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Why should God make people
knowing they are going to hell forever?
This question
raises many issues. If God is all loving, why would He send people
to hell? What is hell? Is it a place of eternal torment?
Why create creatures knowing they will end up in an eternity of
damnation? Is God helpless to save them all?
Often times,
skeptics try and present an idea so that fairness and compassion necessitate
that the Christian God cannot be real. For example, they sometimes
say that a truly loving God would not
create people He knew would go to eternal punishment. Of course
this is only an opinion, but it is sometime raised nonetheless. As one skeptic put it, "If God truly loves us (this
sacrificial love you talk about) then he would simply say 'I do not want
the child to be born'. He is in control and has that ability doesn't he?
As I would not wish any of my children who I love to go through a life
of agonizing pain." The main problem with such an approach is that it is
overly simplistic and based on emotionalism, not scripture. So,
let's look at what the Word of God says.
First of all, when God made Adam, He made him good.
Adam had the freedom to choose to obey or disobey God.
Adam is the one who rebelled. God did not make him rebel and God
is not responsible for Adam's rebellion. It would be like a parent
having a child knowing that the child would eventually disobey the
parent. Does this means that the parent is responsible for the
child's rebellion when it occurs because the parent knew it would
happen? Of course not. Furthermore, if the parent has more
children, does he/she not know that some children may very well turn out
good and others bad? Should the parents then not have children
because some of them might turn out bad? The skeptic, if he is
consistent, would urge parents not to have any children at all lest some
of them turn out bad.
But the skeptic might say, "But God knows for a
fact who will be bad and good. Why allow the people going to hell
to be born in the first place?" But, if this is the case and if
God arranged it that no "bad" people were born, then we would all go to
hell. You see, Jesus is the only way to be forgiven of our sins.
His sacrifice on the cross was necessary in order to make it possible
for us to be saved because everyone, "good" and "bad"
has sinned. If there were no "bad" people born, then there
wouldn't be any "bad" people around who would have sent Jesus to the
cross. If that never happened, then we wouldn't be saved from our
sins because Jesus would never have been unjustly condemned and His
sacrifice would never have happened.
Second, if someone says that it is wrong for God to
allow someone to be born who will go
to hell, then would he rather have God remove our freedom to rebel against
Him so that no one can be blamed for sin? If the critic says he only want those people
born who go to heaven, then
how are they truly free and how would that fulfill the ultimate plan of
God to sacrifice His Son for the redemption of mankind?
Third, God could have reasons for sending people to
hell that we cannot understand.
Fourth, God is just and always does what is right.
Therefore, sending people to hell is the right thing to do, especially
when we understand that God is eternally holy and those who sin against
God incur an infinite offense because the infinite God is the one who is
offended.
Finally, the Bible simply tells us that people will go
to hell. They go there because they are not covered by the
sacrifice of Christ. Whether or not they are created or not does
not effect the fact that sinners must be punished; otherwise, the
holiness and righteousness of God mean nothing.
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Skeptics Ask
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