Don't you see, though - God does not offer us redemption for our sake
{the selfless thing to do}
{the loving thing to do}
{the outwardly directed thing to do}
God offers us redemption for His own sake - so that His holy name be praised and glorified
{the selfish thing to do}
{the holy thing to do}
{the inwardly directed thing to do}
*I hope you're right, where my scenario of repentance after death is concerned, but the vast majority of Christians with whom I have conversed assure me that in such a case - God will cast such a soul into the Lake of Fire
You and I are approaching the Bible from different starting premises. I understand how you are viewing it, I think.
First of all, you are approaching holiness as a selfish, inward focused attribute that permeates all things that God does, including the redemption of humanity.
While, yes, there are definitely passages that talk about God doing things for His own sake, for His glory, to make Himself known, etc, this is not in every passage that talks about God’s actions. You seem to be reading that into these passages, almost making that be entirely God’s focus and purpose for humanity.
I will appeal to church tradition here. I don’t see your view being expressed historically by the church or any Christian group.
The senior pastor of a church I had attended while in graduate school had grown up Jewish. I appreciated his insights on things because of his unique perspective. He wrote a paper on the difference between Jewish thinking and Greek thinking, which I found very interesting. He said something like Jewish thinking tends to accept information in chunks, not linearly. Greek thinking is very linear, like taking one piece of information of something and going with it, then taking another piece of information, and trying hard to reconcile and apparent discrepancies.
This might be a little of what is at play here. You are viewing God’s holiness as totally dominating over everything else about God, including His love, turning them into opposites, when it doesn’t appear to me that the Bible is doing that.
If you were able to create your own world the way you wanted it, and then created creatures to inhabit it, wouldn’t you want those creatures to acknowledge your existence and look to you for direction? Wouldn’t you want to protect them as best as you could? And if one of these creatures turned against you and tried to get other creatures to turn against you as well, or even to harm them, wouldn’t you want to try to protect the other creatures from that harm? And if they turned on you and made up their own gods, wouldn’t you want them to turn back to you?
I still believe that everything God has done is out of His great love for humanity.
