No someday I’m going to walk the streets of gold with my Holy God
This is a good point, but qaz you have to understand by now that God has little to do with punishment, as He has put in the hands of the creation. 
Oh this will get a few post’s…
No. You’re way off. You live in a world where you blaspheme the holy. You hate a holy God because of His wrath.
God is a father. He is Father to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is Father to all His created beings. I am also a father - of nine. I punished my children when they said or did something unkind or hurtful and because of disobedience. They are all grown up now and they all acknowledge that their punishments were deserved and carried out in love, for their benefit. They are bringing up their own children in the same way.
I took no delight in executing punishment but I knew it was for my children’s good. It’s the same with God. Ps. 103:13 “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” Earthly fathers can learn from how God acts as a father. He corrects the fallen - why?, because He loves them. The necessary correction may require a long time or a short time but it will eventually achieve its end. Then, every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that He is Lord.
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Whatever. I’ve been healed of my fears and insecurities because of my faith in God. I’ve completely changed. It’s a miracle that you attribute to what you call a malevolent deity.
Nope. I’ve been there and done that. Seeing that you struggle with the fear of death I would recommend Richard Becks book:
Yet you asserted in the monster god thread that killing Jesus is the best proof that killing an innocent one is not evil, but rather was wonderfully justified.
Is this because you mean that for God to kill Jesus is wonderfully good, but that the people whom God ordained to carry it out are still guilty of an infinite evil that justifies their own infinite suffering?
What Satan meant for evil God meant for good. I go along with Jonathan Edwards in that God permits or allows evil. When God allowed Satan to take Jobs kids Job says "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. To which the writer responds, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” God is the ultimate cause in that He permits evil for morally sufficient and justifiable reasons. The secret things belong to the Lord. His sovereign will is His business. My job is to obey His revealed will which is to trust Him. Here’s how it works:
Fear and anxiety and worry are about the future. When I’m worried about the future I’m in my mind or ego. In the past this fear of being harmed or plotted against by others has caused me to drink and do drugs. Alcohol released my fears where I could communicate and talk with others but the next day I would feel more fear and shame. Shyness turned into social phobia and social phobia turned into paranoia. I have found that this fear is uprooted by having faith in God. Such a faith secures the future and gives one hope. Hope pushes the desires that lead to sin out of the heart as one relies on God like Christ did. It’s by the joy set before us. Not only does it push desires out of the heart but it brings strong desires to the heart as one is thrown into the current of love. It’s faith - hope - love. It’s faith working itself out through love. The joy of faith. In the Bible faith produces obedience. The power to love is the confidence that God will take care of my future. It’s the obedience of faith as one trusts and relies on God like Jesus did. It’s faith working itself out through love. Christ’s atoning death secures the future with his blood bought promises. Example:
Vengeance is Mine I will Repay
When my faith is in God the desires for sin is pushed out of the heart. I let go and let God handle it. Rather I love the enemy just like Christ did. Another example:
God works all things together for good for those that love Him.
I place my faith in God and Christ as it gives me hope.
Dealing with shame:
If we confess our sins He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
My faith is in God. Indeed. when facing shame that comes from the rejection, and ridicule of others I trust God when He promises to one day vindicate His children. Oh the glory that awaits those who are despised and rejected by others misplaced shaming. It’s faith working itself out through love. When my future is in the hands of an all powerful and holy God who promises to work out all my circumstances for good, anxiety is broken as the heart opens up to love. The desires that lead to sin are pushed out of my heart as God infuses me and covers me with His righteousness.
Hollytree,
I cited your argument that the killing of Jesus shows that killing the innocent need not be evil, but is wonderfully good. Now you reply that you can also assert that killing Jesus IS so evil that it requires infinite punishment because “God permits or allows Evil.” I get lost with your reasoning. If killing Jesus is an example that God “permits EVIL,” how does That show that killing such an innocent one was not Evil, but actually good?
God’s mysterious heart is infinitely complex and cannot be grasped by our finite and limited mind. He is paradox. Take for instance the evil murder of His Son. In one sense God wasn’t pleased when innocent Christ was murdered. God doesn’t delight in torture and evil in and of itself. What He was pleased in was what Christ accomplished on the cross is showing love and grace to sinners. God’s sovereign will is His business. We don’t know it until it comes to pass. We are to go by His revealed will. The secret things belong to the Lord. This is why often in the Bible God will use evil to judge His people and then turn around and judge those who committed the evil against His people. God’s holy intentions and justifiable reasons in permitting the evil were good. Man’s intentions in committing the sinful acts were evil.
G.K. Chesterton was a brilliant writer. Nobody exploits the power of paradox like Chesterton. I heartily recommend his book orthodoxy. Chesterton did all he did to keep from becoming a Calvinist, and instead made me a romantic one - a happy one. The poetic brightness of his book, along with C.S. Lewis awakened in me an exuberance about the strangeness of all things, which in the end made me able to embrace the imponderable paradoxes of God’s decisive control of all things and the total justice of his holding us accountable. One of the reasons Calvinism is stirring today is that it takes both truth and mystery seriously. Read Orthodoxy…This book will awaken such a sense wonder in you that you will not feel at home again until you enter the new world of the wide eyed children called the happy Reformed…How can I not give thanks for this jolly Catholic whose only cranky side seemed to be his clouded views of happy Calvinists! - John Piper, A Godward Heart, pp. 79-82
As one example of so many incoherencies, you wrote that killing Jesus proves that it’s morally “good” to kill the innocent. Then you insist killing Jesus proves that it is the worst possible “evil.” When I suggest that using language so contradictory makes your language and claims meaningless, you respond that your assertions about God are ‘paradoxes’ that no one’s mind can grasp. Exactly!
Thus indeed every religion can and does justify insisting on its’ claims that everyone sees are irrationally contradictory and make no sense, by insisting that religious truth is “secret things” which only God can make any sense of. But since this strategy (insist that A and not A are equally correct) can be used to argue for ANY assertion about Any religion, I find it is a useless tactic and a waste of time to debate.
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G.K. Chesterton didn’t find it useless. Reality is filled with paradoxes It’s a clash of contradictions.
Chesterton’s a blast even when he’s a nut ball. But if you concede that your own logic presents a “clash of contradictions,” and ignores the basic law of contradiction in presenting a case, I’m satisfied.
The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say “if you please” to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers. ~~ G.K. Chesterton
Thanks, the admission that one’s reasoning relies on “fairyland” says it beautifully!
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Holly Tree. Please respond via your Catholic position, to the following Catholic statements:
Pope John Paul II the following are three quotes from him.
Eternal damnation remains a possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it. (General Audience of July 28, 1999)
Christ, Redeemer of man, now for ever ‘clad in a robe dipped in blood’ (Apoc, 19,13), the everlasting, invincible guarantee of universal salvation. (Message of John Paul II to the Abbess General of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of St Bridget)
If the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is to convince the world precisely of this ‘judgment,’ undoubtedly he does so to continue Christ’s work aimed at universal salvation. We can therefore conclude that in bearing witness to Christ, the Paraclete is an assiduous (though invisible) advocate and defender of the work of salvation, and of all those engaged in this work. He is also the guarantor of the definitive triumph over sin and over the world subjected to sin, in order to free it from sin and introduce it into the way of salvation. (General Audience of May 24, 1989)
The new, post-Vatican II Catechism of the Catholic Church also gives us to hope that all will be saved.
1058 The Church prays that no one should be lost: ‘Lord, let me never be parted from you.’ If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that God ‘desires all men to be saved’ (1 Tim 2:4), and that for him ‘all things are possible’ (Mt 19:26). 1821 We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere ‘to the end’ and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God’s eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for ‘all men to be saved.’
Randy,
They weren’t speaking infallibly. Moreover, we can hope that nobody commits the eternal sin in rejecting Christ. But the Bible tells us that those who commit the eternal sin by finally rejecting the eternal Christ (thereby forever separating themselves from God’s mercy) are crucifying the Son of God all over again thereby committing the eternal sin:
It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age— and then have fallen away—to be restored again to repentance, because they themselves are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to open shame.
We don’t know which individuals are involved but we know that there are some. It makes no sense to pray for those in heaven. And it makes no sense to pray for those in hell who hate God out of a hardened heart. Their fate is sealed. Rather we pray for the dead because there’s a purgatory.
These are interesting assertions. But this is an evangelical site, and almost no Protestants find that the Bible says that unbelievers are in purgatory and can be prayed out of it, the Catholic tradition also has not read it that purgatory is for unsaved unbelievers, and of course a central contention of this site and evangelical universalists is that a fate of damnation is not “sealed” for any of God’s offspring that he seeks to reconcile.
I think this means that the burden falls on those who claim dogmas that most participants here have found lacking in support, need to start with explaining step by step why they reject the exegesis embraced by most of us and by the Christian traditions that I cited in paragraph one.
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