Warning… blasphemy: God owes us an answer.
I have a question… actually a few questions and specifically for the Christian theologians… if they would be so kind.
Can the damnation of one soul directly cause the damnation of another? Specifically, if one person decides that they do not want to believe in Jesus Christ and they teach another doctrine to as many people as will listen, are those who believe the “heresy” doomed as well? I know the answer that many Christians will give me so don’t bother there… but answer “why?” A Muslim is raised to believe that Muhammad was the last prophet of Allah. They’re even taught that Jesus Christ was a prophet of Allah. Muslims are as adamant about Islam as Christians are about Christ… this is a deep seeded belief that can not be unlearned save some fundamental contention within themselves that sprouts doubt. In this situation, even though the Muslim may be introduced to Christianity he will likely never convert. Can a man be punished even when he never had a chance to believe?
Now, before you answer, I ask you to expand your thoughts a little bit more. What if someone raised in Christianity has fundamental problems with the faith, problems at the deepest level of their persons, and subsequently leaves the faith? Whatever the reasons these problems were caused by, who is to blame? Is this person damned for all time too? The Holy Spirit is supposed to be our moral compass, a voice inside telling us the truth… so why is this person doomed?
You can argue that the devil planted all of those seeds of dissension… but how then does a person remove those seeds if at a base level they already have an opposition to the “truth”?
What about the billions of souls who lived and died without ever hearing the name of Jesus Christ? Men and women who also likely brought up in a “heretic faith” who were never given the opportunity of something else? Are they expected to read the Bible in the clouds… discern the name of Christ from the trees? The point of Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ. The son of God only came to Earth once and traveled very little (compared to the rest of the world). If you don’t even know who He is how can you develop a relationship?
Christ paid for the sin of all man kind and then offered salvation to the same. That offer is reading a bit like a mortgage contract… one that is biased in all the ways that an omniscient and omnipotent god shouldn’t be. Why should one man pay for the sins of another… after God’s son already paid?
After all of that, I’m going to have the audacity to ask for your prayers. My faith is still strong… I’m just working some things out.
A week from Friday I should be driving my dad to Cincinnati for a surgery related to his prostate cancer. He told me the doctors say they caught it pretty early and that this surgery should be all he needs… but I’m still very scared for him.
You have mine, as does your father.
I always appreciated Dante’s perspective on those souls that never knew Christ, that were born before him. I know he’s not a theologian or anything, but I still liked it as it fit neatly into the Christian schema and wasn’t dooming. They go to Hell, but they’re in the first part of it. There’s no pain, no torture, no punishment of any kind, they just can’t be redeemed and live in paradise. If you have to subscribe to the belief that all those who don’t believe in Jesus are going to Hell, it’s not a bad way to think of it.
i’ll lay into your questions a bit with some of my own beliefs. Firstly, I don’t believe in the devil, satan, etc, i think that such characteristic negativity is a product of living in a flawed existance, the devil is just made-up deity that we blame our bad thoughts and actions on.
secondly, if you were God, and lets stick to Christianity here, that not know or having a relationship with Jesus, or worse yet, not even been given the remotest of possiblities to comprehend such things, would damn your soul? Do you truly believe that God, the one who we believe created our existence would be so specific as to say, “those that believe in Me and my son Jesus are saved, the rest of you, to hell, literally.” For as long as I’ve grown up, I’ve been told God is a caring being, who loves every single one of us, and in my mind, God would not be kind to look unfavorably on such people. I think God takes a different approach, respect and honor him. We call him God, Islam calls him Allah, Judaism calls him Yahweh, I would doubt God cares about the proper name he’s given in our language. Such an existence that is God is so glorious and awesome that to believe he is picky is just unfathomable from my point of view.
Try to imagine yourself as God, a being that is fair, loving, and created the universe, and is watching it, and its billions of people on Earth. We say he could obliterate us all on a whim, that our very existence, and everything else, crushed, smashed, and ended in a destructive way, doing nothing more than batting an eye. Yet, instead, he allows us to live, and not just live, but live with free will, a mind of our own, a mind that can question everything, how things work, how science works, how emotions works, how math works, and even question whether or not God exists and, most importantly to me, what happens after this mortal vessel dies. The ability to question things is a sign of trust, I think God trusts us all in a way.
i’m pretty sure i might not have answered or helped your questions at all, but hopefully, helped you in some way.