For example, why couldn't the Most High God find another way to exhibit His wrath without the need for hell?
And this was another reason for my comment about a kind of Protestant bias. I don't mean that as an insult at all. I just mean that some things I think are being understood in the way they are being understood because of prior Protestant teachings.
Hell isnt something that exists for the purpose of God displaying wrath to mankind.
Please forgive me, I'm so limited in bits of time.
Toolbelt & Anastasia,
I know that you are trying to help, but telling me I have a "Protestant bias" or indicating that I am not seeing what is "veiled" doesn't directly address anything in my post.
What part of what I have said is not true?
Are we not created for God's pleasure and glory?
Maybe the answer is simply that God created man for His pleasure and His glory. For a reason known only to God, He chose to create people who will suffer eternally.
Is God not able to make the rules and create as He chooses?
As I said before, God is God. He makes the rules. If nothing is higher than God, if nothing imposes limitations on God, if nothing dictates to God; then we are left with the reality that God chose to make us as He did. He chose to create man knowing many will suffer eternally. God could have created us differently, but He didn't. That's the cold hard reality.
Can you deny that all this suffering exists?
It's all really depressing, when I think about it very much. We are born through suffering. Life is full of suffering. Salvation was accomplished through suffering, and eternity is full of suffering for many, of which I may be one. Even if that is not the case, those I love may suffer eternally. How could that bring any happiness to my eternal state? All of this comes from God who is Love. It makes no sense to me, but I am a mere mortal, suffering through this life.
My apologies.
I think we might as well ask - why didn't God immediately fix everything as soon as Adam messed it up? (And you did ask that, I know.)
The only reason God allows suffering - is that something better FOR US comes out of it as a result. NOT for the purpose of somehow propping up His own glory, as some interpret. God's glory hardly needs propping up, and certainly not through using such beings as us.
We are created ... out of love. Please understand that the kind of love we speak of is inherently to desire the best for the one who is loved. I'm sure God takes pleasure in mankind but I think it reduces His love if we aren't careful when we say we were created for His pleasure and glory. One could understand that to mean we are simple toys of His, or something to manipulate for the sake of His own glory. And that is contrary to the nature of God.
I know it was said the nature or character of God isn't the issue, but I think it is. That was a key turning point for me. Orthodoxy views God as purely good, loving mankind. There are many different doctrines within Protestantism, but so many of them warp this character, when they start considering how we exist only for the sake of His glory, or that He must display wrath upon us, etc. That's what I mean by a Protestant bias. It's very hard to understand unless you've been on BOTH sides of the fence, I think. So I might not be able to explain. I'm trying though. It took a deep revelation of God purely AS agape-love to make me begin to understand. (And I really don't mean any insult by this ... I think Protestants don't - really can't - see the implications of some of their ideas because they've always thought them to be the way things are. I know I couldn't.)
God does make all the rules, yes. He orchestrates history. And there is suffering. So clearly God allows it. I doubt it is His best will for creation (to have fallen I mean). But given that it DID fall, I am very confident that He is at work in everything for the best good of human persons, whom He loves intensely.
Maybe this will help a little. Do you know that when something seemingly bad comes to us - a disease, or hardship, a loss, being treated unfairly, whatever the case may be ... we are taught that everything that comes to us is at least allowed by God, and that it is for the sake of our ultimate salvation. We ought not to complain and murmur against God at times like that, but patiently bear what we cannot escape, trusting God that He will save us through it, and thanking Him in it even.
The suffering of human history can be thought of in the same terms.
I don't think God inspired Joseph's brothers to plot to kill him and then to sell him into slavery. But due to their passions and being tempted by the enemy, they did those things. And though it caused Joseph to suffer, God allowed it --- knowing that in the end He would use it to save the lives of all his family and multitudes of other people from starving to death.
The ultimate good was the truly loving thing, rather than preventing Joseph's suffering as a slave and in jail. We just don't see that.
And the ultimate good is salvation and being united to God.
As someone else said, if every evil person was never born, how many of their descendants who would be saved, or those who might be saved through their work, might not exist or be saved?
We just don't know the full story.
But I KNOW God is loving and merciful. And I have hope for every person I know or consider. We can and should pray for all of them to be saved.
Those who might ultimately and irrevocably choose to hate God and find His continued love of them repugnant - well we can hope they are as few as possible. I can't really understand such a mind though.
