How do you understand or reciprocate the love for a God that will throw you into hell...

Can you prove any of this mate? ;)

If you dont understand Christianity then try not to speak so confidently about it, lmao.

The idea of hell, as I and a lot of other Orthodox Christians understand it, is that when Jesus comes back his love will be so overwhelming that it will torment those who rejected him.

These quotes explain it well

>It is totally false to think that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is a child of the knowledge of truth, and is unquestionably given commonly to all. But love’s power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, while at the same time it delights those who have lived in accord with it."
– St. Isaac the Syrian

>"For those who love the Lord, His Presence will be infinite joy, paradise and eternal life. For those who hate the Lord, the same Presence will be infinite torture, hell and eternal death.”
– Fr. Thomas Hopko

No matter what you do, God has already elected you for heaven or hell .No action you take will change it.

go back to the 1600s, heretic

who the fuck are these cucks?

Is hell even mentioned in the Old Testament or is it just more of Jesus' fanfiction?

I wish but there are so many NDE hell testimonies its disheartening. Even people following Christianity and in nowise in fully acknowledged rebellion to God are going there.

youtube.com/watch?v=ArqRiIBh2p8#action=share

I'm basically a Calvinist who is agnostic on the matter of free will so I agree. There is no self, just the realization of God's will or what rebels against it. I'm a compatibilist so there is still personal responsibility and nothing changes about how I act but the idea that we somehow have a seat at the cosmic negotiation table is ridiculous. We are fated to either obey or rebel against God.

God will only throw you into hell because he cannot be reconciled with sinners. It's a rejection for that reason, that after the end of the world everything that is not with God is destroyed. Your purpose is to be with God, by following Christ, who will redeem you of your sins and make you a clean temple in which God may live, and you then enjoy his godliness and eternal life. It's more he throws all signs of sin and corruption into the fire out of incompatibility, but if you are compatible you will be saved.

That seems like it will effectivly be universal ism for people without empathy and agnostics

OP, essentially put, you're in hell right now.
>inb4 le maymay interpretation of we all really died and this is hell

Well what are you saying then?

Hell is the farthest place from God. OP has no faith and, worse yet, is perfectly aware. Truly there's no way but up for him.

You derive enjoyment from this don't you?

Most surely, youngun.

>Truly there's no way but up for him.
You underestimate mankind's ability to burrow.

I could become a satanist at this rate.

everyone goes to heaven in the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>How do you understand or reciprocate the love for a God that will throw you into hell? How do you show appreciation for a life that can terminate in ETERNAL hellfire?
>Well if acting as a self is what makes me so contemptible in the sight of the Lord then why would I love myself?
> I've asked too many questions and I feel like I'll never be able to go back to childlike innocence.
>So I'm stuck in this situation where I've acknowledge scripture as truth but I cannot bring myself to have the totality of faith.

Where to even begin.

bump cause i also have this problem

Holy...

Maybe a better question is how is one supposed to feel themselves worthy of this punishment? Of course you can say God wills it and assume from this that its worthy. But how do you FEEL this?

If you truly repent of your sins and do goodness, you won't go to Hell. Everyone in Hell is there because they won't repent.

No its not so much that I think I am going to hell its just when I try to love God the fear of hell prevails instead. But as I said I pretty much have a problem with this emotion anyway.

Because God also gives you (and your hypothetical future children) everything you need to avoid Hell and actively tries to help you avoid it. Read The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson. Not a long poem but a good explanation of God's attitude toward the potentially damned.

Other things to keep in mind:

Damnation is an act of love. God gives souls exactly what they asked for in life: either eternity with him or eternity without him

God still loves souls in Hell (which is part of what makes Hell so bad for the damned. If God hated them, they would at least have the satisfaction that they're justified in their spite)

Damnation is an act of mercy. Eternity in Heaven with God would be more tortuous to one who doesn't love him. Part of the reason God separates the damned from himself is to punish them, but part of the reason is to save them from a worse fate

>Because God also gives you (and your hypothetical future children) everything you need to avoid Hell and actively tries to help you avoid it.

I thought on that but then I imagine the billions of people who ever lived in cultures completely disconnected from Christianity and it really makes me question the universality of even ACCESS to grace. I don't believe in universalism or even OSAS but there is something troubling about the idea of people, many of them children dying without even having heard the word. So for all I know, salvation is even more exclusive still and the Lordship Salvationists have it right and in order to be saved you need to be a state where you can speak in tongues and your every action is impelled by the holy spirit with everyone else being "lukewarm".

at least the rest of your comment gave me a bit more perspective on the nature of God's wrath. Is there at least evidence to support the idea of different degrees of eternal punishment?

>be God
>be omniscient, omnipresent, etc.
>create universe, infinitely expansive in every conceivable direction
>allow it time for the dust to settle
>pick random dust clump
>spruce up the joint
>add the white man
>get sick of watching him jack off and fuck the innocent woodland creatures
>steal a rib, make a grill for him
>get sick of watching them fuck
>tempt them with a snek
>they fall for your trap snek
>"If u don't love me forever and apologize for everything I think u shouldn't do, EVERY TIME, I will send u to a scary place forever"
>ave a giggle, watch them fuck some more

>inb4 agnostic atheist
It was the (((aliens)))

Yeah that's an interesting question. It helps to realize that Heaven is never merited but Hell always is. Every person frequently chooses to do what they know is evil. Every person is evil in some sense and has chosen to reject God whether they know exactly who he is or not, so everyone has chosen Hell at some point in their lives. No one really deserves to have access to Grace, so God hasn't done anything wrong by not giving certain people access. I know this doesn't answer your question, but it's a good starting point for your reasoning through it.

Pretty sure there's no hell, there're only different levels of purgatory. The good news is that once you're in the only way to go is up.

common sense? the fact that some people are more evil than others and merit worse punishment and that, since God is just, he will punish them accordingly?

As far as scriptural evidence goes, there's Revelation 20:12 which seems to hint at different degrees of punishment determined by sinners' actions.

No it was more that if the souls were redeemed as in purgatory then God wouldn't be demonstrating love because he would be approving of their spite. I also heard there is some reason he cannot extinguish the human soul entirely. Maybe I can hold out on something like an eternity of being sodomized with a cactus or something.

More like a gnostic atheist, wouldn't you say?

Look at the lengths He went to to offer a chance at life at all!Look at passover and how it established the possibility to anull sins with sacrifice, paving the way for Jesus's sacrifice. So much setup and movement in the Spirit.

I'm in an unfortunately similar spot, OP my dear brother.

"His brain was simmering and bubbling within the cracking tenement of the skull. Flames burst forth from his skull like a corolla, shrieking like voices- Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell!" -James Joyce

Why am I even quoting this book? Why am I indulging myself with a book that lets me self-pity myself for my fears? The "relief" it gives me is total illusion. This self-pity concerning my fears, this oh-poor-me-for-having-to-fear-God, is sneakily rebellion against Him. Another trap of evil. I have to throw reason out the window if I'm going to serve and love God. Too many questions which ruin me. And the atheists say people turn to religion to feel comfortable. Yeesh. And even now I am still self-pitying myself. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

>How do you understand or reciprocate the love for a God that will throw you into hell?

You don't. Such an entity is not God. The fact that Classical Christianity is based on master-slave Dialectic too extreme even for the likes of Milton Friedman should give you a hint. Ultimate slavery will only lead you to the ultimate master.

I thought the same but as it turns out Yeshua must exist.

Christianity necessitates a submission to god

Christian dialectic of coming onto God is identical to Capitalist dialectic of "making it". Even the advice given to abate this realization is identical from both ends.

depends on how orthodox your theology is. Many believe that faith is a free gift received passively, while "making it" in a capitalist society is obviously the result of both deliberate action and passive reliance on chance. Many Christians, however, like to speak about "finding God" as if their relationship with him is the result of anything other than his free gift and their passive acceptance. It's a popular Christian belief, but not exactly an orthodox one.

How is it free if you have to get rid of everything you previously understood? It doesn't say its a "free gift" anyway. It requires total obedience and no recognition of personal sovereignty. I'm not saying I do this. In fact its daunting. But people had better reassess what it means to be Christian.

youtube.com/watch?v=BPVT1qIEu3s

"free" in the sense that it's not merited. It's offered before you make the decision to be obedient.

Yeah, people do need to reassess what it means to be Christian. It entails a more radical sacrifice than most are willing to admit. That video is garbage, though. Christian life is a process of gradually reducing sin to as little as possible. It's a series of recurring conversions. Anyone who says that he's totally stopped sinning is either a liar or has a very narrow definition of sin. Literally no one, except for a few based mystics, has ever totally stopped sinning before their death.

Well I think the problem for him is if he has not stopped sinning then his fruit does not reflect a true faith.. But what he really means is he has stopped willfully and negligently sinning.

fucking this. hell is not a set region of infinite physical tortures, it only describes one's false perception of heaven. unironically, the best description of hell i've read came from c.s. lewis:

Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinkung greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking ony the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.” But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:

“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

God is evil, better suck up to him.

wtf u talking about?

Revelation is a gradual process. This doesn't make the New Testament "fanfiction." While the Christian idea of hell isn't fully developed in the Old Testament, sheol exists. Remember, before Christ none were saved. It was only after His descent into hell that He brought salvation to the souls of the righteous.

No the self is evil. Only through self recognition can you suffer. Even the Buddhists knew that.

how do love someone who is very capable of robbing you blind, killing you and your children in your sleep, and mutilate your corpse?
that's what a wife is.

Are you part of a church community? I think speaking with a vicar, priest, pastor, or some sort of spiritual advisor whom you can trust would be a genuinely better way of sorting this out.