Love-How can I respond to a skeptic's response?

I'm unclear how dying on the cross holds a gun against our heads.

The skeptic consider “hell” to be like a gun to the head, but you have to believe in the Christian God to believe in hell and if you believe in the Christian God hell is not a problem.

If you are repeatedly refusing to humbly accept God’s pure charity (Love/forgiveness/grace/mercy/help) than hell can be a motivation for the hell bound person to respond sooner then later, but there is no hurdle to jump over, but just do what the lowliest person on earth can do (accept God’s charity).

Tom Hancock said:

So theres this response I heard when listening to Dr.Craig's debate with the Ohio State (besides the fact that I currently am residing in Rhode Island I actually live in Ohio with my family during summer and break so if you forget this skeptic I'll say "GO BUCKS!!!" and eventually get tired from saying it too much) professor I heard this question that I felt I had to ask this forum, and I'm definitely thinking this question is a cake walk. So there is this view that the skeptic pointed out stating that god's love seems not like love but more of like a threat, like a gun to our head...I to myself am not a good thinker but more of a good listener so I just wanted to see how you guys interpret this? Thanks,
Tom Hancock

Click to expand...

If God's love were like a gun to our head then there would be a lot more Christians in the world. The fact of the matter is it's not, that's why so many people reject him. The Bible says God isn't willing that any perish, yet people perish in sin everyday and go to hell. Those people were not forced into God's presence.

People make the choice of their own freewill to to reject God. The problem is they want to reject God and then blame it on him. The classic have your cake and eat it too scenario. God will not force you to love him or to be with him. But God is a just God and he will judge us according to his righteousness.

It's not different than any other judge making judgment against you. What if you murdered someone, but didn't get caught for 20 years. In those 20 years you became rich and used all your money to benefit other people. You were the absolute best person you could be, then you finally got caught. During your trial you use all the evidence to show what a good person you are now. Should the judge then allow you to go free because of the good, or will you receive punishment for the murder you committed?

So God doesn't force anyone into a relationship with him, even though it's his will than none perish.

Sadly, too many people reject God because of the destructive erroneous belief in an eternal burning place of torment... what drove millions to "accept" Christ as their Saviour, out of fear for the alternative, is now having the opposite effect. Both ends of this spectrum are Satan's designs. One to compel through fear, the other to reject through rebellion of such a heinous act.

The truth is much less inflammatory... accept God in love for who He is and what He's done and receive eternal life, or reject God's free gift of love and suffer eternal separation from God by ceasing to exist.

Tom Hancock said:

So theres this response I heard when listening to Dr.Craig's debate with the Ohio State (besides the fact that I currently am residing in Rhode Island I actually live in Ohio with my family during summer and break so if you forget this skeptic I'll say "GO BUCKS!!!" and eventually get tired from saying it too much) professor I heard this question that I felt I had to ask this forum, and I'm definitely thinking this question is a cake walk. So there is this view that the skeptic pointed out stating that god's love seems not like love but more of like a threat, like a gun to our head...I to myself am not a good thinker but more of a good listener so I just wanted to see how you guys interpret this? Thanks,
Tom Hancock

Click to expand...

If it were a gun to the head, it would be a gun to the head of a dead person, how would that be a threat?

It is because God loves us that He has provided the means for us to be made alive with Christ. God becoming a man and laying down His life in order to give us life, is not a threat, it is the very highest form of love. (John 15:13)

Tom Hancock said:

So theres this response I heard when listening to Dr.Craig's debate with the Ohio State (besides the fact that I currently am residing in Rhode Island I actually live in Ohio with my family during summer and break so if you forget this skeptic I'll say "GO BUCKS!!!" and eventually get tired from saying it too much) professor I heard this question that I felt I had to ask this forum, and I'm definitely thinking this question is a cake walk. So there is this view that the skeptic pointed out stating that god's love seems not like love but more of like a threat, like a gun to our head...I to myself am not a good thinker but more of a good listener so I just wanted to see how you guys interpret this? Thanks,
Tom Hancock

Click to expand...

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us… (1 John 3:16)
How is that like holding a gun to our heads?

Love is the word God uses to describe Himself
1 John 4:8:
“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

1 John 4: 16
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

Not only out of love did he lay down is life for His people but it is out love he bestows blessings on them. Everyone can agree with this. However this same love will also bring chastisement to correct wrong behavior (Prov 3:12, Heb 12:6). Think of a father correcting his child. The child will often take the same defense saying the father is punishing him for not following his rules when in fact the rules ultimately may save that child’s life. Chastisement from the Lord is a very hard lesson. But He does it because he loves us and when we come around we learn to love him the way he defines love.

God describes love for us in 1 John 5:3
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments…

The problem is most people love themselves and ways of the world so when they are told to live in a way contrary to their lusts and what they consider good and loving they say the opposing view is threatening when the consequence is severe (death in this case). All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes… (Pro 12:15)

God’s love is perfect and just. But the guilty do not think it is just,
Prov 28:5
Evil men do not understand justice, But those who seek the Lord understand all things.

Tom Hancock said:

So theres this response I heard when listening to Dr.Craig's debate with the Ohio State (besides the fact that I currently am residing in Rhode Island I actually live in Ohio with my family during summer and break so if you forget this skeptic I'll say "GO BUCKS!!!" and eventually get tired from saying it too much) professor I heard this question that I felt I had to ask this forum, and I'm definitely thinking this question is a cake walk. So there is this view that the skeptic pointed out stating that god's love seems not like love but more of like a threat, like a gun to our head...I to myself am not a good thinker but more of a good listener so I just wanted to see how you guys interpret this? Thanks,
Tom Hancock

Click to expand...

The answer is that God's love itself is not the same thing as the consequences of obeying or disobeying God, of believing or not believing. Therefore, these are two distinguishable concepts.
Love is not the same concept as a person's actions or as the events that occur.
Since they are different concepts, God's love is not the same thing as having a gun to the head.
God's love in particular is not what results in gun to the head, the love is what withdraws the gun.

if the skeptic wants to argue that the gun is unloving, even that argument does not mean that the love and the gun is the same.

Tom Hancock said:

So theres this response I heard when listening to Dr.Craig's debate with the Ohio State (besides the fact that I currently am residing in Rhode Island I actually live in Ohio with my family during summer and break so if you forget this skeptic I'll say "GO BUCKS!!!" and eventually get tired from saying it too much) professor I heard this question that I felt I had to ask this forum, and I'm definitely thinking this question is a cake walk. So there is this view that the skeptic pointed out stating that god's love seems not like love but more of like a threat, like a gun to our head...I to myself am not a good thinker but more of a good listener so I just wanted to see how you guys interpret this? Thanks,
Tom Hancock

Click to expand...

The skeptic's statement proposes that we just look at the end-point. Collapse all of time down to a mere few moments. You choose the Gospel or not and then "bang" you are in the lake of fire if you choose wrong... or in the illustration above "bang you're dead" in the case of the gun to your head.

What is the atheist's "collapsed time" model??? the Grand atheist alternative --> You decided to be an atheist and then "BANG" you are in a hole-in-the-ground.

In that same atheist model "you choose to be Christian -- and then "BANG" you are in a hold in the ground same as the atheist".

i.e -- they solve nothing when it comes to their own objection!!
==========================================================================

Given that they start off with "no solution" -- consider the options.

The atheist model has the WORST upside and the WORST downside. It combines the WORST in all options!

WORST upside: === "hole-in-the-ground" this is the grand glorious "ending" that the atheist proposes for the loyal devoted atheist -- and he/she has no WORSE outcome to offer to the Hindu or Christian. In the Atheist model ALL get the SAME grand glorious "hole-in-the-ground" -- no penalty at all for not being atheist.

(And of course the UPSIDE for Christianity - is... ETERNAL LIFE!" -- here is where the atheists think we will be "sad" for some inexplicable reason.)

WORST downside: The downside to Atheism is the Rev 20 lake of fire which is what they get if they have guessed wrong.

the skeptic makes a valid point. if God is an authoritarian then he would seem like an awfully big jerk. lots of Christians make him out to be such so i can see how someone would not think God is loving if they saw him as that.

I assume that he means that what people who misunderstand and get rightly offended by "if you don't love me then I will torture you in hell forever", yeah that line of thinking... if you have any courage at all or any brains you would see that that is not love. but if you understand that hell is a state of being and also a symbol for purification from evil then you view God in a different manner. if you view God as having made us free to be good or evil and that he came to show us his true nature to the point of allowing evil people to murder him to teach that evil is evil and goodness is good and that he wants us to have the kingdom of heaven and not hell, then you get a very different picture of God.

but there is deeper skepticism out there. the kind that ask "what kind of God lets his souls be mortal creatures who suffer having to eat food, feel pain, exist in great weakness with limited understanding of reality, ect" and I would say that since many christians can't give a decent answer to the first that the second would be harder to properly answer. God gives me flashes of insights to such but I don't remember anything atm and that is probably because he is preventing me from understanding why.

those who argue that 'if you do not accept God then you deserve hell' and those that say "if you do not love God then he will obliterate you" are almost the exact same spirit as those that say "if you reject God you will suffer forever in hell".

they all view God as an authoritarian figure who is out to get you and punish you for he is as they believe "righteous", which is just an obscure word that people use to defend their beliefs about what they think God does with fallen souls. but you can once again go back to the question of "what is love with no shadow of turning?" and it will rend those theories to pieces. thus people have to alter what love really is and add onto it their ideas of what being "righteous" and 'just' means even though the terms they use for 'just' is more like what some evil tyrant of the world would do to people who do not submit to his rule. you know, boom! bullet to the head for disobeying.

the beliefs of God being some kind of authoritarian figure is rooted in fallen humanity and how they are raised as a child and the world that they exist it. it is full of "might makes right". you can see this kind of ignorance in things such as statism, which believes that it is okay for a ruling class to steal money from you, they call it "tax". people accept evil authorities with not much of a problem, all they have to do is cast away their moral compass and be taught that "authority" is greater than "morality".

hell is in fact the perception of lies because God is the truth. thus as much as hell rules over you is how much the image of God you see is distorted into a monster. so hell is a state of being that God does not want us to be in nor for us to stay in and neither is loves solution to "erase" his children. Gods solution is to create stages for his children to become sane and to, as much as they will, partake of God. that is why the gates of the new jerusalem are always open but in the outer darkness is weeping and gnashing of teeth. so the destruction of satan is actually the spiritual explanation of the overcoming of Christ in us, saving us from all our sin and blindness and error.

but once again you might notice that fear and authoritarianism will try to keep you from believing the goodness of God, because satan is very crafty, so much that he makes an image that blasphemes God and the whole world worships it. that is why that Christians don't even allow others to deeply express the goodness of God, they don't believe in contemplating the divine nature so much as they try to understand God by the flesh of the bible, which kills your spirit. thus there are rules in this forum to not talk about what I say... but that evil spirit is nothing more than an appeal to an false authority that has no place in the kingdom of God.