satan's effectiveness and reach, but that would water down Christianity even further to a point where the term "repentant" would be meaningless.
Yeah, that discussion is tough. My understanding of hell is a spiritual one. One of the things I talk about is how the greek culture placed gods in the physical realm. This warped the understanding of hell, hence the medieval concepts of magical regenerative bodies being tortured. The latin church is still heavily influenced by greek thought it seems.So moving on from that, and thinking out loud here, I guess you could say that, Purgatory is not biblical but has some precedents. But I don't believe in purgatory.
However I guess you could at a stretch say I believe the catholic concept of purgatory is probably closer to the truth of hell than their concept of hell is,
"everyone salted by fire" Jesus said. But the concept of separation is where it comes unstuck to me. God is a consuming fire. He doesn't fix people by rejecting them. He immerses them in fire. Oh wait that's Pentecost, wait what?!
So Robert, if Satan gets 97% and God gets 3% then Satan is a better salesman and God is a failure. You'd think God could outwit Satan. I guess your God doesn't know how.
Robert, I deleted your other post because as Josh said, joking about rape and sexual abuse is not acceptable.
David wrote: ”Perhaps this makes me a bit more loving but if only 3 take my way out and I am all knowing then...well then I am not sure how I would qualify as all-knowing. I also take the free will answer, David. But does God have to be less than knowing if a person rejects Christ as the only way?
I don’t see how a person’s own decision would affect God’s attributes. Does ANY gift He’s given us (reason, free-will, etc.) affect His attributes?
What makes a person think so?
That it seems was what Elihu asked.
It seems to me that people (in the burning building) want God’s omniscience to save them, when the blood of Christ (His very life) was poured out for whoever.
God a failure? Never.
Well, David, I think a pastor who believes the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is weaker than Satan and basically a failure is a joke. I wish we could delete you from the ministry as easily as you deleted my post. Since you're just a sham, why don't you save your parishioners the trouble of firing you and resign?
Robert,"by this will all men know you are my disciples, that you love one another."
I think you should take a good look at yourself. I was embarrassed for you yesterday, but perhaps your colors are showing.
David is not accusing God, he is asking questions. Job did the same and he was blameless in his words.
Good response Debbie. I can't help but think of myself and my relationship with my kids. Would I ever stop pursuing relationship with my daughter? If she rejects me and hates me would I ever give up?No. Never.
And I struggle to think I am more loving then God.
If my daughter was suffering and in pain and continued to exist (as per eternal conscious torment teaches), I would not necessarily override her free will. But I would never stop trying to get her change her mind and love me.
For the record, since Robert may want to launch an inquisition and burn me as a heretic, I am not a universalist. I think the Bible teaches those who reject God face death and this simply means they cease to exist. The questions I am offering in this thread are truly troubling to me though, which is what this Goodreads group is for - to discuss issues of this sort. At least, that's why I am here. I don't think God is a failure even though I don't think everyone will be saved, though it is a question I ask. Some of you have given good answers. Thank you.
wow. I really am learning a lot on this forum.
haha, I'm the head engineer at a large contracting firm, I understand bluff and bravado. I just didn't expect to see so much on theological forum.It's all good, people are what they are and the conversations have been very helpful to me in fleshing out some of these concepts.
Writing what I did has been absolutely massive for me, but I see more and more that people all over the world, there must be millions upon millions, wrestle with this exact question of the goodness of God in the context of eternity.
David wrote: "At least, that's why I am here. I don't think God is a failure even though I don't think everyone will be saved, though it is a question I ask."And thank you, David. There's nothing at all wrong with asking hard questions, especially ones that affect you so deeply.
Well I would agree that Faith ebbs and flows over a lifetime, but if one permanently questions God's dominion over Satan and the remainder of the cosmos, then that someone never truly accepted Christ's outreach in the first place.
Robert, you seem to have misunderstood my point in bringing up Satan. My point was that if 97% of people end up with Satan and only 3% with God, then it seems God is a failure and Satan wins. I do not believe God is a failure and I do not believe Satan is more powerful. But I am looking for an answer to how, if Satan convinces multitudes more then God, how God is more successful? Surprised no one brought up Revelation 7 yet, there we get a saved multitude greater then no one can count. Indicates countless persons will be saved, right?
David - As I think Revelation to be far in the future, I didn't bring it up. This is a little like the Black question of why are 97% of our young men dead or in jail?
But I think bringing it up would answer the question. From our perspective it may seem like only a small number are saved. But in God's perspective, taking in the many who will be saved in the future, the numbers shift. Give the world another few hundred years and there could be much higher percentage who are saved. I think it is one way to answer the original question.
Or they all get saved, like Paul said. ;)
Of course I view salvation to mean something wildy different to saying the sinners prayer as you all know. Isaiah 45:23, Romans 11:32, 14:11, Phillipians 2:10
Is God a failure? NO, Jesus will be King of King and Lord of Lords for all eternity - whether us debauched and rebellious sinners follow Satan's advice or not.
Remember: It's all about Jesus!
Many religious people assume all humans are God's children. This is the real question. The Bible is clear that God knows who HIS chosen and adopted children will be. A lack of love would be for all of humanity to get what they truly desire (a rebellious existence where their lustful passions are a priority over God's purpose for mankind.)
But God grabs some of us for the Glory of HIS SON. If God only Grabbed ONE OF US for the Glory of His Son - that would not be a failure. Love is letting people have what their hearts desperately CRAVE. God's love is even better than that - He rescues some of us against our will.
To David's earlier comment: Very few parents love their rebellious and ungrateful children to the bitter end. Your love will change to that of sorrow and acceptance as your children denounce love and justice...
Gods love never fails. Let's not set the benchmark for God's ability by our own inability.
If God sent all of us to HELL - His love still would not fail. IT would just prove that we are failures as children of a loving God.
Anyway you look at it subjecting someone to eternal torment is not love.What does the phrase "salted by fire" mean to you?
#42... a good father punishes his children or rebukes them. Is that love or hatred?
But not everyone is a good Father's child. Interesting verse:
…48where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED. 49"For everyone will be salted with fire. 50"Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
Kind of poetic isn't it? Don't make doctrine out of poetry.
Exactly.... this is a different father, he doesn't just want us to do the good things to be a good person. He wants us to BE a good person and let this goodness show through what we do and say. God loves us but He is also just and holy. To only love and ignore the wrong we do, is in violation of his character as Holy and Just.
Ok David, I will bring it up (parts of the futuristic viewpoint on Revelation). I see the decline in Christianity worldwide as fulfilling prophecy. Eventually Satan gets real cocky about events and introduces the antichrist. God is prepared and centers Christianity on Jerusalem with the 12 members from the 12 tribes converting multitudes of Jews as well as many wishy-washy Gentile "Believers". Unfortunately, the lion's share of the masses compose Satan's army and get the tar kicked out of them by the sword-wielding, not so loving, Jesus. Happens when you back the wrong horse. Maybe the thoroughbred example isn't so far fetched - few can handicap horses and consistently tout a winner, but many think they can.
Rod saidDon't make a doctrine out of poetry
Oh please, that could perhaps be the most pitiful thing I have heard yet on this forum. Most of the messianic prophecies are poetry.
The reason I chose this passage is I knew you wouldn't understand it. It is not understood for the same reason the writer of Matthew omitted it. It is completely incompatible with the "law gospel" which, by the way, the church continues to tolerate in spite of Paul's warning in Galatians. At least try to understand it!
Or, alternatively, you could bury your head in the sand and sing "la,la,la"
Robert never said that - I really have no idea what you're talking about Joshua.
Sorry, Robert, a thousand apologies I meant Rod. I have a daughter named lily and a dog named lulu. You came imagine how much trouble I have with that! haha
Robert, you speak of the "decline of Christianity worldwide" but unfortunately the facts refute that statement. Today 1/3 of the world is Christian. The percentage has never been higher.I guess this goes back to the idea that only 10% of these are "true" Christians. I mean, is that how you would twist the data to fit your made-up prophecy?
Joshua and Rod comments:"Don't make a doctrine out of poetry"
"Oh please, that could perhaps be the most pitiful thing I have heard yet on this forum."
You had a good point Joshua that some Prophecy comes out of rather poetic statements. You probably agree that believers need to be very careful with assumptions based on historic ambiguity. (Look at the messy history of the church).
The problem is you may be looking backwards with easy hindsight. Once a prophecy hits reality - IT IS NO LONGER POETRY. Joshua it was your phrase "Salted by Fire" that brought this up.
The Bible is brilliant: " Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
We both know this isn't about Salt, or fire, or worms.
I have heard similar comments in the past. Usually the point is that there are very few real or true Christians in the world. But when combined with a traditional view of hell, and it often is, I can't help but see God as a failure in this.
Let's say only 10% of self-proclaimed Christians really are saved. There are 2.18 billion Christians (self-proclaimed) in the world. Thus, 10% of that is 218 million. Thus, out of a world population of 6.9 billion people there are 218 million Christians. This is, if my calculations are right, 3%.
Now if you say only those who are truly saved go to heaven (exclusivist view) then you are saying that 97% of humans alive today are destined for an eternity in hell. Depending on your theology, this means God only chose to save 3 percent of people OR only 3 percent exercise freedom in choosing. Either way God is either a monster by not choosing more or God is inept at wooing people to choose him.
If your God only saves 3% of people, is he not a failure?
Thoughts?