the God as described by Jesus in the Bible doesn't give up until everything that is lost is found.
That’s to paint
the clearest picture of universal reconciliation, however, the clearer that idea gets the more believable it becomes.
It’s a beautiful story that meets the high standards set by the beauty of the storyteller, God the Father. Every other story seems below His love, below His sacrifice, below His greatness.
That believability is partly why so many posts in the topic have been used up to spread lies about what universal reconciliation means
(e.g. no justice in universalism, sin amnesty, Hitlers going to do genocides in heaven.)
So many replies trying to eject universalism from the heart and mind based upon untruth about what universalism means.
The picture is
obscured by untruth so that users can more easily reject it. The
clearer the picture we are allowed to paint of universal restoration the more it seems to make sense.
While the opposite view
(e.g. traditionalism) becomes
less believable the clearer we paint it. The situation here is totally inverted, instead of clarity of thought helping to strengthen our trust in the view, we punt to mystery, Gods inscrutable mind, lopsided notions of justice measured in pounds of flesh.
_________
1. We use
clarity to defend universalism.
2. We use
mystery to defend hell and traditionalism.
_________
1. We attack universalism by
obscuring the facts.
2. We attack hell and traditionalism by
making the facts known.
____________
It’s another pesky philosophical problem that short circuits Christians into saying
“just my Bible! I only need my Bible!” when in truth they’re
already using their front loaded philosophical ideas about love and justice to interpret the Bible.
People shouldn’t pretend to junk in philosophical presuppositions because they simply can’t, instead they need to learn the craft and start embracing good philosophy.
“Good philosophy exists if only for the purpose of exposing bad philosophy.”
Users would feel much more comfortable writing about
their preference for universalism to be true if they had a proper grasp of philosophy, like how Paul had a strong grasp of even pagan philosophy.
He borrowed the phrase that in God
“we live and move and have our being” from a poem to Zeus
(!) He borrowed
“evil communication corrupts good character” from Euripides.
People ignorant of ancient scholarship like this can’t even appreciate the joke about tailors in Ancient Greece
“Euripides? We fix ah these!”
On my last count there were 28 uses of pagan philosophers in the writings of Paul, which comes as no surprise when we think on the prophets great education, so, from Socrates to Plato he knew and quoted them all.
Just imagine a first century Jew complaining to Paul
“only my Torah! Only my Torah!” No guys, just no, that’s not life, that’s not what God expects of Christians living in victory.
I’d recommend that people look into Paul’s use of
“vain human philosophies” so that they come away with a less dismissive attitude towards how much truth those things actually contain. Even more exciting is that today we have an army of Christian philosophers
(!) Believers in Jesus who can teach y’all about great making properties and why torturing people forever isn’t loving
(as if you need to be taught that,) there’s really no excuse to put off jumping headlong into one small part of our Christian birthright.