Pointing out the fact that running around saying that you want people to be condemned to suffering for all of eternity while at the same time saying we should all have love and forgiveness and compassion for one another makes you a hypocrite isn't a snarky one-liner. It's a basic fact. And it becomes noticeable when you accuse others of hypocrisy.
There is no hypocrisy in my position. None. Yes, I believe there is a hell, and I want there to be a hell, and I want it to be as sparsely inhabited as possible. It is no different than wanting a maximum security prison to exist, as a judicial measure of last resort, while also hoping that very, very few people commit crimes deserving of incarceration there. How is there any hypocrisy or inconsistency in that?
"Thoroughly attested?"
Um... the gospels?
No I do not. I readily recognize that Jesus and I had differences of belief. Exactly where we differ, I'm not sure, because we don't have any records of what Jesus actually taught from either Jesus or anyone who was there, but I think it's safe to say we disagree on several issues.
Okay, so the gospels aren't good enough for you because they aren't eyewitness accounts. And even if they were they could've been embellished. Well, you can go one of two ways from there.
First, you can say that we ultimately can't know anything for sure about who Jesus was. In that case, why follow him? Why be the disciple of a straight up enigma? You might as well follow the teachings of Weegdorf Lukenburg, a medieval Bulgarian mystic who probably never existed, but then again he might've, because ultimately we can't be sure.
Alternatively, you could acknowledge that, in a culture steeped in oral tradition, at the very least the parables of Jesus were transmitted with a high degree of fidelity. Then, since Jesus told many different parables warning people of the danger of hell and describing the torment of those who go there, you would have to admit that Jesus really did believe in both a loving heavenly Father and hell. In which case, his moral worldview is more like mine, and crude and inferior relative to your own. And in that case, again, why follow him? For "a pupil is not above his teacher." (Luke 6:40)
So because I disagree with you, I'm a Nazi? Really now?
It was hyperbole meant to jar you into realizing the fallacy of your approach to Jesus. Guess it didn't stick.
How's about actually addressing this part that you, conveniently, did not quote?
Fine.
Quote from Highroller »
You say it's illogical or impossible for God to redeem the world. Why? Nothing is impossible for God. That's in the Bible. Why would an infinitely loving being that you say that God is only forgive some of the people of their sins and the rest instead condemn to eternal suffering when he could forgive all of them? You say we're all, as human beings, inherently sinful against God. How then does it make any sense to only redeem some and punish the rest if we're all guilty of being human equally together?
Actually, the Bible does say that some things are impossible for God; most specifically He cannot violate His own holy nature. For example, Titus 1:2 tells us that God cannot lie.
Now as to forgiveness: as I mentioned earlier, forgiveness is not the same as redemption or reconciliation. Forgiveness removes the offense of our brokenness; redemption restores us to wholeness. God has forgiven everyone on the cross, whereby He says, "Your sins do not turn me away from you; I am willing and eager to make you whole and welcome you home." But then the ball is in our court; for we must accept God's offer of reconciliation. If we refuse, He cannot redeem us without violating our agency or overriding our free will. If God removes our capacity for self-creation, then He goes against Himself, for the Creator created us in his own image.
Remember the parable of the prodigal son? The Father was overjoyed when the prodigal came home; but the prodigal had to make that choice of his own volition.
Bitsy:
While I can sympathize with what you're saying, the matter at stake here is hardly "the most minute detail." Yes, Protestants arguing with Catholics about the nature of the Eucharist is silly. Even arguments about Creationism vs. theistic evolution are in some sense frivolous (though potentially impactful to public education). But the nature of God's character, His love, the ultimate fate of human souls... these are significant things. You are right to suggest that we should be humble in handling them. I need to do better on that point.
I'm just going to respond to the one thing you said that was actually worth saying. Not all the snarky one-liners where you continue to verbally degrade and belittle me, which is what you have a marked habit of doing in your conversations with anyone with whom you disagree, and which is why I find you to be the single most obnoxious regular poster on this forum and wish you would go the way of TIBA (just telling it like it is).
Nobody deserves heaven. Nobody deserves God's love. Nobody deserves love of any kind. And it's not a matter of whether or not we're horrible or whatever, it's that you can't "deserve" love. That's not how love works. It's not a transaction. It's not that I do this and therefore I deserve love. Anyone who speaks of "deserving" love doesn't know what love is.
Love is a gift. Love is offered freely. It's not about what one does, it's about who one is. And indeed the truest love is the love that is offered without any conditions, without thought of anything in return.
At the heart of Christianity is that it is impossible for man to be anything other than flawed, but that God offers his love anyway, not because we're perfect, not because we're anything other than ****ed up, but because God loves us anyway. Because God so loves the world.
Yes, this is all true. This is well said. Jesus was adamant about God's love for the world. His teachings on the matter are breathtaking.
He was also adamant about the reality of hell. And you say to me, "Oh, come off it, you're not Jesus," when you're the one trying to one-up Jesus by insisting that no righteous person could possibly believe such an abominable thing.
You call yourself a Christian, and yet you not only cherry-pick your way through the Bible at large (which, yes, I also do); you pick and choose which parts of the thoroughly attested personage of Jesus you like and sweep the rest under the rug. That is disingenuous in the extreme; in such a case we might as well praise Hitler for his love of animals while ignoring all the racist, warmongering and genocidal parts of his person.
I apologize; I cannot keep answering questions here at the present. I have frankly gotten in over my head. My own thoughts on the matter of hell are not sufficiently clear and well-ordered to make any sort of reasonable defense of the doctrine, especially to people who do not even accept the existence of God as an axiom. When I get all my ducks in a row I may make another attempt.
One thing I can say with absolute certainty is this: I am convinced that God's whole point in making us was to increase the size of the Divine Family. "He became what we are so that he might make us what he is." (Athanasius of Alexandria)
In this mortal life, we can show ourselves to be true Sons and Daughters of the Father by treating one another with the utmost respect and compassion and graciousness; by acting towards flawed mortals as if they were in fact radiant gods. Then after we die "the perishable shall be raised imperishable," and God will joyously welcome us into His household. But there will be people who go through life simply using and abusing and despising their fellow human beings, or defiling themselves with merely animal pleasures, growing obese or addicted or sexually exhausted without a thought towards transcendence. They will not inherit a greater life who ***** on this life. They will not see God's face who can barely stand to look at the faces of their brothers and sisters.
So I am convinced that for some there must be a place of separation or dismissal, a hell. But that word and that idea are freighted with two thousand years worth of baggage that my shoulders are not strong enough to bear up under. Again, I am sorry.
One last thing, though: thank you very much, Crashing00, for pointing out my misuse of the term "intrinsic worth." The correct statement for a Christian, I believe, would be that only God has intrinsic worth; the worth of everyone and everything else is whatever God has imputed to it.
What? Ants, dogs, and cats are not sentient. Amongst sentient beings, a justice system that handed out disproportionate protection and punishment based on "stature" would, I think, rightly be called corrupt and unjust. When poor people are punished more swiftly and severely for crimes against rich people, or black people against white people, or anything of the sort -- we deplore it, do we not?
Of course. Because we understand, correctly, that all human beings have intrinsically the same worth, regardless of their abilities or genetics or economic position. That they are "created equal," as our Declaration of Independence states.
It does not follow necessarily that all sentient beings are created equal. Suppose there were a sentient planet -- a genuine Gaia figure -- whose continued life made possible the life of other (human scale) sentient beings that walked upon her surface. Would not her life be intrinsically more precious than the life of humanoids?
Certainly, if I killed (or tried to kill) God, I would expect his dying vengeance to be terrible.
Well, one of the central points of Christianity is that God deliberately positioned Himself in such a way as we could kill Him; and that's just what we did. In the most gruesome way possible.
And, we would do it again. If Jesus were to have come in modern times, there are many nations where the state would publicly execute him or privately "disappear" him in short order. Even in Western democracies, he would be widely regarded by the authorities as a fanatic and a rabble rouser; and in due time he would be assassinated and many would breathe a sigh of relief and say, "Good riddance!" That's just how it goes when someone rocks the boat too much, especially when they prick peoples' consciences in the process.
Analogies of crime and punishment only extend so far. The salient point for Christianity is that we are all, in our natures, cut from the same cloth as the archetypal rebels Adam and Eve. We depose God from the throne of our hearts, preferring the gods of material success and pleasure. We salivate over and call "enlightened" any theory or philosophy that allows us to deny His existence. Or we claim to believe in and love Him while making Him a mouthpiece for our obviously carnal desires (as in the "prosperity gospel" preached by Joel Osteen and others). Ours is an adolescent race, in perpetual resistance to the discipline of a heavenly Father.
The point is that God doesn't owe us anything, though we owe Him our very existence; and if He were to destroy the world He would be guilty of nothing more than a playwright who crumbled up a script because he found his characters unsatisfying, or a computer programmer who pulled the plug on a simulation. And we especially hate to hear talk like this. Atheists have no problem professing (based on the apparent evidence of the cosmos) that human beings are profoundly, mind-bogglingly insignificant; yet they take it as a personal offense when Christians assert that God is not beholden to us. There is no rationality to this response but only wounded pride.
I suppose I am wandering in my speech here. You can respond as you wish; though if you're not willing to take seriously the idea of a God who is not only loving and just but sovereign, we might as well not waste one another's time.
There's a fair number of things that make Christianity unacceptable to me, but this one is definitely in the top ten.
Infinite torment for finite crimes.
Define "finite crimes."
Certainly, we can only commit crimes for the duration of our mortal lives. But observe that the severity of a crime has nothing to do with how long is spent in the commission of that crime. An embezzling scheme could take months to enact; a murder could be done in seconds, yet it would be the far more heinous crime.
Observe, further, that the severity of a crime is tied to the stature of the offended party. If you exterminate a whole hive of ants, that would not be considered a crime except perhaps in the extremely strict Jain religion. If you maliciously kill a cat or a dog, you could receive a sentence of some months for animal cruelty. If you commit arson and burn down the house of another person then, even if no one is hurt, you could expect to spend years in prison.
What, then, of crimes committed against God? What is the appropriate penalty for crimes against a being of infinite stature and significance?
You might say, "But surely nothing we do could actually harm God." True; but we accept the principle of mens rea ("guilty mind") in all our judicial dealings. Suppose you had a gun and fired it at me, meaning to kill me; but unbeknownst to you it was loaded with blanks. Or suppose you fired bullets at me but there was an intervening pane of bulletproof glass. In either case, though your deed could not actually harm me, yet you would be charged with attempted murder.
Without proposing a "therefore," I would simply ask you to carefully consider these points.
Highroller, your response is exactly as I foresaw it would be. So there is nothing more for either of us to say here; though I do sincerely hope that one day (not to say I am faultless on this point) you will learn to be gracious in your disagreements with people. Good day.
As an deist who used to be a Jew, I just don't see what makes it any more believable than Judaism. The whole idea of a "son of God", saints, hell, fallen angels, and eternal judgment is much less believable than the comparable simplicity of Judaism.
I find reality to be rather complex in my experience; and I feel that any religion which is true to reality will also necessarily be rather complex -- though perhaps the perceived complexity and nuance of anything depends much on the mind that engages it.
I would question the assertion that Judaism is "comparably simple," as I have studied enough of it to know that there is a distinction (and contentious relationship) between written Torah and oral Torah; that the vast exegesis of the rabbis is not for nothing; and that the need for explaining how "God's chosen people" have been the subject of such grave historical misfortunes is at least as theologically thorny as, say, the doctrine of the Trinity.
Clearly, this is the cornerstone of everything here: we disagree on what true love is and whether it is compatible with hell.
Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain which nicely sums up my view of God:
Quote from C.S. Lewis »
“You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes.”
See, that's the only conception of love that I find to be really dignifying. Whereas you seem to prefer to believe in (in Lewis's words) a "senile benevolence" in heaven, I want a God who cares enough about me to get angry if I start mucking up my life. I want a God who respects me enough to allow me to experience (and if need be suffer) the consequences of my actions. Not a "helicopter parent" who dashes in with a Magic Eraser to wipe away every unpleasantry, regardless of whether I even feel any contrition or remorse.
My God! I want a God who takes good and evil seriously! Who created a universe not as some idle simulation, where running someone over with your car has ultimately the same impact (read: NONE) whether done in real life or in Grand Theft Auto, but where our words and deeds and cultivated characters have genuine and even everlasting repercussions. None of this, "bloodthirsty mass murderers are on the same page as average people" bull*****.
Yes, I want there to be a heaven and a hell! I want an abyss of darkness that contrasts the light and allows it to shine all the brighter, or even to shine at all. And I don't just want hell for other people, as you slanderously insinuate. I want to be allowed to damn myself if such is my will. I want there to be a separation of the sheep and the goats even without taking for granted that I am one of the sheep.
No doubt you will find all of this abominable and will sharply criticize me. Well, in the words of Martin Luther: "Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders."* We both claim to be Christians but our conceptions of Christ are incompatible, and evidently intractable. So now there is really no point in continuing this. One day, in any case, the truth will be made manifest.
Phelps was guilty of a lot of things, and was not shining example of humanity, to be sure. However, one thing that can be said about him was that he did not claim he wasn't advocating the damnation of people when he was. He was upfront and honest about that fact.
So for you to condemn him for wanting people to be sent to hell when you're doing the exact same thing makes you completely hypocritical. So for someone who wants to run around talking about hypocrisy, well: remove plank from eye.
There's no hypocrisy. Phelps did want people to go to hell; I don't want anyone to go there. Neither should any Christian.
To me it seems like I'm saying, "If you smoke and eat a lot of processed meat, you're going to get cancer," and you're saying, "How dare you believe that such a dreadful consequence could follow from such minor vices as smoking and meat-eating? You clearly want people to get cancer!"
I do, however, find it noteworthy that you take umbrage at the idea of people not receiving hell or divine justice, when the entire point of Jesus' ministry was to prevent such things from happening.
Jesus continually preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." (Matthew 4:17) All his parables dealing with judgment made it clear that there would be many who would not heed his message, would not repent, and who would go to hell as a result. "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
It's rather odd that you don't see the inherent hypocrisy in someone claiming to love the sinner and not the sin, claiming to be compassionate towards sinners and not want them to be damned, start complaining at the idea that those who sin wouldn't be sent into hell to suffer with all eternity.
You are willfully omitting a qualifying word that I have tried to be careful and use wherever it is warranted. My claim (and the gospel's) is that unrepentant sinners will go to hell. Do you hear that, Highroller? UNREPENTANT. The serial rapist who feels no shame, but gloats about how many virgins he defiled. The Ponzi scheme architect who suffers no pangs of conscience for robbing his investors, but laughs inwardly at their gullibility. The abusive husband who, every time he beats his wife and leaves her bruised and whimpering, assures himself that she actually deserved worse than what he gave her. People like that are the hellbound ones.
And yes, God does love them. But true love does not permit or accommodate all. It is candid. It says to the wayward beloved, "You can make better choices. I believe that you can; I will help you to do so if you let me. But if you're going to keep pushing me away and keep causing harm, then one day I will remove my embrace from you. I will allow you to suffer the full consequences of your evil, because the way you are living is incompatible with reality, and I love you too much to lie to you."
That's ridiculous. It is entirely possible to forgive someone even when they don't want us to.
Forgiving and redeeming are not the same thing.
Or God could just forgive them and let them in.
Kind of ruins that nice false dichotomy you were creating though, huh?
So God says to Osama bin Laden, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, etc: "Hey guys, you killed thousands and millions, causing untold fear and suffering. But you know what? All's forgiven, since you were clearly acting out of ignorance. The gates of heaven are open -- c'mon in!"
What, are you denying that the coming of the Kingdom of God does not involve sweeping away the evil people into hell? That's the whole point of apocalyptic eschatology. Fundamental to that is the belief that the world is locked in a battle of good and evil, and in the end, the evil of the world, especially the evil people, will be destroyed in a climactic battle by God and only the good will remain. The evil people will go to eternal wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Okay, let me ask you: what do you think is the spiritual significance of the evil in the world? Apparently you do not believe it derives from Satan, so what is it? Simple ignorance, coupled with addictive passions and a lack of self-control, perhaps? Would we all be good if only we knew better? Seriously, what's your take on it?
Bull.
It's clear that hell is where sinners are to suffer the wrath of God. The wrath of God. Those who sin are said to be storing up God's wrath for themselves. The judgement will be the coming of God's wrath. God is characterized acting out of wrath and vengeance. God is clearly active in this.
Wrath is not always an acting out; sometimes it is to refrain from acting. If you're pissed at someone because he's running a meth lab out of his garage and ruining himself and others, and then he blows up his house, and you hear him screaming in the flames but don't try to save him because you think he deserves to burn, that is passive wrath.
Of course, I will grant that God who set up the parameters of the universe is ultimately active in whatever transpires therein. So you can have this point.
No, forgiveness that relies on someone else exacting vengeance on someone is not forgiveness. That is the opposite of forgiveness. Saying, "God will make you suffer for what you did," is not forgiveness.
To clarify, you would not be saying, "God will make you suffer for what you did." You would be saying, "I trust that God will deal with you justly." Maybe that person will repent without your knowledge and meet you in heaven and all will be wonderful. But you have to trust that people who do evil, continually and willfully, and feel no pangs of conscience but indeed are gratified by it, will finally be excluded from the human community that they have mocked and degraded.
Do you see how you are no better than Fred Phelps in saying thus?
Intrinsically I am no better than Phelps. We're both sinners, yes. But I do not think I am wrong or hypocritical in discerning that Phelps made a life out of inflicting pain and misery; that he took pride in that; and that this evinced that he turned his back on, or never knew, the love of Christ. "You shall know a tree by its fruits" and all that. Testimony from a couple of his kids that his rage was a fixture of his life even from their childhood, that he physically and verbally abused them growing up, only further confirms how lost he was.
Interesting that you object to someone taking away hell and divine justice.
You get the irony right? It's because we're talking about Christianity.
Surely you know that the orthodox Christian position is not that Christ's sacrifice removed hell or God's justice. The opening chapters of Romans are very explicit about this.
Correct. To believe anything else is to believe either that will not redeem everyone, and therefore God's love is finite, or that God is incapable of redeeming everyone, and therefore God is not omnipotent.
Omnipotence does not entail the ability to do the logically impossible. I maintain that it is logically impossible to act lovingly towards someone by redeeming them against their will. That God will not say to unrepentant evildoers, "Okay, guys, enough of this. I'm strapping you down and performing open heart surgery, taking out those shriveled wicked hearts of yours and implanting shiny new compassionate ones, so you can actually participate in heaven. I know you hate me and you're going to fight this to the end, but believe me, it's for your own good."
You know, you're just as bad as HerewardWake. Do you realize that? You both think that somehow you can come in and make these completely disingenuous, dishonest, oblivious analogies as though that crap would fly around here.
And you're perpetually evasive. Your posts are full of words but often say very little. You make assertions and never back them up.
No, the hope of the early Christian community was specifically that the evil people of the world would be destroyed. Evil would be destroyed, and the evil people of the world sent to hell was part of that hope. They definitely wanted the people to be damned.
Like this nugget here. You keep making the early Christian church out to be a bunch of arrogant spiritual sadists, without providing one scrap of scripture or extra-Biblical evidence to back it up. Yes, the Christians prayed for God's coming judgment; but they also took it earnestly as their commission to evangelize day and night so that as many people as possible might escape that judgment. They did not want anyone to be damned.
"The ultimate good of everyone"? Infinite, eternal suffering for people is the ultimate good? By what distorted, insane logic is that good? By what distorted, insane logic is that love?
Now on to this matter. Very intelligent and thoughtful Christians of this day and others have looked at the doctrine of hell and found it to be disturbing, yet ultimately consistent with a God of love. If you want a more contemporary take on it than you'd get from the church fathers, read C.S. Lewis or Timothy Keller. If you disagree with them (and me), then fine. However, I will make two further points:
The lake of fire is metaphorical. Hell is a place or state of being that is no doubt horrific; being burnt alive is meant to convey that. However, Jesus did not refer to hell only as a lake of fire but also as "the darkness outside," suggesting both coldness and the absence of such light as fire would create. Hell is again the place "where the worm does not die," suggesting a state of perpetual decay and corruption, though moist wormy decay would again seem to be incompatible with fire. All of this symbolic language is simply meant to drive home the point that hell is not somewhere you want to go. Thankfully, anyone can turn aside from it, because...
Hell is not God actively torturing people, but passively allowing them to torture themselves. And this is a reluctant letting go. But if people consistently choose to abuse and deceive and boast and mock -- if that is the character they build in this life -- then one day God is going to say, "You're not hurting my children anymore. I'm taking them away from you and your predations. Now you will have no one to abuse but abusers, no one to deceive but deceivers, no one to boast to but boasters, no one to mock but mockers. You will be treated to the mirror gallery of horrors that is your life, always afflicted, confused and belittled. For as you did unto others, so shall it be done unto you."
If you made this thread because you wanted to know why people might find Christianity morally unacceptable, congratulations, you answered your own question. Look no further than the post you just made.
Well, there is that. We have a very soft and sugar-coated view of love in the peaceful West. We believe that forgiveness is cheap and easy, because most of us have never been subjected to anything really horrific. But how does one forgive the destruction of one's home in war? Or the rape and murder of one's sister? Or the oppression of an occupying army? How does one not seek vengeance in those cases? The only way is to believe in a God not only of love, but of justice. Only through assurance by faith that justice will be done can we resist the urge to make ourselves judge, jury and executioner, opening up the possibility of forgiveness. "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)
Take away hell, and you take away divine justice. How then is the human cycle of hatred and violence broken?
EDIT:
Finally I will add this. If you are a universalist, if you believe there is no hell and God takes everyone into heaven, then you are really being dishonest with yourself and everyone else by calling yourself a Christian.
Let "sin" equal "anything that drives a wedge between man and God, creating separation." If you believe that everyone goes to heaven, then ultimately there is no separation between man and God -- therefore no sin or at least no mortal sin. If there is no mortal sin, then Jesus did not need to die for our sake. He was not, as accredited by John the Baptist, "the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." So the eschatalogical significance of his death on the cross -- truly the crux of Christian faith -- is removed and his death is death is rendered merely tragic, his resurrection absurd.
"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." (1 Cor. 15:3-4) This is a matter of primal importance. If you don't believe it, do yourself and everyone else a favor and stop professing to be a Christian; because what you really are is a monist who thinks Jesus is pretty cool.
So one can want the time of judgment and damnation to come, but not for judgment and damnation to come?
That doesn't make a lick of sense, does it? That's like saying that one can want a horse race but not the racing of horses.
Not at all. Whenever there is an outbreak of a deadly, contagious and incurable disease like ebola, we wish (for the good of everyone) that those who are infected be quarantined, even against their will if necessary. Does that mean that we wish for quarantines, or that we hate sick people?
The Christian position is roughly this: sin is sickness. There is an a cure, freely offered to everyone. But the pernicious thing about sin is that this disease is so widespread that its symptoms are popularly mistaken for signs of normalcy or health; and many of the most virulently infected will not even admit that they are sick. Eventually, for the ultimate good of everyone, God is going to establish a quarantine zone for those who refuse the cure. That quarantine zone is, of course, the hell to which you object so strongly.
Yes, you can cherry pick a hundred quotes about how much God loves everyone from the Bible. None of that changes the fact that God damns people to eternal suffering in the Bible, which is incongruous with love, and sooner or later, you're going to have to actually address the problem instead of pretending it will go away.
Hell is only incongruous with love if you don't value human autonomy very much.
Do you suppose that there can be such a thing as "heaven" if therein are unrepentant murderers, rapists, thieves and liars? Of course not. So what will God do when confronted with an evildoer who refuses to repent or admit his evil? He can let that person into heaven anyway, and thereby destroy heaven; or He can forcibly "reprogram" or brainwash the evildoer into being a good person, and thereby destroy human autonomy. And if He refuses to destroy our autonomy (since He created us in His own image), there remains only one option: exclude the rebel from heaven. Put him somewhere else, with all the other hardened rebels; and that "somewhere else" need not be a literal lake of fire. It could even start out as a very pleasant place. But it inexorably becomes hell because of the nature of its inhabitants. No more kindness, patience, generosity or empathy. Only a million deranged and utterly selfish selves, narcisists suffering the intolerable presence of other narcisists, perpetually hating and being hated, each one becoming a furnace of indignation and rage that burns hotter than any physical fire.
Now you might say that God should snuff such people out rather than allowing them to come to such a wretched state. And that course of action would no doubt be less painful for God. But the orthodox Christian position is that God values us so highly that He is willing to let us see the consequences of our free will through to the very end, whether that end be glorious or bitter.
So no, hell is not incongruous with God's love. You can certainly argue otherwise; but I don't see how you can argue otherwise and still call yourself a Christian, seeing as Jesus spoke of hell more than He did of heaven.
To which I repeat, this is the same movement of people of whom the great hope and cause of future rejoicing is that God will one day sweep away the world and damn all those not part of the Christ movement to eternal hellfire. This is the same movement that says that all those who behave in wickedness through unnatural lusts deserve horrible punishments. This is the same movement that praises God for God's bestowing justice unto those who behaved wickedly.
Yes, Christians were and are called to anticipate the eschaton, the ultimate victory of God, when death dies, evil is vanquished and the unrepentant evildoers are cast into "the outer darkness," removed from Creation itself. But they are not called to wish the ultimate punishment upon anyone.
As Jesus declared, the "gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." (Matthew 24:14) Justice and mercy both demand that everyone be given a chance to hear and respond. "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!" (Ezekiel 18:32)
Where, then, do you see the Bible instructing Christians to rejoice in or hope for the damnation of anyone? The closest thing I could find is in Revelation, when God condemns the Whore of Babylon to hell and the saints respond to the announcement by saying, "Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever!" (Revelation 19:3) Yet the Whore of Babylon is not even a proper person, but a demonic eschatological figure who rides the seven headed beast from Daniel's prophecy. She is "drunk with the blood of the saints" (Rev. 17:6), and is explicitly a stand-in for Rome, and all the brutality, idolatry and oppression coming from Rome: "The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth." (Rev. 17:18)
So, anywaaaaay...
You keep saying that the Bible says Christians should hate sinners and should rejoice at those who get damned. Now it's time to start backing it up with actual passages from the Bible, if you have any.
I am rather dismayed that you are sidestepping or willfully ignoring what is for me the crux of the matter; because I have not once denied that Paul's writings can and do support a hatred of homosexual acts. I am not denying that Phelps had scriptural justification in believing that gays go to hell. I am only denying that he had any scriptural justification for acting with hatred and malice towards unbelievers. And I should hope you are able to call black "black" and admit that protesting at someone's funeral is an utterly hateful and malicious act. If not, then we are really done here.
There is no hypocrisy in my position. None. Yes, I believe there is a hell, and I want there to be a hell, and I want it to be as sparsely inhabited as possible. It is no different than wanting a maximum security prison to exist, as a judicial measure of last resort, while also hoping that very, very few people commit crimes deserving of incarceration there. How is there any hypocrisy or inconsistency in that?
Um... the gospels?
Okay, so the gospels aren't good enough for you because they aren't eyewitness accounts. And even if they were they could've been embellished. Well, you can go one of two ways from there.
First, you can say that we ultimately can't know anything for sure about who Jesus was. In that case, why follow him? Why be the disciple of a straight up enigma? You might as well follow the teachings of Weegdorf Lukenburg, a medieval Bulgarian mystic who probably never existed, but then again he might've, because ultimately we can't be sure.
Alternatively, you could acknowledge that, in a culture steeped in oral tradition, at the very least the parables of Jesus were transmitted with a high degree of fidelity. Then, since Jesus told many different parables warning people of the danger of hell and describing the torment of those who go there, you would have to admit that Jesus really did believe in both a loving heavenly Father and hell. In which case, his moral worldview is more like mine, and crude and inferior relative to your own. And in that case, again, why follow him? For "a pupil is not above his teacher." (Luke 6:40)
It was hyperbole meant to jar you into realizing the fallacy of your approach to Jesus. Guess it didn't stick.
Fine.
Actually, the Bible does say that some things are impossible for God; most specifically He cannot violate His own holy nature. For example, Titus 1:2 tells us that God cannot lie.
Now as to forgiveness: as I mentioned earlier, forgiveness is not the same as redemption or reconciliation. Forgiveness removes the offense of our brokenness; redemption restores us to wholeness. God has forgiven everyone on the cross, whereby He says, "Your sins do not turn me away from you; I am willing and eager to make you whole and welcome you home." But then the ball is in our court; for we must accept God's offer of reconciliation. If we refuse, He cannot redeem us without violating our agency or overriding our free will. If God removes our capacity for self-creation, then He goes against Himself, for the Creator created us in his own image.
Remember the parable of the prodigal son? The Father was overjoyed when the prodigal came home; but the prodigal had to make that choice of his own volition.
Bitsy:
While I can sympathize with what you're saying, the matter at stake here is hardly "the most minute detail." Yes, Protestants arguing with Catholics about the nature of the Eucharist is silly. Even arguments about Creationism vs. theistic evolution are in some sense frivolous (though potentially impactful to public education). But the nature of God's character, His love, the ultimate fate of human souls... these are significant things. You are right to suggest that we should be humble in handling them. I need to do better on that point.
I'm just going to respond to the one thing you said that was actually worth saying. Not all the snarky one-liners where you continue to verbally degrade and belittle me, which is what you have a marked habit of doing in your conversations with anyone with whom you disagree, and which is why I find you to be the single most obnoxious regular poster on this forum and wish you would go the way of TIBA (just telling it like it is).
Yes, this is all true. This is well said. Jesus was adamant about God's love for the world. His teachings on the matter are breathtaking.
He was also adamant about the reality of hell. And you say to me, "Oh, come off it, you're not Jesus," when you're the one trying to one-up Jesus by insisting that no righteous person could possibly believe such an abominable thing.
You call yourself a Christian, and yet you not only cherry-pick your way through the Bible at large (which, yes, I also do); you pick and choose which parts of the thoroughly attested personage of Jesus you like and sweep the rest under the rug. That is disingenuous in the extreme; in such a case we might as well praise Hitler for his love of animals while ignoring all the racist, warmongering and genocidal parts of his person.
So, right... plank out of eye and all that.
I apologize; I cannot keep answering questions here at the present. I have frankly gotten in over my head. My own thoughts on the matter of hell are not sufficiently clear and well-ordered to make any sort of reasonable defense of the doctrine, especially to people who do not even accept the existence of God as an axiom. When I get all my ducks in a row I may make another attempt.
One thing I can say with absolute certainty is this: I am convinced that God's whole point in making us was to increase the size of the Divine Family. "He became what we are so that he might make us what he is." (Athanasius of Alexandria)
In this mortal life, we can show ourselves to be true Sons and Daughters of the Father by treating one another with the utmost respect and compassion and graciousness; by acting towards flawed mortals as if they were in fact radiant gods. Then after we die "the perishable shall be raised imperishable," and God will joyously welcome us into His household. But there will be people who go through life simply using and abusing and despising their fellow human beings, or defiling themselves with merely animal pleasures, growing obese or addicted or sexually exhausted without a thought towards transcendence. They will not inherit a greater life who ***** on this life. They will not see God's face who can barely stand to look at the faces of their brothers and sisters.
So I am convinced that for some there must be a place of separation or dismissal, a hell. But that word and that idea are freighted with two thousand years worth of baggage that my shoulders are not strong enough to bear up under. Again, I am sorry.
One last thing, though: thank you very much, Crashing00, for pointing out my misuse of the term "intrinsic worth." The correct statement for a Christian, I believe, would be that only God has intrinsic worth; the worth of everyone and everything else is whatever God has imputed to it.
Of course. Because we understand, correctly, that all human beings have intrinsically the same worth, regardless of their abilities or genetics or economic position. That they are "created equal," as our Declaration of Independence states.
It does not follow necessarily that all sentient beings are created equal. Suppose there were a sentient planet -- a genuine Gaia figure -- whose continued life made possible the life of other (human scale) sentient beings that walked upon her surface. Would not her life be intrinsically more precious than the life of humanoids?
Well, one of the central points of Christianity is that God deliberately positioned Himself in such a way as we could kill Him; and that's just what we did. In the most gruesome way possible.
And, we would do it again. If Jesus were to have come in modern times, there are many nations where the state would publicly execute him or privately "disappear" him in short order. Even in Western democracies, he would be widely regarded by the authorities as a fanatic and a rabble rouser; and in due time he would be assassinated and many would breathe a sigh of relief and say, "Good riddance!" That's just how it goes when someone rocks the boat too much, especially when they prick peoples' consciences in the process.
Analogies of crime and punishment only extend so far. The salient point for Christianity is that we are all, in our natures, cut from the same cloth as the archetypal rebels Adam and Eve. We depose God from the throne of our hearts, preferring the gods of material success and pleasure. We salivate over and call "enlightened" any theory or philosophy that allows us to deny His existence. Or we claim to believe in and love Him while making Him a mouthpiece for our obviously carnal desires (as in the "prosperity gospel" preached by Joel Osteen and others). Ours is an adolescent race, in perpetual resistance to the discipline of a heavenly Father.
The point is that God doesn't owe us anything, though we owe Him our very existence; and if He were to destroy the world He would be guilty of nothing more than a playwright who crumbled up a script because he found his characters unsatisfying, or a computer programmer who pulled the plug on a simulation. And we especially hate to hear talk like this. Atheists have no problem professing (based on the apparent evidence of the cosmos) that human beings are profoundly, mind-bogglingly insignificant; yet they take it as a personal offense when Christians assert that God is not beholden to us. There is no rationality to this response but only wounded pride.
I suppose I am wandering in my speech here. You can respond as you wish; though if you're not willing to take seriously the idea of a God who is not only loving and just but sovereign, we might as well not waste one another's time.
Define "finite crimes."
Certainly, we can only commit crimes for the duration of our mortal lives. But observe that the severity of a crime has nothing to do with how long is spent in the commission of that crime. An embezzling scheme could take months to enact; a murder could be done in seconds, yet it would be the far more heinous crime.
Observe, further, that the severity of a crime is tied to the stature of the offended party. If you exterminate a whole hive of ants, that would not be considered a crime except perhaps in the extremely strict Jain religion. If you maliciously kill a cat or a dog, you could receive a sentence of some months for animal cruelty. If you commit arson and burn down the house of another person then, even if no one is hurt, you could expect to spend years in prison.
What, then, of crimes committed against God? What is the appropriate penalty for crimes against a being of infinite stature and significance?
You might say, "But surely nothing we do could actually harm God." True; but we accept the principle of mens rea ("guilty mind") in all our judicial dealings. Suppose you had a gun and fired it at me, meaning to kill me; but unbeknownst to you it was loaded with blanks. Or suppose you fired bullets at me but there was an intervening pane of bulletproof glass. In either case, though your deed could not actually harm me, yet you would be charged with attempted murder.
Without proposing a "therefore," I would simply ask you to carefully consider these points.
I find reality to be rather complex in my experience; and I feel that any religion which is true to reality will also necessarily be rather complex -- though perhaps the perceived complexity and nuance of anything depends much on the mind that engages it.
I would question the assertion that Judaism is "comparably simple," as I have studied enough of it to know that there is a distinction (and contentious relationship) between written Torah and oral Torah; that the vast exegesis of the rabbis is not for nothing; and that the need for explaining how "God's chosen people" have been the subject of such grave historical misfortunes is at least as theologically thorny as, say, the doctrine of the Trinity.
Clearly, this is the cornerstone of everything here: we disagree on what true love is and whether it is compatible with hell.
Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain which nicely sums up my view of God:
See, that's the only conception of love that I find to be really dignifying. Whereas you seem to prefer to believe in (in Lewis's words) a "senile benevolence" in heaven, I want a God who cares enough about me to get angry if I start mucking up my life. I want a God who respects me enough to allow me to experience (and if need be suffer) the consequences of my actions. Not a "helicopter parent" who dashes in with a Magic Eraser to wipe away every unpleasantry, regardless of whether I even feel any contrition or remorse.
My God! I want a God who takes good and evil seriously! Who created a universe not as some idle simulation, where running someone over with your car has ultimately the same impact (read: NONE) whether done in real life or in Grand Theft Auto, but where our words and deeds and cultivated characters have genuine and even everlasting repercussions. None of this, "bloodthirsty mass murderers are on the same page as average people" bull*****.
Yes, I want there to be a heaven and a hell! I want an abyss of darkness that contrasts the light and allows it to shine all the brighter, or even to shine at all. And I don't just want hell for other people, as you slanderously insinuate. I want to be allowed to damn myself if such is my will. I want there to be a separation of the sheep and the goats even without taking for granted that I am one of the sheep.
No doubt you will find all of this abominable and will sharply criticize me. Well, in the words of Martin Luther: "Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders."* We both claim to be Christians but our conceptions of Christ are incompatible, and evidently intractable. So now there is really no point in continuing this. One day, in any case, the truth will be made manifest.
*= Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise.
No, it really isn't.
There's no hypocrisy. Phelps did want people to go to hell; I don't want anyone to go there. Neither should any Christian.
To me it seems like I'm saying, "If you smoke and eat a lot of processed meat, you're going to get cancer," and you're saying, "How dare you believe that such a dreadful consequence could follow from such minor vices as smoking and meat-eating? You clearly want people to get cancer!"
Jesus continually preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." (Matthew 4:17) All his parables dealing with judgment made it clear that there would be many who would not heed his message, would not repent, and who would go to hell as a result. "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
You are willfully omitting a qualifying word that I have tried to be careful and use wherever it is warranted. My claim (and the gospel's) is that unrepentant sinners will go to hell. Do you hear that, Highroller? UNREPENTANT. The serial rapist who feels no shame, but gloats about how many virgins he defiled. The Ponzi scheme architect who suffers no pangs of conscience for robbing his investors, but laughs inwardly at their gullibility. The abusive husband who, every time he beats his wife and leaves her bruised and whimpering, assures himself that she actually deserved worse than what he gave her. People like that are the hellbound ones.
And yes, God does love them. But true love does not permit or accommodate all. It is candid. It says to the wayward beloved, "You can make better choices. I believe that you can; I will help you to do so if you let me. But if you're going to keep pushing me away and keep causing harm, then one day I will remove my embrace from you. I will allow you to suffer the full consequences of your evil, because the way you are living is incompatible with reality, and I love you too much to lie to you."
Forgiving and redeeming are not the same thing.
So God says to Osama bin Laden, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, etc: "Hey guys, you killed thousands and millions, causing untold fear and suffering. But you know what? All's forgiven, since you were clearly acting out of ignorance. The gates of heaven are open -- c'mon in!"
What then does God say to their victims?
Okay, let me ask you: what do you think is the spiritual significance of the evil in the world? Apparently you do not believe it derives from Satan, so what is it? Simple ignorance, coupled with addictive passions and a lack of self-control, perhaps? Would we all be good if only we knew better? Seriously, what's your take on it?
Wrath is not always an acting out; sometimes it is to refrain from acting. If you're pissed at someone because he's running a meth lab out of his garage and ruining himself and others, and then he blows up his house, and you hear him screaming in the flames but don't try to save him because you think he deserves to burn, that is passive wrath.
Of course, I will grant that God who set up the parameters of the universe is ultimately active in whatever transpires therein. So you can have this point.
To clarify, you would not be saying, "God will make you suffer for what you did." You would be saying, "I trust that God will deal with you justly." Maybe that person will repent without your knowledge and meet you in heaven and all will be wonderful. But you have to trust that people who do evil, continually and willfully, and feel no pangs of conscience but indeed are gratified by it, will finally be excluded from the human community that they have mocked and degraded.
Intrinsically I am no better than Phelps. We're both sinners, yes. But I do not think I am wrong or hypocritical in discerning that Phelps made a life out of inflicting pain and misery; that he took pride in that; and that this evinced that he turned his back on, or never knew, the love of Christ. "You shall know a tree by its fruits" and all that. Testimony from a couple of his kids that his rage was a fixture of his life even from their childhood, that he physically and verbally abused them growing up, only further confirms how lost he was.
Surely you know that the orthodox Christian position is not that Christ's sacrifice removed hell or God's justice. The opening chapters of Romans are very explicit about this.
Omnipotence does not entail the ability to do the logically impossible. I maintain that it is logically impossible to act lovingly towards someone by redeeming them against their will. That God will not say to unrepentant evildoers, "Okay, guys, enough of this. I'm strapping you down and performing open heart surgery, taking out those shriveled wicked hearts of yours and implanting shiny new compassionate ones, so you can actually participate in heaven. I know you hate me and you're going to fight this to the end, but believe me, it's for your own good."
And you're perpetually evasive. Your posts are full of words but often say very little. You make assertions and never back them up.
Like this nugget here. You keep making the early Christian church out to be a bunch of arrogant spiritual sadists, without providing one scrap of scripture or extra-Biblical evidence to back it up. Yes, the Christians prayed for God's coming judgment; but they also took it earnestly as their commission to evangelize day and night so that as many people as possible might escape that judgment. They did not want anyone to be damned.
Now on to this matter. Very intelligent and thoughtful Christians of this day and others have looked at the doctrine of hell and found it to be disturbing, yet ultimately consistent with a God of love. If you want a more contemporary take on it than you'd get from the church fathers, read C.S. Lewis or Timothy Keller. If you disagree with them (and me), then fine. However, I will make two further points:
The lake of fire is metaphorical. Hell is a place or state of being that is no doubt horrific; being burnt alive is meant to convey that. However, Jesus did not refer to hell only as a lake of fire but also as "the darkness outside," suggesting both coldness and the absence of such light as fire would create. Hell is again the place "where the worm does not die," suggesting a state of perpetual decay and corruption, though moist wormy decay would again seem to be incompatible with fire. All of this symbolic language is simply meant to drive home the point that hell is not somewhere you want to go. Thankfully, anyone can turn aside from it, because...
Hell is not God actively torturing people, but passively allowing them to torture themselves. And this is a reluctant letting go. But if people consistently choose to abuse and deceive and boast and mock -- if that is the character they build in this life -- then one day God is going to say, "You're not hurting my children anymore. I'm taking them away from you and your predations. Now you will have no one to abuse but abusers, no one to deceive but deceivers, no one to boast to but boasters, no one to mock but mockers. You will be treated to the mirror gallery of horrors that is your life, always afflicted, confused and belittled. For as you did unto others, so shall it be done unto you."
Well, there is that. We have a very soft and sugar-coated view of love in the peaceful West. We believe that forgiveness is cheap and easy, because most of us have never been subjected to anything really horrific. But how does one forgive the destruction of one's home in war? Or the rape and murder of one's sister? Or the oppression of an occupying army? How does one not seek vengeance in those cases? The only way is to believe in a God not only of love, but of justice. Only through assurance by faith that justice will be done can we resist the urge to make ourselves judge, jury and executioner, opening up the possibility of forgiveness. "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)
Take away hell, and you take away divine justice. How then is the human cycle of hatred and violence broken?
EDIT:
Finally I will add this. If you are a universalist, if you believe there is no hell and God takes everyone into heaven, then you are really being dishonest with yourself and everyone else by calling yourself a Christian.
Let "sin" equal "anything that drives a wedge between man and God, creating separation." If you believe that everyone goes to heaven, then ultimately there is no separation between man and God -- therefore no sin or at least no mortal sin. If there is no mortal sin, then Jesus did not need to die for our sake. He was not, as accredited by John the Baptist, "the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." So the eschatalogical significance of his death on the cross -- truly the crux of Christian faith -- is removed and his death is death is rendered merely tragic, his resurrection absurd.
"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." (1 Cor. 15:3-4) This is a matter of primal importance. If you don't believe it, do yourself and everyone else a favor and stop professing to be a Christian; because what you really are is a monist who thinks Jesus is pretty cool.
Not at all. Whenever there is an outbreak of a deadly, contagious and incurable disease like ebola, we wish (for the good of everyone) that those who are infected be quarantined, even against their will if necessary. Does that mean that we wish for quarantines, or that we hate sick people?
The Christian position is roughly this: sin is sickness. There is an a cure, freely offered to everyone. But the pernicious thing about sin is that this disease is so widespread that its symptoms are popularly mistaken for signs of normalcy or health; and many of the most virulently infected will not even admit that they are sick. Eventually, for the ultimate good of everyone, God is going to establish a quarantine zone for those who refuse the cure. That quarantine zone is, of course, the hell to which you object so strongly.
Hell is only incongruous with love if you don't value human autonomy very much.
Do you suppose that there can be such a thing as "heaven" if therein are unrepentant murderers, rapists, thieves and liars? Of course not. So what will God do when confronted with an evildoer who refuses to repent or admit his evil? He can let that person into heaven anyway, and thereby destroy heaven; or He can forcibly "reprogram" or brainwash the evildoer into being a good person, and thereby destroy human autonomy. And if He refuses to destroy our autonomy (since He created us in His own image), there remains only one option: exclude the rebel from heaven. Put him somewhere else, with all the other hardened rebels; and that "somewhere else" need not be a literal lake of fire. It could even start out as a very pleasant place. But it inexorably becomes hell because of the nature of its inhabitants. No more kindness, patience, generosity or empathy. Only a million deranged and utterly selfish selves, narcisists suffering the intolerable presence of other narcisists, perpetually hating and being hated, each one becoming a furnace of indignation and rage that burns hotter than any physical fire.
Now you might say that God should snuff such people out rather than allowing them to come to such a wretched state. And that course of action would no doubt be less painful for God. But the orthodox Christian position is that God values us so highly that He is willing to let us see the consequences of our free will through to the very end, whether that end be glorious or bitter.
So no, hell is not incongruous with God's love. You can certainly argue otherwise; but I don't see how you can argue otherwise and still call yourself a Christian, seeing as Jesus spoke of hell more than He did of heaven.
Yes, Christians were and are called to anticipate the eschaton, the ultimate victory of God, when death dies, evil is vanquished and the unrepentant evildoers are cast into "the outer darkness," removed from Creation itself. But they are not called to wish the ultimate punishment upon anyone.
As Jesus declared, the "gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." (Matthew 24:14) Justice and mercy both demand that everyone be given a chance to hear and respond. "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!" (Ezekiel 18:32)
Where, then, do you see the Bible instructing Christians to rejoice in or hope for the damnation of anyone? The closest thing I could find is in Revelation, when God condemns the Whore of Babylon to hell and the saints respond to the announcement by saying, "Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever!" (Revelation 19:3) Yet the Whore of Babylon is not even a proper person, but a demonic eschatological figure who rides the seven headed beast from Daniel's prophecy. She is "drunk with the blood of the saints" (Rev. 17:6), and is explicitly a stand-in for Rome, and all the brutality, idolatry and oppression coming from Rome: "The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth." (Rev. 17:18)
So, anywaaaaay...
You keep saying that the Bible says Christians should hate sinners and should rejoice at those who get damned. Now it's time to start backing it up with actual passages from the Bible, if you have any.
I am rather dismayed that you are sidestepping or willfully ignoring what is for me the crux of the matter; because I have not once denied that Paul's writings can and do support a hatred of homosexual acts. I am not denying that Phelps had scriptural justification in believing that gays go to hell. I am only denying that he had any scriptural justification for acting with hatred and malice towards unbelievers. And I should hope you are able to call black "black" and admit that protesting at someone's funeral is an utterly hateful and malicious act. If not, then we are really done here.