We bristle at the concept of an eternal hell yet deal with and accept hell on earth daily and give little to no thought about God (except maybe to shake our fist at Him in anger)
i.e. most of us don't *seek God for answers or help when we go through Pain and suffering - i.e. hell on earth, - we cope with it **any way we can as long as it doesn't directly involve God. Humanity as a whole avoids God like the plague. At best we consider Him as a last restort instead of the primary solution.We settle for hell on earth even though God has provided an answer and solution. We reject, ignore, even mock God's offer if we hear it. We certainly do not seek or call out to Him for that solution.
What is the solution? Christ became a human like us so He could enter and embrace this world of sorrow and suffering (caused by our rejecting Him) and took our hell onto himself - physically and emotionally - allowing it kill him. He did this so we would not have to but eventually be freed from it forever.
And we will be freed if we choose to accept his offer. If we reject His offer, we are left with our current strategy of dealing with pain and death **without God i.e. looking to ourselves (and anything we can get our hands on to cope with our pain) instead of to God. Hell is simply the continuation into eternity of the course - without God - we are already on.
The difference between using this strategy in our current existence vs when we pass into eternity is we won't have the ***resources we now use (abuse) to numb our pain. There will be nothing available to quench our longings and thirst in our next existance. All we will have is memories of how we tried to cope and longing or thirsting for the current blessings of life again but never being able to have them.
God doesn't send anyone to hell. We send ourselves. It is our choice. It is not because there is no offer or solution to our dilemma but we go out of our way to ignore, deny or ****ridicule it (Him). We are tenaciously committed to being our own god even if it means continuing in our pain.
For a further discussion of heaven and hell click here.
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* We may seek relief and call upon God for it but this is not seeking God but simply relief and God as a means to it - i.e. We treat God as some genie in a bottle to grant our wish. We are only interested in God as a means of relief and not God himself.
** We might give a "hat tip" or "nod" to God when facing death, hoping He will notice and it will be enough to appease God after living our whole life avoiding him and pursuing the pleasures of creation instead of Him, the Creator of all things.
*** We use the gifts of God to address our pain yet we never acknowledge (thank) God as the Creator and Giver of those gifts. And what are those gifts? Anything in creation available to us (or within us) to help us numb or cope with our pain, be it recreation, substance abuse, abuse of sex, food, our God given abilities etc.... all good gifts from God used (i.e. misused) by us to maintain our independence from God.
**** Have you ever wondered why people only use the name of Christ in a disparaging manner and not the name of Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, or some other religious figure. (Do people who live in a Muslem society throw around the name of Mohammad like we do Christ's name in the west? No. Why? Out of respect to Mohammad). It's as if we know on a subconscious level Christ is the way and truth and since our default disposition is antagonistic to God we disregard and disrespect His Son and all He did to restore us.
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* We may seek relief and call upon God for it but this is not seeking God but simply relief and God as a means to it - i.e. We treat God as some genie in a bottle to grant our wish. We are only interested in God as a means of relief and not God himself.
** We might give a "hat tip" or "nod" to God when facing death, hoping He will notice and it will be enough to appease God after living our whole life avoiding him and pursuing the pleasures of creation instead of Him, the Creator of all things.
*** We use the gifts of God to address our pain yet we never acknowledge (thank) God as the Creator and Giver of those gifts. And what are those gifts? Anything in creation available to us (or within us) to help us numb or cope with our pain, be it recreation, substance abuse, abuse of sex, food, our God given abilities etc.... all good gifts from God used (i.e. misused) by us to maintain our independence from God.
**** Have you ever wondered why people only use the name of Christ in a disparaging manner and not the name of Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, or some other religious figure. (Do people who live in a Muslem society throw around the name of Mohammad like we do Christ's name in the west? No. Why? Out of respect to Mohammad). It's as if we know on a subconscious level Christ is the way and truth and since our default disposition is antagonistic to God we disregard and disrespect His Son and all He did to restore us.
