Imagine I start a country and have the ability enforce my will. In my country, I create various laws. I say it is illegal to do certain things like murder, steal, rape, and lie. I also say that you have to swear allegiance to me. Now, if you swear allegiance, you get all the benefits of a citizen of my country (and we'll assume my country is pretty rad), but if you don't, I lock you in a dungeon for the rest of your days and have you tortured. No takesies backsies, either. You stay in there until you die. As for the punishments for the other crimes (murder, theft, etc)... there are none. If I walk down the street and see you killing a guy, I'd say "Hey, that's illegal!", and when you ask me what I'm going to do about it, I'd say "Nothing!", and presumably make sure you swore allegiance to me.
And that's the punishment and reward system that Christianity gives us (well, except the rape part. They don't explicitly forbid that).
How many orphanages do you have to build or lives do you have to save to get into heaven? How many to stay out of hell? There is no answer, because that's not part of the criteria. How many living babies do you have to eat before you won't get let into heaven? Again, there is no answer. Baby-eaters that swear the proper oath of fealty before they die get eternal reward, and orphanage builders who didn't swear the oath because it didn't make sense (or, even worse, they were raised in the wrong religion!) get tortured for eternity. There's no accountability, other than that you'd better swear your oath before you unexpectedly get hit by a truck, or something. Even then, you can can swear the oath, sin, repent, sin, repent, ad infinitum.
The best counter I've seen to this is the No True Scotsman of "Well, a true Christian wouldn't be bad like that", but that's just a nebulous claim to try to remove the obvious abuses. There's no basis for it other than that it makes people uncomfortable to think about, so they assume there must be something God does to try to sync his punishment/reward system with something more sane that we might actually expect.
And that's the punishment and reward system that Christianity gives us (well, except the rape part. They don't explicitly forbid that).
How many orphanages do you have to build or lives do you have to save to get into heaven? How many to stay out of hell? There is no answer, because that's not part of the criteria. How many living babies do you have to eat before you won't get let into heaven? Again, there is no answer. Baby-eaters that swear the proper oath of fealty before they die get eternal reward, and orphanage builders who didn't swear the oath because it didn't make sense (or, even worse, they were raised in the wrong religion!) get tortured for eternity. There's no accountability, other than that you'd better swear your oath before you unexpectedly get hit by a truck, or something. Even then, you can can swear the oath, sin, repent, sin, repent, ad infinitum.
The best counter I've seen to this is the No True Scotsman of "Well, a true Christian wouldn't be bad like that", but that's just a nebulous claim to try to remove the obvious abuses. There's no basis for it other than that it makes people uncomfortable to think about, so they assume there must be something God does to try to sync his punishment/reward system with something more sane that we might actually expect.
