God is quite busy
Out of context: Reply #148
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- gramme0
Hell did not exist from the beginning, it was created as a place for punishment. The best definition for hell is not the medieval, quaint picture of a lake of burning fire, but rather it is the complete absence of God's spirit—the only place where he is not present. God is aware of what goes on in hell, but he does not commune with the damned in any way. Hell is the bitterest loneliness and most excruciating pain that exists.
Originally, God created a perfect world, where Adam and Eve would be immortal, free from sin, never leaving this world but always communing directly—even physically speaking with God. There was no need for punishment because God's requirements for perfect righteousness and justice had not yet been violated.
ukit, I can't give you a clear reason why God allowed/allows evil to take place in the world. I can tell you that he, from the beginning, gave man the ability to choose good or evil. God did not want to create cosmic pawns. Adam and Eve abused this privilege by eating from the forbidden tree and then lying to God. By choosing to sin, a lack of perfection was introduced into the world. Evil, as I mentioned before, is primarily a lack of perfection. This is why all sin is equal in God's eyes, because all sin is a departure from perfection in some degree or another. If I've broken one of his commandments, I'm guilty of breaking all of them because I have introduced evil.
Sin is a hereditary spiritual illness. Adam and Eve passed it on to their children and so on. Ukit, it's worth noting that Adam and Eve were somewhere in the Middle East. They were not white people, nor were their offspring, who eventually moved outward from Mesopotamia and populated the earth, splitting off into genetically shifting groups that became the various races we have today. God's people were originally in the Middle East, rather than white people in Western cultures. It just so happens that in subsequent centuries, Christianity spread west more than in any other direction, which is why to this day you find so many Christians in Western countries... although, any missionary can tell you that Christians are found all over the world, and that the faith is growing most rapidly in oppressed places like China, India, etc.
God is loving, but he is just. He requires perfection. He knew that we could not attain perfection, and so he gave the Jews a promised Messiah to look forward to, and thus through faith guarantee their salvation; we who came after Christ can look back to the cross, where God the perfect Son took the punishment meant for us all.
How the hell, you might wonder, could one man, one death, pay for the sins of anyone who believes in him? Only because of who he was/is: God incarnate. Because God preceded all and created all, for God to die and accept our punishment means that no other sacrifice was needed.
So, again, why has this drama come to pass? Why not disallow evil from the beginning? All I know is that it all serves to glorify God somehow. I fully admit that it is a mystery. He has promised in his word that he will reveal all at the final day, that his full purpose will become clear to everyone past, present and future. I believe this will come to be, because God has not yet failed to deliver on any of his promises. Why should this promise be any different?
We judge people's character by their actions. From what I know of God's actions, he is good. Just and fair, but good. He is so good that he was willing to go to hell in our place. It doesn't get any better than that.