Please note: I added the word Christians to the subject line because I wish to discuss the matter in terms of the Christian faith, not because I intend to attack Christianity.
In debates about theodicy, persons who see no contradiction between the notions of God being simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenoveolent often use the notion of an eternal existence post-death to refute arguments about earthly suffering. The argument frequently goes something like this:
Yes, it’s true that there is suffering in the world. But our mortal lifespans are less than an eyeblink compared to the length and depth of eternal time, and that’s what we’ll experience in Heaven. True, Joan of Arc died horribly, but that lasted only a few moments; but she and other martyrs will be in Heaven for millions and millions of times longer than that. By comparison, her suffering at the stake doesn’t matter; it’s simply too brief.
Suppose I stipulate that yes, it’s conceivable that God, being infinte in duration both forwards and backwards, isn’t hugely vexed by the suffering any human experiences in her lifetime. But by the same token, why should God care whether we live righteous or sinful lives on Earth, given the insignifcance of those lives? How can 70, 80, even 120 years of righteous living come close to earning a bilion times that amount of bliss? Contrariwise, how can a mortal lifespan of debauchery and villainy merit an infinite amount of suffering n Hell? Why should God, with His much greater perspective, care either way?
The simple answer is that God cares about everything. He wants each person to be good.
I don’t think it’s correct to frame a person’s eternal reward (or punishment) in terms of “earning”. One should choose to do good and avoid evil because it’s the right thing to do, not because of divine carrots and sticks.
Because, as we incline temporally, so will we incline eternally, I suppose. If a lifetime isn’t long enough to choose good over evil and obedience over defiance, nor will an eternity. Imagine me, with all my character flaws, going on as I am interminably. (You may think I already do, but think literally here.) After an insignificant fraction of eternity I’d be functionally indistinguishable from Lucifer himself.
It is my understanding that only in this world does god allow mortals to choose sin or virtue. After death, you cannot repent. This implies you no longer have free will in the afterlife.
I think this is the answer. Everything I do reflects what kind of person I am; and every choice I make is a choice about what kind of person I choose to be.
I agree with the essence of this, and it is what Jesus taught not just about time but generally. “If you cannot be trusted to handle the small matters,” He said, “How is it that you can be trusted to handle the much larger matters?”
And I would quibble, if the OP wouldn’t mind, with the notion of “eternal time”. By my (admittedly primitive) philosophical reckoning, eternity is not the sum total of all time, but rather it is timelessness — the absence of time. An eternal being is to a temporal being as a three-dimensional being is to a two-dimensional being. Whereas the two-dimensional being can see either the outside of the ring (if he is outside it) or the inside of the ring (if he is inside it). But he cannot see both at once. (In fact, he cannot see the ring’s height at all.)
In like manner, God “sees” all of time simultaneously. He sees that the universe has not yet begun; He sees that it is ongoing; and He sees that it is finished — all at once. Just like the three-dimensional being looking down at the ring sees both its inside and its outside at the same time — a thing the two-dimensional being can scarcely conceive.
Two other things are important also.
One is that man is a creature with a dual nature. He is both essentially man and essentially God, according to the teachings of Jesus in John 3. As Jesus put it, “Flesh is born of flesh, but spirit is born of spirit.” Therefore, there is a dimension to man that is spiritual — coequal with God. This component of man sees eternity in the same way God does. The brain, however, being as physical as a monkey’s brain, sees only dim analogies.
Second, it is important that the universe is amoral; i.e., neither moral nor immoral. An asteroid smashes into the earth not because the asteroid belt is angry, but just because of the nature of gravity and spacetime. Thus, the universe serves as a perfect mis-en-scene or setting in which man — the spiritul man — can make his moral decisions. His brain — the animal man — decides how best to execute those decisions. And so, for example, if one man holds another to be worthless, it is because his spirit has made a moral decision. (Moral decisions are aesthetical in nature; that is, they evaluate the worth of other moral agents.) Whether he decides to ridicule the other man, to spit on him, or to stab him with a knife is a mere physical choice. Being amoral, the universe does not influence morality, and therefore allows for free moral will.
And so the blip of a physical existence is all that is required for a person to exercise her morality.
I don’t mind. There’s more than one way to look at the word, and I didn’t wish to stifle debate from the get-go by being too specific.
But I do think most Xtians would say that eternity is infinitely prolonged time, if only because they don’t think about it too closely. Take the lyrics to “Amazing Grace,” f’nstance:
My take on it is it’s a learning process that we have to go through. We, because we are made in the likeness of God, really have to find out for ourselves that God’s way (of Love) is the only way, all other paths lead to death.
Their are some that have chosen the path of death, you can call them demons or devils or whatever. They exist and they want to oppress and enslave, God uses them for us to realize that an eye for an eye doesn’t work.
God gives us a mortal body for this purpose, He knows it will get abused along the way, our immortal body comes after we learn He is God and accept His way.
He also knows that this world is full of temptation and sin that we are blinded to, and such He provided payment for our sins, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, which disposes of the Law for the believer, nailing it to the cross, and freeing the believer from ALL condemnation under the Law. It is not righteous living that gets one eternal life, as no one can do that in themselves. It is solely a free gift of God (so no one can boast of their works), that gift will include God living through that person and God moving heaven and earth if needed so all your works are righteous in His sight. It is only God who can make us righteous.
The Lord also offers what scriptures call ‘joy in suffering’ which I have personally experienced, distress is greatly reduced and a great peace comes over a person.
Thank you for that. Incredibly, there are people who do stifle debate by insisting on specific definitions that are couched as assertions or premises. You, obviously, are not one of those.
Yes, I think you’re right, even though our own scriptures teach us differently.
I think certain things we judge as morallity or moral acts are in tune with our/God’s spiritual reality. Love toward our fellow man is a recognition of the reality of our connection to each other. Acts of greed, or oppression toward our fellow man denies that connection and denies reality.
Although the wording is vastly different, your take is, I believe, in tune with mine. I define goodness as that which edifies, and love as that which facilitates goodness. Thus, God is love — the perfect facilitator of goodness. The opposite of love, then, is not hate. Hate is only emotion, like erotic “love”. Rather, the opposite of love is sin, because I define sin as that which obstructs goodness. Love is whatever facilitates goodness. Sin is whatever obstructs it. When you have been good to someone, you have loved them. You have edified them. You have built them up. You have left them feeling better about themselves than they did before you showed up. To me, that’s love. And I sin too much.
I don’t see love and sin as most Xians do. It isn’t a certain deed or act. If, for example, two men are in love, and they pleasure one another sexually, and edify one another with tenderness and kindness, then there is no way in hell that they are sinning. They are doing good. They are practicing love.
Wonderful. You guys have complimented me, thus derailing my no-caffeine-fueled freakout, and now I can’t poison kanicbird’s well water as I was about to.
When I started this thread I was more thinking of Heaven, but for the issue is more relevant for Hell (assuming one believes in such a place). Whether you conceive of eternity as being infinitely extended (the typical view), or of infinte, ah, depth (cf. the Fraser argument in C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce) it’s hard to see how Hell, being eternal in either sense, can be an appropriate punishment for mortal wrongdoing.
Well, isn’t there the biblical perspective in which being “sent to hell” actually means “instant annihilation”? One model that makes a certain amount of sense (um, assuming that God isn’t particularly omniscient or omnipotent) is that god made a bunch of souls and then uses mortality to give each a ‘test run’, discarding the ones that don’t fly right before setting the rest loose on the eternities.
My view of hell is as renegade as my other views, perhaps, but I believe the teachings of Jesus are crystal clear. He states unequivocally that though His father has every right to judge (morally), He does not do so. Instead, He cedes the right of moral judgment to His son. (Jesus speaking of Himself.) “But,” declared Jesus, “neither do I judge you. You judge yourselves by My Word.”
What makes that so interesting is that in the beginning of that same book (John), Jesus is described as The Word. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God… And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
The fact of the matter is that Jesus never even spoke of punishment, except as a metaphor in the context of a particular parable, and as a consequence of Rome destroying Jerusalem and its temple, which he prophesied — obviously a temporal, not an eternal, punishment.
What He taught about such things is that God gives us the desires of our hearts. He gives us what we treasure most. It is no great philosophical pronouncement to say that we seek that which we value most. Or as Jesus put it, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”
And so, our moral judgment falls to us ourselves. And we will make our judgment based on what we think of Him when we see Him. For many of us, this has already occured. We have seen Him and fallen in love with Him, or we have seen Him and feel something between hatred and apathy. For many, their first encounter with Him will be upon the occasion of their mortal death. They will then decide instantly that He is what they most value, or else not.
That was His teaching on Gehenna, outcasting, separation and such. It was not that He would turn anyone away, but that we would chose to separate ourselves from Him — much like many of the people in my Pit thread would sooner douse themselves in gasoline and inflict themselves with paper cuts from head to toe than visit me at my home. So will be the reaction of many when they see Jesus. Some will despise Him utterly. Some have already expressed that sentiment.
Moral jugment is ours and ours alone to exercise solely on ourselves. It would be cruel of Him to force you to spend eternity with Him if you did not value Him in the same way that I do. Eternity with Jesus is exactly what I desire above all else. If I achieve that end, it will be because He is the treasure in my heart.
Another man might see Jesus and be repelled by his goodness. He might prefer an eternity of snark and ridicule and life as he has enjoyed it here. If so, then that is exactly what God will grant him. He will be (has been, and is) for all eternity the bully and hater that he has always desired to be. (Yes, believe it or not, there are people who value something other than perfect goodness.)
(The above, incidentally, is why Christians are essentialists and not existentialists.)
So Hell would be, for me, any kind of separation from the Lord Whom I love and Whom I serve so poorly. For others, that would be okely dokely. Our moral journeys are necessarily subjective, and no one can conceive a paradise for himself that exactly fits another person. One man’s hell is another man’s heaven (and vice-versa).
It really isn’t a matter of going to Hell or to Heaven. We are already there. “You cannot look over here,” said Jesus, “and point to the Kingdom of God. Nor can you say ‘Look! It’s over there!’ for the kingdom of God is within you.”
You’re correct. And in some Xtian belief it gets even more imbalanced. Someone might live a lifetime of being a self serving asshole, accept Christ moments before they die and be instantly forgiven of every evil thing they ever did. OTOH a decent person, or even a better than average person who is kind and compassionate to others, but simply doesn’t accept Jesus as the only begotten Saviour, is condemned to eternal punishment. It’s ludicrous.
What makes more sense to me is that the cycle of learning, choice , consequences, growth, and a turn toward the positive of our reality, continues in some fashion.
I’d point out that what we label as morality IMO is something else to God. It’s a matter of choices and consequences that in turn become positive or negative energy in our lives. As Liberal pointed out, it has to do with our true intent.
To give an example, suppose you’re walking down a busy city street. Grabbing a glance as you pass a narrow alleyway, you see a well dressed, well heeled man offering food and a cool drink to a man who is obviously homeless, and whose sparkling eyes convey his deep gratitude. You might likely think to yourself as you move on to begin your busy day how inspired you are, and what a great man that was, helping the poor. But you do not know the moral decision the man’s spirit has made. Unbeknownst to you, his offering of food and drink is part of a plan to lure the homeless man into his car, where he intends to rape, torture, and murder his fourth helpless victim. This is why we are to judge only our own morality, and never that of another person.
I believe there’s another about charity. Someone who has a lot may give what seems like a large amount to be seen as generous and kind but someone who has little and gives a small amount without fanfare has actually given more.
It was reading these passages years ago that made me realize the importance of looking within at intent. I think the temporal morality talked about in the OP has a lot to do with our overall intent. Often we aren’t consciously aware of our true intent until we make the effort to look within.
