On Hell and Forgiveness

[Aroura]

I want to give this an honest try.

I also have difficulty answering your hypothetical because I'm having a hard time getting from where you begin to where you end.

The hypothetical just seems like nonsense. Unless God also changes, entirely, my current definition of love, then I don't know how he could convince me of that.  I'm honestly not trying to be snarky, but this is like someone asking me, what if a human person could show you that really, they are a raccoon?  They are the very definition of a raccoon.  Would I accept that?  I would say, a human person cannot be literal raccoon.  That's a nonsense question.  And this is even deeper and more nonsensical than that.

Here are a few things I would personally consider to be attributes of love: selflessness, caring about that other person/group and not yourself, putting that other persons needs before your own, not needing to be loved back, truly unconditional loving them no matter what, giving them support and kindness and understanding even when they make mistakes, validating their feeling and interior life even when it is not necessarily something I agree with.  That's not a complete list, but would certainly be a good starting point. 

I've also been in an abusive relationship, and the world we live in combined with the demands of god to love him from the bible seem far more similar to the relationship of a narcissist to their child or spouse.  Fish Love.  A narcissist loves how a person makes them feel, how they advance their goals, how they can show you off or use you.  If you embarrass them, criticise them, or fail them in any way, they will punish you. Oh, they can make you feel good.  They can make you feel as if you are the center of the universe, and so important to them.  But it is a lie, a facade.

I know you've heard this comparison before, god the abusive husband/boyfriend, and I'm sure you hate it or are tired of it, but it's just so spot on.

So I hope that answers your question.  A God that demands love in return and punishes you if they do not get it, one that gets so upset at the misbehavior of his offspring that he murders them, and tortures them to teach them lessons, is not the embodiment of any definition of love that I'm aware of, nor can it be unless the nature and definition is drastically altered.

It doesn't answer it lol.

You seem to still be going off the fact that you think God (if He exists) is bad.

And as I stated in the hypothetical, "you find out that God is not the evil monster and tyrant you imagined Him to be if He were to be real."

(Also, I agree with how you defined love)

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A God that demands love in return and punishes you if they do not get it, one that gets so upset at the misbehavior of his offspring that he murders them, and tortures them to teach them lessons, is not the embodiment of any definition of love that I'm aware of, nor can it be unless the nature and definition is drastically altered.

For what it is worth, I don't think that is what God is like either.

Although I see what you are trying to say, it just doesn't jive.  I'm going off a) what it says in the bible and b)the reality of life I see around me. It's not about my imagination.  I'm talking about the reality of life as we know it, and his behavior described in his own holy source.

This is going to sound like hyperbole, but it's like saying, you find out Jeffrey Dahmer isn't the evil monster you imagined him to be.  It's not imagination.  It's documented.  It's confessed.

And also, love really is a chemical reaction we experience that is beneficial to our survival.  Saying God is love is like saying a butterfly is happiness. It's a really nice metaphor, but it doesn't make any sense in concrete rational terms that you are trying to turn it into.

If you are asking would I accept the love of someone who had actually demonstrated they truly loved me, then yes, I would of course want that and accept that. But really, if you try and tack "god" onto that lable (or alter the definition of God so it fits in there), it just doesn't make sense to me.  I suppose that is partly because there are no sensical definitions of God (that I have ever heard), IMO. 

I can accept that God is a metaphor for our better natures (see below), anything more literal is just not something that makes any sense to me.