I agree.
It’s certainly hard to get the balance right, between being respectful your elders and people in authority, and standing up for the truth. I don’t think you can be “too young”, although people are more likely to just write you off for not having experience. You probably already know this, but I would recommend being polite and articulate, and giving them no excuses to expel you.
So he believes that this poor girl will be sent directly to hell:
edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiap … tml?hpt=C2
What makes him better than the man who raped her or those who stoned her?
A few tears and a shaky voice does not indicate genuine love but it wows the crowds.
Let me imagine how Driscoll might answer that…
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We like to “have our ears tickled” but the fact is, everyone is born deserving eternal hell. No one is innocent before God. If that seems outrageous, it’s only because we don’t really understand the depravity of sin and the righteousness and justice of God. In God’s eyes, the “young innocent victim” is a wretched sinner He can’t bear to have in His presence.
God will punish her for her sins, and He will punish her attacker for his sins, and both will go to Hell (though the attacker still has time to repent and turn to Christ.)
I dont’ know if Driscoll would say that…but 10 years ago, I would have. I would have felt miserable inside, but I would certainly have said it. 
And, yes, I’m ashamed of myself for thinking such things and calling it “justice”. 
Sonia
This gets me thinking about what I would have said a few years back. I think I’m in denial that I ever believed some things. My mind is a blur and I sit here dumbfounded about it all. Yet, I was raised in a conservative Christian church all my childhood/youth, etc. and embraced every teaching that came my way. This should give me great compassion for others that don’t see what I see. It’s hard to appreciate what is counterfeit when we are unfamiliar with the truth. It’s difficult to break out of the only frame of reference we know. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to ask the questions, or consider what I was missing, if it weren’t for key people in my life that posed questions for me. Has me wondering what else am I missing out on? The bible is much richer than I could have ever imagined!
Later…I realized that my thinking about God was that he had to send people to hell. It’s just the way things were and God was not in control, but more like a victim of the whole set up and not the author of it. I don’t know what I made of passages that God loved Jacob, hated Esau. I guess I thought God had his reasons and they must be good. I didn’t think about the implications, that if God didn’t love one of them, what about me or others. He alwalys loved me and the ones I cared for. 
My experience is that not many lay people understand this, can explain it in any rational way (even though there are ways theologians try to get around the ugliness of it). People feel bound to accept what is, especially since a suitable alternative seems lacking…or at least they think. 
Yeah, I’m the same… about 5 years ago, I would have believed something like that - although I might not have said it in those words (trying to be a “people-pleaser” and skirting around the issue). I hope I would have at least concluded that, “in the end, it’s up to God to decide.”
This makes me angry… and hurt that people could have such injustice. I thank God that His justice is perfect and His love is so much greater than mine (or anyone else’s). He knows her pain, her injustice, her heart. He knows exactly what she needs.
I think that intellectually accepting the teachings of a Master can indeed be an act (indeed should be) of love towards said Master. What does it mean to “accept something intellectually”?
Hi Roofus, giving intellectual assent, I suppose, would be passively agreeing with certain ideas, but not embracing them in a way that is the same as placing your faith in it and so it does not produce fruit. Of course, what we place our faith in is of huge importance.
Sonia, Doesn’t it just tear at your insides when you think about it? I listened to this segment of sermon and something stood out. He said that he trusted God with the life of his miscarried baby because he (God) is a father. I don’t think that Calvinists think through the logic of their theological system. According to the logic, if the baby is one of the elect, it will go to heaven and if not, it will go to hell. Calvinists say that they don’t know why God makes the choices that he does in choosing the elect, but that it is a mystery and we must trust Him. But what if his miscarried child was among the damned? Would he be pleased to know that his baby was in hell? If the theological system is correct then ***some father’s miscarried child will be among the damned. *** Would he be comfortable with that? How is that “good news” to someone who lost their child.
***Calvinist: Sir, I have great news for you: your child may or may not be among the saved in heaven. If your baby was one of the elect, then he/she is enjoying the presence of the Lord God Almighty in a state of eternal joy.
Father’s reply: "But what if my child wasn’t one of the, what did you call them, “elect”? What will happen to them?
Calvinist: Well, you must understand that we are all born sinners and deserve eternal hell. It is by God’s mercy that some are among the elect. If your child isn’t one of the elect then he/she will live in eternal, conscious torment in a burning hell-- a just penalty for his/her sinful nature. Isn’t that good news? ***
Most calvinists would never say this, but it is the logic of their system, and unbelievers are capable of using logic and thinking things through.
Chris
Yes, sure does. I didn’t listen to it, but I’m very familiar with that whole paradigm…
I hear it all the time, “We just have to trust God” – like they’re saying “we can’t do anything about it, God is God and He’s going to do whatever He wants, so the only thing we can do is hope [that’s the wishful kind of hope–not the sure kind] it will work out ok” – but given their theology, what basis do is there for trusting Him at all? None! He arbitrarily chooses to save some and not others. If you get lucky “win the lottery” (and the odds are not good!) then God is your Saviour…if you lose, he’s your tormentor, and there will be no mercy–all hope is gone. Yet we’re supposed to trust him to do what’s right? And what is right? “Right” just means whatever God happens to do. And we can’t tell what’s right [so they say] because God is so beyond us. And if God is as the Calvinists represent…that’s not a God I can trust…that’s a God I’m afraid of…because that god’s idea of “right” sounds a lot like my idea of “wrong.”
I am firmly convinced that God is good. Not good in some mysterious way that’s beyond human comprehension. But really and truly GOOD like what we all know and call “good” and can recognize as goodness – only His is much, much more perfect than our pitiful weak selfish goodness. If God is good I can trust Him, and I do. He proved it with the Cross.
Sonia
Definitely! I must admit that I find it a rather weak argument to just say that “God’s ways are higher than our ways” and “Who can know the mind of God?”… all arguments for allowing a cruel god to be declared just. I just don’t buy it.
I am more of the view that we are created in God’s image: the things we do, the things we say, the things we think… are all in the image of God. Although we’ve messed that up through our sin, there is still an element of it there (like looking at a poor reflection in a mirror). So yes, God’s ways are higher: He is so much more loving, has so much more mercy, is far more patient… and even understands our situations far better than we do. But that doesn’t mean our understanding is wrong… it just means it’s incomplete… a poor reflection.
Which makes me wonder… if God is so much beyond us and (as I’ve heard people say) “His view of justice is beyond ours” (implying that God judges far more strictly), then wouldn’t that imply that actually our view of love is greater than God’s?
(Actually, that’s part of the whole argument of universalism… man, I can be dim sometimes!)
A passage I’ve always found intriguing: when David counts his army (2 Sam 24; 1 Chron 21) he is given 3 options:
Of the choices, David goes for number 3, saying, "“Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His mercy is very great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.”
The question is: why did David fear men more than God? The only answer I come to is that he knew that the evil in mankind produces injustice… man judges far more harshly than God, so it is better to be left in God’s hands than man’s.
I could spend hours at this keyboard and not say it any better than you just did above. One thing You said is:
If you get lucky “win the lottery” (and the odds are not good!) then God is your Saviour.
and that’s the crazy part…the news isn’t good at all because no matter who you talk to the chances are that most people will be forever in hell. So when you go to an unevangelized family, especially from an unevangelized culture (Muslim), the “good news” that you are bringing them is that most people, if not all that they have ever known, will be in hell at the end. I simply can’t see how this is good news. The chances of even the smallest percentage of your family or friends getting saved is so tiny, according to the scriptures, that it is depressing. I don’t see how that is good news and I don’t see how it is a victory for God in the end.
Sonia, you did say that so well! I enjoyed reading all of your interaction.
You have a really good point here. My sister, that was a Southern Baptist Missionary to Turkey, ended up changing much of her thinking because she could not imagine serving a God that would send practicly everyone she ever looked at all day to hell. It’s a real eye opener that not too many consider. Hard to understand how other missionaries didn’t also struggle with it. ??? I have to always joke with my mom, not a universalist, that anyone she’s ever loved and has died is saved. God wouldn’t dare let anyone she loves be eternally consciously tormented. 
Whilst I completely agree with you, I would imagine the non-universalist response here would be to make it personal (as Driscoll does in the video in the opening post (at 1:30)). The argument would be that for you (the one being saved) it is 100% good news… which it is. It’s almost like an encouragement to be self-focussed, as if the only thing that matters is whether “I” am saved.
And yet I think that argument flies in the face of the community aspect… If God is Trinity, we have a community; the Israelites were a community; the believers in Acts were a community. The whole Bible seems to say, “Hey look! It’s not just about you, there are other people to consider!”
Having just re-watched a small section of the video, I find it interesting how Driscoll finds it “greatly disturbing” that some people avoid saying that those who haven’t heard end up in hell… does he not find it disturbing that God would send those who haven’t heard straight to hell? Anyway, that’s by-the-by.
I am just reading Jan Bonda’s book “The One Purpose of God” and hope to start a new thread on it later today. Bonda has a great answer to your question - that it is NOT God’s will that we acquiesce with the perdition of our fellow human beings. God wants us to pray for and work for the salvation of all - then we discover that this was in fact God’s will all along. He cites the examples of Abraham bargaining for Sodom, Moses’ interceding for Israel and Paul in Romans 9.2-3 saying he’d rather lose his own salvation than for any of Israel to be lost.
Mike, Isaiah 55.8 has to be the most abused verse in the whole Bible! Looking at the context we see that it is about God being FAR MORE merciful than human beings, not less!
Amy, I’ve struggled with that as I’ve been working through these issues the last few years. I’ll be at the grocery store and have a nice conversation with a person and then walk away thinking, “it’s so weird that that person will most likely be in hell forever.” Then I will look around the parking lot and see families, kids, couples and think, “Most of these people will be in hell for eternity.” I’m not thinking that in a judgmental way. I’m thinking of it in an orthodox way and it simply doesn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong, I believe with all my heart that Jesus is THE only way to the father and that people won’t get there any other way. I just think that it IS important to God that folks actually get to hear that good news with ears of understanding either before or after they die. I think that God does care.
Chris
What an excellent point about the community aspect of the gospel!