I, like most christians and non-christians, have long had a problem to one degree or another with the seemingly wrathful God of the old testament.  I've always come to the conclusion of God being a God of justice as well as of love.  Because of the sins of mankind, our lives here on this imperfect world involve suffering.  It's a consequence that stems from our sins.  Even innocent children often suffer consequences of the sins of others because they live in the resulting world.  I don't see the directly effected people in God's violent acts in the old testament, such as the flood, as necessarily having to suffer any more that anyone else.  I myself would rather drown or be run through with a sword than die a slow, excruciating death from disease.

This morning as I was walking I was listening to a christian radio talk show and they were discussing various views of hell that have been held by christians since the beginning of the church.  The view of hell as a place of everlasting punishment became almost universally accepted after the catholic embraced it around the 4th or 5th century AD, but there have been other views, also based on scripture, that have been held by christians all along, including a significant number of early church fathers.  One view would be that those who refuse to accept Christ would be sent to hell after the final judgement where they would receive proper punishment for their sins and then would be annihilated.  They would then no longer exist.  Another view, which I see the most biblical evidence for, is that hell is remedial.  Those who fail to believe go to hell after the final judgement, where they experience existence without God, which is extremely unpleasant, and eventually realize that they want to be with him and are then taken to him.  This really bears out the belief that God loves us ALL and that Jesus paid the price for the sins of ALL.  I see more biblical support for the latter two views than for the traditional view of everlasting damnation.  

Anyway, the way that I link my view of universal reconciliation with the supposedly unloving and unfair God of the old testament is that, though we must all suffer the consequences of a sinful world, the punishment aspect has been overridden by God through the atonement of those sins by Jesus Christ.  We no longer need to suffer the punishment for our sins, which is eternal death, but we must suffer the suffer consequences of a sinful world, even as an innocent child must suffer consequences of a parent who screwed up the child's life.  For eternity, though, we will be with our creator sharing in his love in a perfect existence.  This is whether we had an easy death from drowning or being run through with a sword, as the did the victims of the old testament catastrophes, or whether we died a slow and painful death, as did so many others who were not victims of those.  To me, this really brings together the loving, yet just, God of both the old and the new testaments.

I invite comment from christians and non-christians alike.

I too believe in a loving God, next step is to have the faith of the loving God.

http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/Eterna...Greek.html
"Eternal" Punishment (Matthew 25:46) Is NOT Found In The Greek New Testament.

By Tony Nungesser and Gary Amirault

The entire concept of eternal or everlasting punishment hinges primarily on a single verse of Scripture-- Matthew 25:46. This is the only place in the entire Bible where we find these two words together AND only in some Bibles. There are over a dozen English translations which do NOT contain the concept of "eternal punishment" on ANY of their pages, NOR the pagan concept of Hell.

The Greek form for "everlasting punishment" in Matthew 25:46 is ”kolasin aionion." Kolasin is a noun in the accusative form, singular voice, feminine gender and means "punishment, chastening, correction, to cut-off as in pruning a tree to bare more fruit." "Aionion" is the adjective form of "aion," in the singular form and means "pertaining to an eon or age, an indeterminate period of time." (Note: the two words in many, not all translations become reversed when bringing the Greek into English, that is, "kolasin aionion" literally punishment everlasting is reversed to everlasting punishment so as to make better sense in English.)

You keep doing that to yourself. Mabe one day, god will come to save you.

You can think all the versions you want, it's still made up...

I love how there has to be all this debate and discussion and inferring and analyzing etc etc about what "Hell" means. Instead of Jehovah just, you know, telling us what it means.

Does it bother you, Lek, that you sound a lot like an abused spouse?

"Look what you made me do!!!"

Eternal hell has proved to be too bitter a pill for Christianity to swallow. Christianity and Christians wretch trying to expel the truth which was once so well accepted.

(September 24, 2016 at 3:38 pm)Lek Wrote: I, like most christians and non-christians, have long had a problem to one degree or another with the seemingly wrathful God of the old testament.  I've always come to the conclusion of God being a God of justice as well as of love.  Because of the sins of mankind, our lives here on this imperfect world involve suffering.  It's a consequence that stems from our sins.  Even innocent children often suffer consequences of the sins of others because they live in the resulting world.

No loving almighty "God" would ever allow that. You just can't justify that.

(September 24, 2016 at 4:19 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Eternal hell has proved to be too bitter a pill for Christianity to swallow.  Christianity and Christians wretch trying to expel the truth which was once so well accepted.

By whom? The originators of the faith or the inheritors of the belief, hundreds of years later?

I always thought. If suffering is eternal on hell, wouldn't you grow fond of it? I mean, you wouldnt die after it, right? Eternal hell.....