DEBATENATE

Topics / Faith and God

The challenge

“A loving God would never send anyone to hell”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

A loving God has to judge evil, or he isn't loving. Picture a judge who lets a man who hurt a child walk free because the judge is just so loving. You wouldn't call that love. You'd call it betraying the victim. Second, God doesn't want anyone lost. Ezekiel thirty-three says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Second Peter three says he isn't willing that any should perish. John three says he sent his Son to save the world, not to condemn it. Third, hell is God honoring a person's final no. You'll say forever is too long for one short life of sin. We don't measure a crime by how long it took. Let me ask you this. Should God force people into heaven who spent their whole lives telling him to stay out? Love invites. It doesn't kidnap.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Justice isn't the opposite of love. It's what love does when someone is harmed. A judge who excuses every evil has abandoned the victims.

  2. The God of the Bible doesn't want anyone lost. He paid the cost of judgment himself so people could be rescued.

    Ezekiel 33:11 says God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Second Peter 3:9 says he is not willing that any should perish. John 3:16-17 says he sent his Son to save the world, not to condemn it.

  3. Hell is God respecting a person's own choice to reject him. He won't force himself on anyone forever.

    C.S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce: 'There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done."'

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Eternal punishment for sins committed in a short life is wildly out of proportion. No crime of finite length deserves infinite consequences.

Nate: We don't measure crimes by the clock. A crime can take seconds and deserve years. The weight depends on who is wronged, and rejecting God means walking away from the source of every good thing. Many Christian thinkers add that the lost go on refusing him, so the separation goes on too.

What he grants the other side

Hell is the hardest doctrine in the faith.

The lines

Sources

  1. The Bible, Ezekiel 33:11; 2 Peter 3:9; John 3:16-17 (ancient and first century)
  2. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (1945)

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