Why should an omnipotent God care if you worship them or not?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Absolutely. The whole “Lake of fire” speech is a big one in Protestantism. Many preachers and ministers can fulminate for hours about the gnashing of teeth and where the worm dieth not, and so on.

A minority view is annihilationism, where the wages of sin are death – a permanent extinction of the soul, rather than conscious punishment and torment.

It’s certainly not just a Catholic thing! (Unlike purgatory, which is almost purely a Catholic thing.) C.S. Lewis was a Protestant theologian, and had a definite belief in hell.

62

Though if you read “The Great Divorce”, Lewis’s view of Hell may not have been the lake of fire one. Some assert that TGD seems to indicate that Lewis may have been a soft universalist (as indeed I hope so, as I am a universalist Christian myself).

63

I think that others have already provided good answers to your main question, but I would add that your description of humanity as “creatures that are effectively slime molds relative to their place on the evolutionary food chain of the universe” isn’t justifiable or even meaningful to most religious people. Thudlow Boink has already quoted from Psalm 8, which present the paradox of humanity’s dual nature as both physical and mental. Physically we share many body parts and bodily processes with animals. Mentally, we think and reason and make choices, which animals don’t do.

64

I’m terribly embarrassed to say, I completely misread that book, and thought Lewis was saying exactly the opposite. I read it as saying that no one, on the tour-bus from hell, ever made it to the shining castle of heaven, and that the outing from hell was only part of the torment of being forever denied the chance to reach that paradise.

People have explained to me that the point of the book is that, once in a while, someone does make it all the way, to a glorious re-unification with God, and thus promoting a variant, at least, of universalism: some people get out of hell, if not everyone.

If this is correct…it’s fascinating! It very much softens his apparent views regarding the infinity of God’s wrath, and separates him from the “Josh McDowell” school of hard-liners.

65

Assuming I’m remembering the book correctly, it depicted some on the tour bus choosing to stay in Heaven and others choosing to return to Hell.

I don’t think that Lewis says that everyone will ultimately be saved, just that everyone who can be or wants to be will be. Let me see if I can find some of the text of the book online that supports this…

Here we go:
[QUOTE=C. S. Lewis]
“What troubles ye, son?” asked my Teacher. “I am troubled, Sir,” said I, “because that unhappy creature doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn’t wicked: she’s only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling, and one feels that a little kindness, and rest, and change would put her all right.”

“That is what she once was. That is maybe what she still is. If so, she certainly will be cured. But the whole question is whether she is now a grumbler.”

“I should have thought there was no doubt about that!”

“Aye, but ye misunderstand me. The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman-even the least trace of one-still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there’s nothing but ashes we’ll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up.”
“But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?”

"The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye’ll have had experiences . . . it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.
[/QUOTE]
At any rate, it’s a fascinating book, and possibly the best response I’ve ever read to the question of how a loving God could allow people to spend eternity in Hell.

66

And also the ‘Hell’ is basically living in a boring grey nondescript town, where basically you live anywhere… so for most people they are just really grumpy and deciding to move further and further away from people because other people annoy them so much.

But you can always choose to try for somewhere better (heaven that is). You’ll just have to give up some of the stuff that keeps you from getting all the way there… a sort of purgatory in Lewis’s otherwise Anglican faith. The having a choice after death is definitely at odds with a lot of fundamentalist rhetoric (Heck, even Catholic views of Hell allow for belief that Hell is simply “an absence of God” as opposed to physical eternal torment)

67

Indeed… from Wikipedia:

There is also a hint in the guide. George MacDonald is a Scottish minister who was also a Christian Universalist: George MacDonald - Wikipedia

68

From my other sister:

69

If my ultimate purpose was to tell some other entity how great it was until the end of time, I would find that utterly depressing.

70

I didn’t mean that my dilemma was why God makes it nigh impossible to *follow *him.
Although I do think that, too, is a real problem.
I mean that god makes it impossible to believe in him at all. At least for me.

The Christian god commands mankind to believe in him and worship him, and then plays hide and seek.
Can’t find him? Then you’re not searching hard enough.
Found a whole bunch of evidence that contradicts god’s book? Then you need more faith and less logical thought.

I do agree with you, though, that a more inclusive form of Christianity, that believes in universal salvation, would be a positive thing. But I’m certain that many self-declared Christians would reject that as unjust and unfair on those who have dedicated their lives to strict obedience to God’s commandments.

I think many believers feel a need to believe in an exclusive salvation. That is, one in which they are included, but from which many more are excluded.
This is the belief in Mormonism, my former religion. They will tell you that (almost) everyone is “saved” through Christ, but the elect get saved better.

If you do believe in an all-inclusive salvation that favors none and extends to all (even Old Scratch!), I salute you.
I think that’s a pretty cool outlook on life.
My own outlook is still “Dunno”.

71

That’s the kind of worship language that makes me feel a tad … unnerved.
When I hear it I start reading things into it.

I may just be too jaded.

Thanks.
Never read American Gods.
Might have picked it up from a Sandman story, though.

72

I always get into some trouble when I assert that I think that even Adolph Hitler will gain salvation. Ironically its a bit less trouble with Christians - then again, I travel in very universalist circles (this is also why some others consider the ELCA to be a hive of scum and villainy, I guess). Sometimes it seems that even the non-believers want people to earn God’s grace ;).

73

American Gods definitely has some of its roots in Sandman. If you liked the one, you should check out the other.

74

Not my actual belief, but it was what my old roommate believed: he was a universalist, who held that, at the very end, even Satan would be saved. My friend used to say that God’s plan was not only to save everyone, but in the best way possible for them.

Thus, someone who suffers from, say, anger, would be saved directly through events leading from his anger issues. Satan, presumably, would be saved because of, not in spite of, his pride.

It’s a remarkably pleasant faith. My friend is gone now, and it would be nice if he were right.

Alas, no, for me, I’m a fairly hard-edged atheist. Faith is just a fantasy people share to deny the truth of the world.

75

Most people I talk to agree that, since Hitler only committed finite (vast, but finite) evil, he should not be punished infinitely.

I actually have met one chap who believes that Hitler was infinitely evil. That kinda stopped the conversation.

76

Back to C.S. Lewis, who said that with each moral choice, we are changing ourselves. I am roughly paraphrasing here, but we are all gradually becoming either a thing of horror you would meet in a nightmare, or a being you would be strongly tempted to worship. See - “Hell” is this world; “hell” is the place that is not-God. So you stay attached to the not-God, or you elect to cut ties - to become enlightened - to move into God. God is the same no matter what you choose. God’s love is ardent - burning - intense - infinite; the people who have elected to move Godward experience this as love. The people - maybe Hitler, for example - who don’t, experience the very same love of God as shame, guilt, horror, torment, damnation. They wander the golden pavements of Heaven and complain that the bricks hurt their feet, the goddamn choir is annoyingly loud, and God just won’t ever leave me the fuck ALONE, goddammit!

I have a pet theory that the best way to understand the crucifixion is something like this. God, who is infinite in every way, including selflessness, wanted to express that selflessness by sharing his perfection with others. But if you’re God, there are no others. So God had to create a condition of not-Godness. He had to, in a sense, produce a small part of his “spiritual body” that was necrotic - dead, because he is life. He knew, however, that in doing such a thing - and populating it with creatures that would live in it so that, in due time, they could experience all he wanted to share of his perfection of knowledge, love, wisdom, peace, joy - he would be doing something morally reprehensible and deserving of punishment. God had to die: both to create the condition of “not-God” and to simultaneously atone for the sin of doing so. So God - since spacetime means nothing to him; the kosmos/multiverse/whatever is only a mathematical point to him - got himself incarnated in 1st century Judea, roused a lot of rabble, got himself executed by the Romans - and then rose again, because he is life itself. Bob’s yer uncle - two problems solved at one fell swoop.

Now, IMHO, this helps to explain a lot. God died for our sins, yes - in the sense that he is ultimately responsible for them. In not-God, where we are, science operates normally - cosmology, evolution, what-have-you. God is not observable, nor provable, because we are in not-God. This also, to me, explains suffering. In another thread, someone said that the first, and last, reason why they can’t believe in God is terminally-ill children. OK: in a standard, atheist. materialistic universe, yes, the idea of terminally-ill children sucks, because they are innocent, sick, and they die. But then, that’s it. Utter hopelessness. But if God is on the cross while they are in the hospital - he suffers more than they do, because it’s his fault. They get to move into God when they die, because his sacrifice saved them. God’s suffering is paradoxical and multivalent; seen one way, it’s nothing to him, because, well, uh, GOD; seen another way, it is infinite, as he himself is defined to be. We shall live with him, if we suffer with him.

I’ve elsewhere declared myself to be a non-traditional theist; I suppose I’ve just outed myself as a non-traditional Christian. Amen.

77

Same reason he needs a spaceship.

78

And money. Don’t forget money. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! (George Carlin)

79

I’ve never heard it expressed this way. Very nice, indeed. Thanks!