From a “Tribal Wars” message board.
Celtic Mist on 27.11. at 21:34
According to most religions, hell is where the bad people go when they die. Having been raised as a Christian, I’ve simply accepted this belief without giving it much thought (although the idea has always bothered me). But lately I’ve been mulling over the subject, and I must say that the idea of eternal damnation seems inconsistent with the nature of the God that we are taught to believe in.

Below I have outlined my principle arguments against the concept of hell.

1. Mercy – Our merciful God will send our souls to hell for all of eternity if we’re bad. Even I’m more merciful than that; I couldn’t imagine punishing someone that way. How can I be more merciful than God is?

2. Belief – One has to believe in God to achieve Heaven. Failure to believe will result in eternal damnation. Yet the Bible says that ultimately everybody will believe in God. Yet “unbelieving” souls will be sent to eternal damnation anyway?

3. Faith – I have faith in God, why doesn’t God have faith in us? Our souls will be eternally damned if we don’t get it right during this brief physical existence (one can only call it “brief” since the hereafter lasts for the rest of time)? You mean to tell me that once we die here, we’re beyond hope, that our souls cannot possibly improve afterwards? How is it that I have more faith in the human spirit than God does?

4. Judgement – “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Jesus said this, yet according to the Bible we’ll all be judged anyways–some going to heaven, others going to hell. How can God expect us to do something that He is unwilling/unable to do Himself?

5. Heaven – Sounds nice … until I remember that people who I have cared for, who have shaped me as a person during my life, are suffering and will continue to suffer forever. This is the happiness my soul has been striving for?–to live forever knowing that those who helped me become the person that I am are suffering? Doesn’t sound very heavenly to me.

6. Forgiveness – I am to forgive all who trespass against me. But God isn’t doing that; He’s sending people to hell. Forever. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Apparently, I’m more forgiving than God is.

7. Wisdom – God knew/knows everything that’s to become of us … long before we were even created. Therefore it seems some of us were created to suffer forever. Hell is the only solution to our weaknesses of sin and disbelief? I could think of better ways to cleanse men’s souls of such blights. Why can’t God?

8. Justice – I believe bad deeds should be punished. But eternal suffering? To me, that’s not justice, it’s cruelty.

9. Love – God loves us. Loves us so much that He sacrificed His only son to save us (although His son rose from the dead 3 days later, which God Himself knew beforehand). Yet some people will suffer eternal torment in the afterlife. It doesn’t make much sense to me to send people you “love” to an endless existence of suffering.

Keep in mind these are philosophical arguments. I’m not really interested in responses like, “Well the Bible, Koran, etc. says hell exists so it must be there.” Instead I’m curious as to how people reconcile a loving, merciful, and compassionate God with a concept like hell. I’m also curious to see how many people have even questioned the idea. I haven’t come to a definitive conclusion either way, so I’m looking forward to what others think.

Keep in mind, this isn’t a debate about the existence of God, it is about the existence of hell. So please don’t turn this into yet another debate about whether or not God is real. If you don’t believe in God, good for you. But arguing against His existence grossly misses the point of this discussion.
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Gamaliel87 today at 17:24

Celtic Mist, for the purpose of this debate I’m going to assume that God exists as described in the Bible, since you’re also assuming that, and I believe the Bible can answer these questions about Hell and the nature of God.

1. Mercy – Our merciful God will send our souls to hell for all of eternity if we’re bad. Even I’m more merciful than that; I couldn’t imagine punishing someone that way. How can I be more merciful than God is?

You’re not more merciful than God. What makes God different from us is that He is completely holy. God is without sin. He has never, can never, and will never do anything that is not in perfect accordance with His character. As a result, God cannot tolerate even the smallest amount of sin or disobedience. This is not the least bit unfair or judgmental on God’s part – he created us, and he has the right to tell us how to behave.
So this sounds like everyone automatically goes to hell. If (a) God exists, and (b) God is holy, and (c) God cannot tolerate sin, and (d) people have sinned, then (e) there must be a place without God where sinners have to end up. We may assume this is hell. Where does the mercy come in?
Here’s what makes God more merciful than you or any of us. According to the Bible, God’s plan to save people from His own punishment was accomplished by Jesus Christ. He is God’s Son, one of the three persons of the Godhead (which would take an awfully long time to explain here, so bear with me). Basically, Jesus is God, having become Man, in order that He could take God’s punishment for everyone’s sin and give us a way to reconcile with God and go to Heaven.
There are a lot of things that would take extra time to explain here, but this is the gist: God is more merciful than you, or me, or any of us – because despite God’s hatred for sin and his inability to tolerate even the slightest deviation from what he requires, he had Jesus – his Son – take the unimaginable punishment for that sin so that he could be friends with us again, here on earth, and welcome us to Heaven after we die. He loves us on Jesus’ behalf, if we believe that his sacrifice is enough to save us and that we can’t do it ourselves.
We can be “merciful” and tolerate sin for a different reason – we sin too, so why judge? This is exactly right – just realize that God can’t overlook it that way. The only way God can overlook sin is by the horrifying arrangement he made with his Son – that he would punish Him for it, and the Son would take it on behalf of humanity. God doesn’t forgive people who think they are good enough. You have to realize that the sacrifice of Jesus is the only thing that’s enough to save you. If there wasn’t a hell, there wouldn’t need to be a sacrifice.

2. Belief – One has to believe in God to achieve Heaven. Failure to believe will result in eternal damnation. Yet the Bible says that ultimately everybody will believe in God. Yet “unbelieving” souls will be sent to eternal damnation anyway?

I believe in God. So do you. So do most of the people on this board. So do demons (if you believe they exist; I do), and so did many of the most horrible people who ever lived. Most people believe there’s a God. The difference is whether you believe what he says.
God says you need to trust in the sacrifice of Jesus for your sin. Those who believe they can’t save themselves but His death saves them will be forgiven. People who do not believe this on earth will believe it in hell!! In hell, people KNOW how they should have lived and what they should have done. But there are no second chances there.

3. Faith – I have faith in God, why doesn’t God have faith in us? Our souls will be eternally damned if we don’t get it right during this brief physical existence (one can only call it “brief” since the hereafter lasts for the rest of time)? You mean to tell me that once we die here, we’re beyond hope, that our souls cannot possibly improve afterwards? How is it that I have more faith in the human spirit than God does?

The reason why God does not have as much “faith” in the human spirit is because God knows us better than we do. God made us from scratch and designed everything about us, and it is His plan for this earth to be the place that destines whether people spend eternity with him, or not. I believe that in heaven, we will be growing and learning and improving as people. There will be a lot of stuff going on, and we will always be developing and discovering new things. God is infinitely creative, and I’m confident that believers will always be discovering new aspects of his creativity in heaven.
The deal with hell is, once again, it’s separation from God. You want to say that people will change and develop anywhere, but the fact is that God created change and development. Those are good things that He made for us. In hell, we won’t have any of the good things He made. People talk about hell being a companionable place – but fellowship is a good thing that God made, and there won’t be any in hell. It would be worth stepping back for a minute and thinking about your assumptions of hell, and what you think we’ll be able to do there. If you believe that God created everything that is good, then not only does it mean that all of those good things will be in heaven, but also that they won’t be in hell.

4. Judgement – “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Jesus said this, yet according to the Bible we’ll all be judged anyways–some going to heaven, others going to hell. How can God expect us to do something that He is unwilling/unable to do Himself?

The entire verse you quoted goes like this: “Judge not, [so] that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”
What Jesus is saying here is that we have no business judging people who sin just like we do. He is reminding us that we are every bit as subject to judgment as the people we judge, and that we are treading on thin ice when we try to be self-righteous at another person’s expense because we are every bit as flawed and unholy as they are.
The reason why God does not want us to judge each other is because it is HIS place to judge, not ours. God is not held to the same standard that we are. He is without sin and he has never sinned. It is the business of God, the Creator, to judge people. When we judge people, we are stealing and misplacing authority that belongs only to God.
God doesn’t have a double standard here. You can’t say that He is sinning by doing something that He tells us not to do. The reason is, this is a sin that involves humans doing what only God is supposed to do. God also tells us not to call ourselves God. This is because only HE is God! It is completely right for God to call himself God, but it would be a sin for us to do that. Judging other people is the same way. When we place ourselves above another person because of their bad actions, we are doing something that only God has a right to do.

5. Heaven – Sounds nice … until I remember that people who I have cared for, who have shaped me as a person during my life, are suffering and will continue to suffer forever. This is the happiness my soul has been striving for?–to live forever knowing that those who helped me become the person that I am are suffering? Doesn’t sound very heavenly to me.

I don’t have a very good answer for this question. I wish I knew more about it. But I know that for someone to go to hell is even more heartbreaking for God than it is for us. God brutally punished his Son so that we could be brought back to Him, and for someone not to accept and believe in that sacrifice is unspeakably tragic. God punished Jesus so that we would not need to suffer hell. He didn’t have to do that to save us. He would have been perfectly just in sending us all there. But because of his incredible love and mercy, He chose to make a way for us to be saved – the only way. When a loved one does not accept that way, the God who created them and planned that Way is even more grieved than we are. This should underscore the urgency of making sure people understand this God and the salvation He offers.

6. Forgiveness – I am to forgive all who trespass against me. But God isn’t doing that; He’s sending people to hell. Forever. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Apparently, I’m more forgiving than God is.

Are you more forgiving than God is? Really?
I’m not going to run through question number 1 again, but you guys can probably figure this out. For us to forgive another person, we need to overlook the sin of one person against another sinner. People wrong each other all the time (and yet we as humans are surprisingly unforgiving sometimes). But for God to forgive someone – His own creation who is in direct affront to everything He is, and whom He cannot accept with even the smallest amount of sin, something much more serious needs to happen.
As we’ve already discussed, God can’t overlook sin. He is holy and perfect. Sin cannot exist in His presence. In order to forgive sinful people, He had to punish Jesus for EVERY SIN that we committed. This is a big freaking deal and hopefully it may make a little more sense why God can’t just shrug off offenses the way we can or should.
But, incredibly, since God DID punish Jesus for our sin, He can forgive us! It has to be on His terms though – He’s not going to take the sacrifice lightly. We have to know that the sacrifice is why we’re forgiven. We have to know that we didn’t earn it ourselves.
God is way more forgiving than we will ever be! Have you ever endured unimaginable torment for the sake of a wrong that someone else did to you? Multiply that by all the wrongs ever done? God is not the guilty party. He is the offended party. We’ve wronged Him, and yet HE is the one who initiated the process of forgiveness.

7. Wisdom – God knew/knows everything that’s to become of us … long before we were even created. Therefore it seems some of us were created to suffer forever. Hell is the only solution to our weaknesses of sin and disbelief? I could think of better ways to cleanse men’s souls of such blights. Why can’t God?

God did think of a better way. He planned our salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice. But, again, it all comes down to the fact that we have to accept it on His terms. It’s not easy, because we like to think we can save ourselves. Once we know that we can’t, God will show us that the punishment of Jesus is enough to save us.

8. Justice – I believe bad deeds should be punished. But eternal suffering? To me, that’s not justice, it’s cruelty.

It’s easy for any of us to think that, but we need to remember that we have no idea of the extent to which God is offended by our sin. Because we all sin, and we all live among people who sin, it seems like something that can be overlooked. But God can’t overlook a single thing. He is being merciful to us now by sustaining our lives, giving us air to breathe, and giving us a chance to know Him. We don’t deserve that. As a sinful people, we deserve to be apart from God, and yet God is giving us many of his blessings in this life – love, friendship, beauty, choices, sustainability, capacity to learn, and so much more. This is because he wants people to have a chance to know Him and be saved! If we do not take that chance, then after we die here we’ll be separated from Him. Keep in mind that all good things are made by God. Hell is separation from Him. If we sin, we don’t get to be with God anymore, and to not be with God means to be separated from everything good that he has made. That’s what hell is.

9. Love – God loves us. Loves us so much that He sacrificed His only son to save us (although His son rose from the dead 3 days later, which God Himself knew beforehand). Yet some people will suffer eternal torment in the afterlife. It doesn’t make much sense to me to send people you “love” to an endless existence of suffering.

God cannot tolerate sin. And yet – His love was so great that He poured out His wrath for sin on Jesus Christ to give us a chance to be forgiven. All He asks is that we accept this sacrifice on His terms. If God forgave sin without a sacrifice, He would not be God. He is merciful, but He is also perfectly just. The sacrifice of Jesus is the only way that God’s justice can be satisfied and He can show people mercy. No one can be forgiven except by the work of Jesus.

Yes, God loves us. He sent Jesus to die for us. This is the most powerful expression of love ever shown. God was the offended party, and yet He bore the pain of punishment so that we could be reconciled.

But we have to accept Him on His terms.