Wednesday 18 June 2008

Does God love us or not?

A question recently asked is: if God loves us, why would He send us to Hell. Here is my answer to this problem.

Firstly, God created us for the purpose of having a relationship with Him. However, love can not be bought, or commanded (to echo another blog entry), and therefore God HAD to give us freedom of choice; - do we obey, or do we disobey Him? Now note that the word Sin = disobedience [to God].

Secondly, God is HOLY. Therefore He cannot tolerate sin [disobedience] anywhere near Him. This is why He cast Satan and a third of heaven (eternal beings like God) out of heaven to roam on the earth.

Thirdly, Hell was NEVER created for us human beings. If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that it is the place for Satan and the demons, NOT us human beings.

The tragedy is that we believe that it was created for those of us who disobey God, rather than understanding that it was created for Satan, and that he doesn't want to go there alone - he is fighting to drag as many of us down with him as he can.

I've found that getting a grasp on this reality helps to put the whole heaven/hell thing into perspective - and this is why Jesus spends most of the gospel time (check this out, if you like) warning us that Hell is NOT a nice place ... because it wasn't made for us, and He'll do anything to save us (ie, die on the cross ....).

So it's not with any kind of joy or glee that God boots us off to Hell to join Satan because we disobeyed Him - it's with a breaking heart, because we are blinded [by Satan] from seeing that it's not where we're meant to go.