The severity of suffering in hell

[JackRT]

As human beings we are bounded in both time and place. That is to say, we are finite. On the other hand we think of God as completely unbounded. God exists outside of both time and space. God is present everywhere and at all times. That is to say, God is infinite. This is the orthodox theistic understanding of God. To compare the finite to the infinite is beyond our human comprehension. Even to compare a grain of sand to Mount Everest falls far, far, far short. All of this brings up a number of questions in my mind.

The first question being “How is it even possible for a finite creature to offend an infinite God?” Could a grain of sand offend Mount Everest?

The second question being “Even if it were possible for the finite to offend the infinite, would the infinite punishment of a finite creature be just?” I will attempt to craft an analogy. You are in a park enjoying a picnic lunch when you glance down and notice an ant crawling across your sandwich. You are offended. How do you react? You have a number of options. You could ignore the ant. You could brush the ant away. You could move to a different location. You could kill the ant. You could kill the entire ant colony. You could capture the ant and confine it and proceed to torture it for several weeks until it finally dies. That last option is quite inadequate as a comparison to hell because hell is infinite in duration whereas the ant can only be tortured for a finite length of time.

To me the concept of hell flies in the face of any concept of a just and compassionate God. Hell would seem to be an entirely human invention based on a vindictive concept of retributory justice. Perhaps we have the wrong idea of hell. Perhaps we have the wrong idea of justice. Perhaps we have the wrong idea of God. I completely reject the concept of hell as it is traditionally understood in most Christian churches.

 

[coffee4u]

Sorry about breaking the rules, and I hope there can be an exception since we are talking about the Bible.

My point was, that God himself says there is a real chance man (people) can live forever even after they ate of the tree of knowledge. To avoid people living forever, God removes them from Eden. Everything serpent said would happen did happen. The end.

I don't think you broke any rule, but since you quoted scripture I quoted one back that says death only came in with sin.

But it didn't happen, they did not become like God and they did die. Satan as always (I think most liers know this too) uses as much truth as possible while lying because that convinces more people. The truth containing some small poisonous lie is still a lie.

If God had allowed them to stay (real meaning was to stay in Gods full presence)
perhaps by eating the fruit, they might have been rejuvenated each morning, but who knows since it didn't happen. Would they have wanted to while feeling so much embarrassment and shame? They 'hid' from God so being in his full presence was no longer the joy they had when first made.
The real point of it was apart from the tree representing God, and being a foreshadowing of the later tree in Revelations was that God had an overall plan for the world from start to finish, this is why the Bible keeps dropping foreshadowing events. Adam's fall was part of the plan, not that God caused him to fall, but rather God foreknew that he would. If you could see all the details of the future you would plan things differently.

 

[BigV]

But it didn't happen, they did not become like God and they did die

nope. The Bible explicitly quotes God as saying “the man has become like one of us”. The man did become like God, just as serpent predicted.

If God had allowed them to stay (real meaning was to stay in Gods full presence)
perhaps by eating the fruit, they might have been rejuvenated each morning,

point was, God himself had to remove people from the garden because there was a real possibility they would live forever!

The serpent is right again!

 

[coffee4u]

nope. The Bible explicitly quotes God as saying “the man has become like one of us”. The man did become like God, just as serpent predicted.

point was, God himself had to remove people from the garden because there was a real possibility they would live forever!

The serpent is right again!

I've explained this fully once and partly again, I won't do so again.

1 Corinthians 2:14
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.