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| Richard F. Speece Pastor Bob Moore Director of Music |
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PAGE 4
Page 4
Calvary Baptist
Bradenton, Florida
This objection asserts that the two cardinal teachings of the historic Christian
faith,
(1) that God is good and
(2) that God sends people to Hell,
are incompatible, and no thinking person would hold both of them. In other words, this
objection says we are forced to make up our minds as to the kind of God we want to
have. Either he sends no one to Hell and is good, or he sends people to Hell and is bad.
FOUNDATION: These two cardinal teachings of the Christian faith are solidly grounded in
the Scriptures, and therefore we accept both as true.
The fact that God is good is taught in such passages as:
JAMES 1:17 “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down
from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”
JOHN 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God
is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” (perfection)
ACTS 14:16-17 “In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own
ways; and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you
rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
(benevolence)
The fact that God sends those who persist in rebellion to hell is taught in:
2 PETER 2:4,9 “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell
and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; ...... then the Lord knows
how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment
for the day of judgment,”
MATTHEW 11:23 “And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will
descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it
would have remained to this day.”
MATTHEW 10:28 “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but
rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
MATTHEW 23:33 “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence
of hell?”
MARK 9:43f “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter
life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire,”
RESPONSE: This objection, that God cannot both be good and send people to Hell, is
logically built upon two premises, (1) that punishment is necessarily bad and (2)
consequently that anyone who punishes someone is necessarily bad.” I say this because
sending people to Hell is an act of punishment, a most severe act of punishment but an
act of punishment nonetheless. Let’s test each of these premises:
Testing the first premise: is punishing inherently an evil activity? Let’s assume
that punishing is an inherently evil activity. If it is, then it is inherently evil to punish a thief
for stealing and a murderer for murdering. Now there may be debate over the severity of
punishment a person who has committed premeditated murder actually deserves, but
there is no debate that he should be punished in some way. If he should be punished in
some way, and everyone agrees he should, then punishing a person for inflicting harm on
others is not an inherently evil activity. This follows from the fact that universally we have
this intuitive notion resident within us that no one should be able to inflict harm with
impunity; people should bear the cost and be punished for the injury and harm they inflict
on others. Therefore we must reject the premise that punishment is an inherently evil
activity.
Testing the second premise: just because a person inflicts punishment on others
does that mean he cannot be a good person? Is a person who punishes
necessarily evil? If, as we have already shown, punishing is not an evil activity in itself,
then no one who punishes is necessarily a bad person. He would only be bad if he
abused his power and went beyond what was reasonable punishment for any particular
offense.
Is a judge evil because he finds a drunk driver guilty of four counts of manslaughter
(a mother and father and their two children) and sentences him to eight years in prison?
We may disagree with the severity of the sentence and argue that it should be lighter, but
if we believe the man deserves to be punished in some way, then finding the man guilty
and sentencing him to prison does not make the judge bad.
In fact, if the judge simply discounted all the evidence and set the man free, what
would we say about the judge? That he is a good judge? No, we would say he is a bad
judge. Thus it is evident that all of us really believe that those judges who fail to
punish people who have inflicted terrible harm on others but rather set them free
are the ones who are bad. We all believe that judges who ignore or overlook the
harmful deeds perpetrated against others without calling the perpetrators to account are
negligent or derelict in their duties, for we believe that it is incumbent upon judges to judge
fairly.
So the original question really goes through a metamorphosis and becomes this: Is
it fair of God to punish anyone with the severity of Hell? Or, looked at from the
opposite direction, has anyone really been bad enough that he actually deserves to
be punished so severely that he should be sent to Hell? Has anyone’s offenses
been so enormous that he deserves to be punished for eternity?
Before we can assess whether God is fair for punishing people by assigning them to hell,
we need to understand exactly what Hell is? The word used in the N.T. for hell is the word
Gehenna. It is the name of the valley which was the dump for the city of Jerusalem. It
was the place where all the trash and garbage of the city was disposed of. In MK 9:43-48
(quoting the prophet ISAIAH) it is described as a place where there are maggots and fires
smolder continuously. When we realize what hell really is, the cosmic dump for all the
beings in the universe who by their own choice are of no use to God, then all of the ways
in which hell is described in Scripture begin to make sense.
Now as much as I am repulsed by dumps and try to steer clear of them, guess
what! I recognize that they are necessary. We need to have a place where the
garbage is tossed, otherwise, what is bad will contaminate what is good. We all
recognize that it is ultimately for our protection, health, and benefit that we have
dumps here in Tampa Bay.
That God too would have a place for disposing of what is worthless and rebellious
makes good sense. In fact, although many people reject the idea of hell, they do so
without thinking of the implications of no hell. Even most of those who reject the notion
of a hell agree that if there is existence after death, all cannot enjoy the same destiny.
George Peters, one of my former teachers, would tell how following WWII he heard a G.
I. recently returned from Europe make a comment to the effect that Hitler and his
ruthless gang would burn in hell. George Peters pointed out to him that saying such was
inconsistent with what he had heard him say in previous conversations, for he had heard
him say he could not accept the idea that there could be differences in the eternal state of
people. He believed in universalism---that God would save everybody. There would be
no hell.
George Peters said to him, "If what you said previously is true, then you had better
change your mind. If everyone goes to the same place, then what if the first man you
meet in heaven is Hitler himself?"
"Oh, that could never be," replied the soldier who had witnessed the horrors of the German
death camps.
"But according to your opinion there is no hell," replied George Peters.
"There must be a hell for people like that," he replied.
So, although this man had once believed there was no hell, when he saw the evils
perpetrated by a man like Hitler he was forced to conclude that there must be a hell for
people such as he. In other words, to his new way of thinking, God would not be good if
he did not confine people like Hitler (and Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot and Idi Amin) to hell
for all the misery they had inflicted upon innocent people. Therefore, the position that there
is no hell is not very acceptable either.
Now for the issue of whether it is fair for God to punish people with the severity of
hell. How could it be fair of God to punish people eternally for sins which are
committed in time? It is argued that if God punishes people forever for sins committed
in time, then he is giving way more punishment than they deserve, and that means he is
cruel. He is unjust.
What can we say here? Is it true that if God disposes of worthless angels and
people forever in a cosmic dump, that he is being cruel and unjust because the
punishment he metes out far exceeds the crime? This sort of reasoning is fallacious
because (1) it incorrectly assumes that time is pitted against eternity, and (2) it fails to
recognize what it is that determines the seriousness of any offense.
We need to ask ourselves: just what does determine the seriousness of any
offense? What determines the seriousness of an offense is not whether it was
committed in time as we know it or outside of time as we know it. What determines the
seriousness of an offense is the value of the one who was offended.
If someone maliciously cut the legs off a roach, no one would think he should be
prosecuted for a criminal offense. If he cut the legs off a rat, many people would think
that was kind of bizarre, but most wouldn't think he had committed a prosecutable
offense. If, however, he cut the legs off a cat, he could be arrested and prosecuted and
even found guilty of cruelty to animals and sentenced to prison or fined stiffly. But what if
he cut the legs off a child? That would be so heinous a crime that no one would question
whether he should be aggressively prosecuted and sentenced to many, many years in
prison.
So what makes us react so differently? In each instance it was the same offensive
act of severing legs? We react very differently because we recognize that what makes
the difference is the value of the one who is harmed. (cf. MT 12:12, where Jesus declared
that people are way more valuable than animals.) How much more valuable is a child than
a roach? You say there is no comparison. The child is worth so much more we are at a
loss to say anything other than a child is vastly more valuable than a roach. In the same
way, since God is infinite and infinitely perfect he is of infinite value. Therefore any offense
against Him, despite how trivial it might appear to us, is an infinite offense.
We have absolutely no idea how offensive our sins are to God. We assume that our sins
are not really such a big deal. It is only when we start to grasp that God is utterly perfect
and free of imperfection that we can even begin to understand why every act of sin and
rebellion, no matter how trivial we might think it, demands a commensurate response.
As a little boy I broke a cut glass dish my mother had on a table. I had no idea of
the loss she had incurred at the time. In my immaturity I was oblivious to the seriousness
of what I had done. To me a dish was a dish was a dish. My attitude was: Plenty more
left in the cupboard. The more valuable the one offended the greater the offense.
To offend an infinite God is an infinite offense requiring an infinite payment to
make restitution. An infinite payment is not something a finite being could make. Only
God himself could adequately cover the offense of our rebellion against Him. This is just
what Jesus did on the cross.
Why can't God just ignore sin? That is like asking why a doctor just cannot ignore
disease. A good doctor does not ignore disease but rather works to isolate it from others
who would be harmed by it. If God is good, then there has to be a place for what opposes
him, for all that opposes him is bad. Otherwise, what is bad would contaminate heaven,
and God will not permit that to happen.
The World Health Organization recently accused those doctors in charge of health
care in parts of China with negligence because they did not aggressively act to contain
the spread of the SARS virus. In fact, they initially reported the numbers of people
infected as substantially lower than they actually were. Their actions enabled the virus to
spread. Those provincial health care officers were fired over it because they were not good
doctors. Good doctors would have been honest and acted aggressively to contain the
spread of the virus.
Final Note: In one sense God doesn't send anyone to hell. He simply confirms the
eternal destination each person has selected in this life. If in this life a person chooses to
ignore God and not give his Son the time of day, then he will get to continue in his choice
forever. He will be banished from God’s presence and the presence of his son and be
consigned to Hell forever.
faith,
(1) that God is good and
(2) that God sends people to Hell,
are incompatible, and no thinking person would hold both of them. In other words, this
objection says we are forced to make up our minds as to the kind of God we want to
have. Either he sends no one to Hell and is good, or he sends people to Hell and is bad.
FOUNDATION: These two cardinal teachings of the Christian faith are solidly grounded in
the Scriptures, and therefore we accept both as true.
The fact that God is good is taught in such passages as:
JAMES 1:17 “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down
from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”
JOHN 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God
is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” (perfection)
ACTS 14:16-17 “In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own
ways; and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you
rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
(benevolence)
The fact that God sends those who persist in rebellion to hell is taught in:
2 PETER 2:4,9 “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell
and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; ...... then the Lord knows
how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment
for the day of judgment,”
MATTHEW 11:23 “And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will
descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it
would have remained to this day.”
MATTHEW 10:28 “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but
rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
MATTHEW 23:33 “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence
of hell?”
MARK 9:43f “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter
life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire,”
RESPONSE: This objection, that God cannot both be good and send people to Hell, is
logically built upon two premises, (1) that punishment is necessarily bad and (2)
consequently that anyone who punishes someone is necessarily bad.” I say this because
sending people to Hell is an act of punishment, a most severe act of punishment but an
act of punishment nonetheless. Let’s test each of these premises:
Testing the first premise: is punishing inherently an evil activity? Let’s assume
that punishing is an inherently evil activity. If it is, then it is inherently evil to punish a thief
for stealing and a murderer for murdering. Now there may be debate over the severity of
punishment a person who has committed premeditated murder actually deserves, but
there is no debate that he should be punished in some way. If he should be punished in
some way, and everyone agrees he should, then punishing a person for inflicting harm on
others is not an inherently evil activity. This follows from the fact that universally we have
this intuitive notion resident within us that no one should be able to inflict harm with
impunity; people should bear the cost and be punished for the injury and harm they inflict
on others. Therefore we must reject the premise that punishment is an inherently evil
activity.
Testing the second premise: just because a person inflicts punishment on others
does that mean he cannot be a good person? Is a person who punishes
necessarily evil? If, as we have already shown, punishing is not an evil activity in itself,
then no one who punishes is necessarily a bad person. He would only be bad if he
abused his power and went beyond what was reasonable punishment for any particular
offense.
Is a judge evil because he finds a drunk driver guilty of four counts of manslaughter
(a mother and father and their two children) and sentences him to eight years in prison?
We may disagree with the severity of the sentence and argue that it should be lighter, but
if we believe the man deserves to be punished in some way, then finding the man guilty
and sentencing him to prison does not make the judge bad.
In fact, if the judge simply discounted all the evidence and set the man free, what
would we say about the judge? That he is a good judge? No, we would say he is a bad
judge. Thus it is evident that all of us really believe that those judges who fail to
punish people who have inflicted terrible harm on others but rather set them free
are the ones who are bad. We all believe that judges who ignore or overlook the
harmful deeds perpetrated against others without calling the perpetrators to account are
negligent or derelict in their duties, for we believe that it is incumbent upon judges to judge
fairly.
So the original question really goes through a metamorphosis and becomes this: Is
it fair of God to punish anyone with the severity of Hell? Or, looked at from the
opposite direction, has anyone really been bad enough that he actually deserves to
be punished so severely that he should be sent to Hell? Has anyone’s offenses
been so enormous that he deserves to be punished for eternity?
Before we can assess whether God is fair for punishing people by assigning them to hell,
we need to understand exactly what Hell is? The word used in the N.T. for hell is the word
Gehenna. It is the name of the valley which was the dump for the city of Jerusalem. It
was the place where all the trash and garbage of the city was disposed of. In MK 9:43-48
(quoting the prophet ISAIAH) it is described as a place where there are maggots and fires
smolder continuously. When we realize what hell really is, the cosmic dump for all the
beings in the universe who by their own choice are of no use to God, then all of the ways
in which hell is described in Scripture begin to make sense.
Now as much as I am repulsed by dumps and try to steer clear of them, guess
what! I recognize that they are necessary. We need to have a place where the
garbage is tossed, otherwise, what is bad will contaminate what is good. We all
recognize that it is ultimately for our protection, health, and benefit that we have
dumps here in Tampa Bay.
That God too would have a place for disposing of what is worthless and rebellious
makes good sense. In fact, although many people reject the idea of hell, they do so
without thinking of the implications of no hell. Even most of those who reject the notion
of a hell agree that if there is existence after death, all cannot enjoy the same destiny.
George Peters, one of my former teachers, would tell how following WWII he heard a G.
I. recently returned from Europe make a comment to the effect that Hitler and his
ruthless gang would burn in hell. George Peters pointed out to him that saying such was
inconsistent with what he had heard him say in previous conversations, for he had heard
him say he could not accept the idea that there could be differences in the eternal state of
people. He believed in universalism---that God would save everybody. There would be
no hell.
George Peters said to him, "If what you said previously is true, then you had better
change your mind. If everyone goes to the same place, then what if the first man you
meet in heaven is Hitler himself?"
"Oh, that could never be," replied the soldier who had witnessed the horrors of the German
death camps.
"But according to your opinion there is no hell," replied George Peters.
"There must be a hell for people like that," he replied.
So, although this man had once believed there was no hell, when he saw the evils
perpetrated by a man like Hitler he was forced to conclude that there must be a hell for
people such as he. In other words, to his new way of thinking, God would not be good if
he did not confine people like Hitler (and Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot and Idi Amin) to hell
for all the misery they had inflicted upon innocent people. Therefore, the position that there
is no hell is not very acceptable either.
Now for the issue of whether it is fair for God to punish people with the severity of
hell. How could it be fair of God to punish people eternally for sins which are
committed in time? It is argued that if God punishes people forever for sins committed
in time, then he is giving way more punishment than they deserve, and that means he is
cruel. He is unjust.
What can we say here? Is it true that if God disposes of worthless angels and
people forever in a cosmic dump, that he is being cruel and unjust because the
punishment he metes out far exceeds the crime? This sort of reasoning is fallacious
because (1) it incorrectly assumes that time is pitted against eternity, and (2) it fails to
recognize what it is that determines the seriousness of any offense.
We need to ask ourselves: just what does determine the seriousness of any
offense? What determines the seriousness of an offense is not whether it was
committed in time as we know it or outside of time as we know it. What determines the
seriousness of an offense is the value of the one who was offended.
If someone maliciously cut the legs off a roach, no one would think he should be
prosecuted for a criminal offense. If he cut the legs off a rat, many people would think
that was kind of bizarre, but most wouldn't think he had committed a prosecutable
offense. If, however, he cut the legs off a cat, he could be arrested and prosecuted and
even found guilty of cruelty to animals and sentenced to prison or fined stiffly. But what if
he cut the legs off a child? That would be so heinous a crime that no one would question
whether he should be aggressively prosecuted and sentenced to many, many years in
prison.
So what makes us react so differently? In each instance it was the same offensive
act of severing legs? We react very differently because we recognize that what makes
the difference is the value of the one who is harmed. (cf. MT 12:12, where Jesus declared
that people are way more valuable than animals.) How much more valuable is a child than
a roach? You say there is no comparison. The child is worth so much more we are at a
loss to say anything other than a child is vastly more valuable than a roach. In the same
way, since God is infinite and infinitely perfect he is of infinite value. Therefore any offense
against Him, despite how trivial it might appear to us, is an infinite offense.
We have absolutely no idea how offensive our sins are to God. We assume that our sins
are not really such a big deal. It is only when we start to grasp that God is utterly perfect
and free of imperfection that we can even begin to understand why every act of sin and
rebellion, no matter how trivial we might think it, demands a commensurate response.
As a little boy I broke a cut glass dish my mother had on a table. I had no idea of
the loss she had incurred at the time. In my immaturity I was oblivious to the seriousness
of what I had done. To me a dish was a dish was a dish. My attitude was: Plenty more
left in the cupboard. The more valuable the one offended the greater the offense.
To offend an infinite God is an infinite offense requiring an infinite payment to
make restitution. An infinite payment is not something a finite being could make. Only
God himself could adequately cover the offense of our rebellion against Him. This is just
what Jesus did on the cross.
Why can't God just ignore sin? That is like asking why a doctor just cannot ignore
disease. A good doctor does not ignore disease but rather works to isolate it from others
who would be harmed by it. If God is good, then there has to be a place for what opposes
him, for all that opposes him is bad. Otherwise, what is bad would contaminate heaven,
and God will not permit that to happen.
The World Health Organization recently accused those doctors in charge of health
care in parts of China with negligence because they did not aggressively act to contain
the spread of the SARS virus. In fact, they initially reported the numbers of people
infected as substantially lower than they actually were. Their actions enabled the virus to
spread. Those provincial health care officers were fired over it because they were not good
doctors. Good doctors would have been honest and acted aggressively to contain the
spread of the virus.
Final Note: In one sense God doesn't send anyone to hell. He simply confirms the
eternal destination each person has selected in this life. If in this life a person chooses to
ignore God and not give his Son the time of day, then he will get to continue in his choice
forever. He will be banished from God’s presence and the presence of his son and be
consigned to Hell forever.
| QUESTION: If God is good, how could He send anyone to hell? |
| Pr Rick Speece December 2005 |
| Extracted from notes used in a Sunday School class on 6 December 03 at Calvary Baptist Church, Bradenton-FL. |
Church