Hell and a Merciful God – Jack Kinsella – Omega Letter
The question has been asked so many times that has morphed from a question into a challenge; “How can a merciful and loving God condemn people to eternal torments in hell?”
The question is not just posed by atheists and skeptics, but also by some sincere, but woefully uneducated Christians. The argument has some merit on the surface. God is love. All men are created with a sin nature.
Since, by definition and design, all men are sinners and our Creator God is love, it logically follows that a loving God who created sinners would be unjust in condemning them to hell for being what they are.
God is the Righteous Judge. If He is so righteous, it seems logical that He would take into account the mitigating circumstances.
Especially since the chief mitigation is the fact it was the Righteous Judge that created the unrighteous sinner and that unrighteousness is the default condition of man. That cannot be stressed strongly enough.
The default condition of mankind is that of utter depravity. People are not born good and then learn bad things. It is precisely the opposite.
There is a common canard in our society that dictates that racism, for example, is learned behavior. A ‘learned behavior’ is something that has been taught to someone, or a way of thinking that they did not come up with themselves.
The prevailing worldview is that children who grow up to be racists are taught to be racist as a child. In this view, unless a child is taught to be racist, he will grow up to be ‘color-blind’ so to speak.
An article posted by a Dr. Carl Bell, MD on the American Psychiatric Association’s website attempted to argue against racism as a ‘mental illness’, claiming;
“As I stated in the editorial, racism “is mainly a product of learned behavior,” and “a majority of explicitly racist persons do not have any psychopathology.”
I don’t know if racism is a mental illness, but I know that racism is not something that children are taught. It is something that they must be ‘untaught’.”
Children are racist by nature. Studies conducted that put one black pre-schooler into a classroom full of white pre-schoolers showed the white pre-schoolers abused, ostracized and teased the black kid corporately, that is to say, they did so as a group.
Reversing the situation produced the same results; the black kids abused, ostracized and teased the white kid, again corporately. Were all these pre-schoolers taught to be racists?
Moreover, who taught them to be abusive? Who taught them the principles of boycott, or ostracization?
These are fairly advanced principles for pre-schoolers — it took Jesse Jackson a lifetime of effort to fine-tune them into the social weapons they are today. Where did these kids learn to be racist?
Any school teacher will confirm that children are not only racist, they are mean. Kids are really small terrorists without advanced weaponry or a cause. And we were all kids.
If we reach back far enough into our memories, it is fairly obvious that the cruelest people we ever met were our own classmates.
Everyone remembers that one kid who was taunted unmercifully, (maybe it was you) because of their skin color, their religion, their social status, or some other characteristic that made that kid different. (I remember a kid we all teased because he was ugly.)
I was teased unmercifully because I had no hand-to-eye coordination. When we would choose up sides to play baseball, the two team captains would choose their players until they got to me. Then they’d fight over who got ‘stuck’ with me — as if I wasn’t there.
My nicknames were alternatively, “Easy Out” and “Butterfingers” — two terms that make me cringe to this day.
Children have to be taught not to hit each other, bite each other, they have to be taught not to steal, to show respect, not to lie, etc.
Prisons are full of folks who blame their upbringing for their shortcomings. Zacharias Moussaoui’s defense for being a 9/11 plotter was, in essence, that his father was mean to him and that’s why he became a terrorist.
Dr. Carl Bell, MD, would undoubtedly agree with Jung and Freud that having bad parents as children is to blame for bad behavior in adults. Baloney.
Children needn’t be taught bad values because ‘bad’ is their default state.
Prisons, as rehabilitation centers, attempt to teach ‘good’ values — or the word ‘rehabilitation’ is meaningless.
A long example to prove a short principle; We are born sinners. Evil is our default condition. It is goodness that is the learned behavior.
To return to our original premise, if a loving God created us without a spark of goodness, then how could He then condemn us to an eternity of torment for being what He made us to be — and still call that ‘perfect justice’? [CONTINUE READING]
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