The concept of Hell discourages belief

[Tonus]

Why do you insist that God is at fault, Adam and Eve were the one's that sinned, they were not forced. My parents did a great job of raising me, yet when I was out on my own I made many bad choices, choices that lead to the result my parents told me they would. I do not blame them, I made the choices that I was taught not to and the resulting consequences belong on my shoulders and mine alone.

As I said, I was theorizing. What I wrote begins from the premise that god has it in him to be responsible for his actions. The idea can also be developed from the "god is pure and good" standpoint and the end result is a bit less harmonious than this one, but lack of harmony is to be expected with the Bible.

In any case, my assumption that god is at fault is based on the fact that in any other facet of life, we would blame the person who made something if that item did not work as intended. When it comes to god, you reverse the assumption, but I do not. I insist that god is at fault because it is the logically consistent explanation. You insist that he isn't because... you insist that he isn't. *shrug*

Let's determine when this choice was made, scripture tells us that this was determined before creation, and the choice was not to experience the human condition, it was to be the perfect sacrifice through the human condition. I agree that God seem hard on His people, just as a child believes it's parents are harsh when they are being punished, He asked them to trust them and obey so He could protect them, when they did they prospered greatly, when not they were punished. One description you used "uncompromising", why would the Creator ever need to bargain with His creation.

My description was simply that, a description of god as he is in the OT. Although I was wrong about the "uncompromising" part; Moses gets god to change his mind in Exodus 32.

Christ, the Father, nor the Holy Spirit has ever been conflicted, they are the omniscient God, Yahweh knows all for all time and eternity.

Yahweh regretted creating humanity, which is the basis for the flood account, where he expresses this regret by not wiping out the humanity he regretted creating, which succeeds in not resolving anything. This indicates that he was conflicted; he felt he'd made a mistake, and expresses his anger (at most of creation) but cannot bring himself to completely undo his mistake, and thus perpetuates it.

Or maybe he knew all along that he'd feel some regret and take it out on the planet, and therefore he wasn't really conflicted. He was just a bigger bastard than we'd imagined. I can work with that, but it requires a whole new theory. Granted, it would be a lot of fun to write.

I'm not sure how you can come up with this through the Sermon on the Mount, man is responsible for his condition. The the struggling and the suffering people of that time generally were put in that position by the supposed righteous and upstanding people or they were born into a poor position. Jesus was giving them hope for the future. As far as the struggle you say God is going through, Jesus said himself that a house divided can not stand, Jesus also says that He and the Father are One. Through scripture we see God hard at work to redeem those who will except His extended hand.

The Sermon on the Mount is a whole topic unto itself, but I'm just showing how it can support the idea that I was developing in that post. His attitude throughout is passive-aggressive, as if he's toying with his listeners. I find it a particularly fascinating piece of Bible lore.

You have a big imagination, but why imagine, the truth is in the scriptures you are trying to mock. Christ does not judge himself, there's nothing to judge His plan is perfect, which by the way can only come from a perfect God. Jesus had no regrets on the cross, He did suffer through the horror of all sin being placed upon Him, but no regret.

But you may have noticed that my explanation, blasphemous as it may seem, fills the gaps as well as any other. Well, you probably didn't notice it, LOL. But I'm guessing that I could start up another minor Christian cult around the concept because it flows very nicely, if I may say so myself.

Again some imagination, totally wrong. God never needed to identify with man, he completely understood, this is why he knew the only way to restore man to himself was to give his Son as a sacrifice for man, to give man a way to have his wrongs righted by God.

God is all powerful and god makes the rules. Given his nature, he could have figured out any number of ways to set mankind on a better path without use of a ritual murder. As I said before, in almost any other facet of our lives, we apply a consistent set of logical rules to determine what does and doesn't make sense, but we're expected to cast it aside or even go against it in order to justify god.

But yeah, my theory is a product of imagination. This is religion we're discussing, after all.

Jesus said that the word of God would never change not one little bit Matt.5:18. If people do not come to God through the provision he has given, then they will suffer their choice. This life is not a rest stop by any means, it is a time to walk in a faithful relationship with God through Jesus Christ for the coming eternity.
I do not mind you theorizing but shouldn't you do it with what is actually in scripture, making things up does not help the argument.

The hundreds, if not thousands, of different Christian sects attest to the difficulty in interpreting the Bible. My imagined interpretation above draws directly from the Bible and fills in the gaps in a manner consitent with the myth I wanted to create from it. Which is what any religion does. I cannot recall a Christian denomination that does not use external understanding or reasoning to strengthen their interpretation of the Bible.

If I was interested in making my theory fit more comfortably into Bible lore, I have no doubt that I could quote mine the Bible for any number of texts in support of my idea, and come up with any number of excuses and rationalizations for texts that did not support it. The Bible can easily support many divergent approaches. All you need is to find a common thread, develop it, find some verses to support it, and dismiss rationality and logic when someone finds flaws in the theory. BAM!!! Instant religion, bay-beh!