(August 31, 2015 at 8:25 pm)abaris Wrote:(August 31, 2015 at 8:01 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: We "go to" Hell not as a punishment from God, as the article says, but because we chose to be away from Him.
Well, thats only the nicer version of what our resident evangelicals tend to say. You're saying, someone chooses to be away from him, they say, we condemn ourselves to hell. In my opinion both versions shift responsibilities. In a way it's blaming the victim to keep god from being the one, meting out the punishment. It's on the same lines as the medieval slogan of the church not shedding blood. The reality was, they let the secular authorities shed blood for them to wash their hands on the matter.
It also ignores the fact that as an omnipotent being, God could certainly find a way to both maintain his own arbitrary rules, and demonstrate perfect mercy.
Of course, that's a much harder passage to navigate using human language, because they are contradictory concepts.
