Tag Archives: Feelings

Podcasts

J Warner Wallace answers: can a loving God send people to Hell?

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J Warner Wallace
J Warner Wallace

I stole this image from James Warner Wallace’s Facebook page. Without asking. He is a cold case detective. So, I could get arrested. If I suddenly stop blogging, then would one of you please bail me out of jail?

Now just a quick note about the title of this post. I do NOT believe that a loving God “sends people to Hell”. I think people freely choose to separate themselves from God because they don’t want to relate to him. People who go to Heaven are people who freely choose to respond to God’s unilateral offer of forgiveness. People who go to Hell are those who freely chose to reject his offer of forgiveness.

Anyhoo, six podcasts on Hell from Please Convince Me.

Number 1:

In the wake of Rob Bell’s new book, “Love Wins,” many people are beginning to question the nature and existence of Hell and how exactly God decides who must go there. For many, the idea that our temporal, finite sin on earth should deserve an eternal punishment of infinite torment in hell is ridiculously inequitable. Why would God torture infinitely those who have only sinned finitely? Jim addresses this objection and answers listener email.

The MP3 file is here.

Number 2:

A loving God would never create a place like Hell, would He? Any God that would send people to a place of punishment and torment is unloving by definition, right? In this podcast, Jim responds to these foundational objections to the existence of Hell. In addition, Jim comments on the Harris / Craig debate and answers listener email related to hearing God’s voice.

The MP3 file is here.

Number 3:

In this podcast, Jim answers the objection that God would send people like Gandhi to Hell (simply because they are not Christians) alongside people like Hitler (who have committed unspeakable atrocities). How can a reasonable and just God be the source of such inequitable punishment? Also Jim answers listener email related to the power of prayer, the importance of evidential apologetics and the grounding for objective morality.

The MP3 file is here.

Number 4:

Isn’t it unfair for God to penalize people who are otherwise good, just because they haven’t heard about Jesus? A good God would not send good people to Hell. Jim responds to this objection and answers listener email related to the Craig/Harris debate, pre-existing mythologies that are similar to Jesus, and the difficult, exclusive nature of “election”.

The MP3 file is here.

Number 5:

If God is all-loving, why doesn’t he “reform” people rather than simply “punish” them in Hell? Skeptics sometimes argue that a God who simply punishes his children in Hell is a sadistic and vengeful God, unworthy of our worship. Jim responds to this objection and answers listener email related to the nature of “election”, the evidence for “annihilationism”, and a political quote related to same sex marriage.

The MP3 file is here.

Number 6:

A Loving God would love all of His creation, right? Wouldn’t He make sure that everyone goes to Heaven (regardless of what they might believe in this life)? A loving God would never limit Heaven to a select few and allow billions of people to suffer in Hell, would He? Jim responds to these objections and answers listener email related to Christian “essentials”, the appropriate response to fallen teachers and the nature of “debate” as it relates to Richard Dawkins and William Lane Craig.

The MP3 file is here.

I’m listening to the last one right now, and he is really mad at Rob Bell for being evasive in his debate with Adrian Warnock. I could not agree more. I was writing up a snarky summary of that debate but Bell literally made my ears bleed with his disingenuous questioning of anyone who asked him straight yes or no questions. Sometimes I feel like the bad guy for being harsh and snarky with certain people, but Wallace was just as upset with Bell as I was with Bell.

There could be more podcasts coming in this series, but these are so good I though I would link to them right away. I’ll keep an eye out for new ones.

The one thing I do disagree with J Warner Wallace on is that he is a Calvinist, and I believe in the middle knowledge view of salvation. William Lane Craig has written about his concerns with Calvinism, and I talk about those concerns in this post and link to some debates in there as well.

Related to the problem of Hell, is the problem of religious pluralism – what about people who say that you can follow any religion and still be approved by God? Here is a debate on religions pluralism, featuring the king of pluralism John Hick.

Related posts

Podcasts

Jennifer Roback Morse explains how divorce laws changed marriage

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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

When couples think that divorce is possible, it changes what marriage means. She also talks about how Christianity makes a big difference to our understanding of marriage.

The MP3 file is here.

Right Wing News posted an interview with Warren Farrell recently, and this question and answer struck me.

Excerpt:

Now thanks to people like Mark Steyn, conservatives have gotten a lot more interested in demographics over the last few years. In the Western world, you’re seeing a lot less marriage and a lot less people having children. Now you’ve written a couple of books about divorce and you’ve had a lot of experience talking about marriage. Why do you think marriage is simply less appealing to men today than it used to be a few decades ago?

I think, first of all, it’s both more appealing and less appealing. For example, when I wrote Why Men Are the Way They Are in 1986, almost invariably women would say that the first chapter that they opened up to was the chapter on why are men afraid of commitment. There was a deep interest in the ’70s and early ’80s – and for hundreds of years before that — on the part of women on how to get a man, how to get married and so on. Men were oftentimes the resisting party to that. Today, from what I can tell anecdotally and what I see in surveys, men and women are about equally interested in getting married. Having said that, there is a statistical shift that actually is in the opposite direction. Men have a greater interest, compared to women, in getting married in relation to what it used to be.

Nevertheless, there are many men whose fear of getting married is based on many things — one of which is that they see that their dad was married when he was younger, but now he lives in an apartment while their mom lives in a home. The mom got to raise the children, which they interpreted when they were younger as “Dad was just not interested,” but then as they got to be age 18 to 25, their dad eventually let them know that he was extremely interested and showed them court documents about how he fought in court to be involved with them, but how the mom resisted that involvement. So the man starts saying, “Wow, if I get married to the wrong woman, I could end up like my dad. My dad thought he was in love with my mom at the time and my mom was in love with my dad. Then my dad ended up not getting the home, not getting the children, having us feel that he hated us or was at least neglectful of us, his being depressed and disappointed and paying child support for children he couldn’t see in a home he couldn’t live in….” That gets pretty depressing for some boys that feel they could fall into the same pattern. The reason it isn’t even more depressing for many men is that when a man falls in love, he believes his woman will be different and oftentimes she is. But, sometimes she isn’t.

I think a lot of young men who have suffered through this experience are worried about it happening to them. A good start would be to realize that God wants us to have good marriage, and to ask ourselves – what are we going to do to prepare ourselves for marriage? What are we going to read? How will be train our character to be able to put others first? How will we strengthen our faith so that it can have an impact on our actions? If we just leave it up to whims and feelings, things aren’t going to work out. There has to be some sort of plan to make the marriage successful.

Mentoring

Do you need to have a special feeling before you can share your faith?

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Here’s a fun commentary from Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason.

First, the setup:

A couple of days ago, someone asked me about how much initiative I took sharing my faith in public. Do I wait for the Holy Spirit to “lead” me–waiting until I feel like God wants me to talk to a particular person–or do I just jump in on my own without a special directive from the Lord?

I’ll tell you the truth. If I waited for the Holy Spirit to “lead” me in that sense, I’d never do anything. I rarely “feel impressed” to do anything God commands, including witnessing.

That’s one of the problems with this approach. It’s a mistake to think that being led by the Spirit is a subjective thing, as if you can feel the tugging of the Holy Spirit grabbing you by the ear or the heart and pulling you along. That isn’t what the leading of the Spirit means in the Scriptures.

And a snarky excerpt:

Here’s how it works out for me. When I get on an airplane, I do not usually want to talk to anybody about the Lord. I want to work on my computer, I want to read, I want to watch the movie, I want to sleep. I don’t want to be bothered with conversation about spiritual things. Maybe that doesn’t sound very admirable, but that’s the way I feel.

Even though I feel that way, though, I know something different. I know, first of all, that I’m a Christian. I hold the information that can transform people’s lives and can secure their eternity. I have something valuable that every person needs. Proverbs says I ought not withhold something good from somebody when it’s within my power to do it (Prov. 3:27).

So when I get on a plane, I don’t feel like sharing my faith, but my attitude is to be obedient to whatever opportunity the Lord gives to me. My goal is to be available. I say, “Lord, I don’t want to talk to anyone today; I want to have an easy, conflict-free flight. That’s my desire. I don’t ‘feel led.’ But Lord, if you give me an opportunity to make a difference for the Kingdom in some way–to plant a seed, to give a word of encouragement, whatever–I’m available.”

Then, I just keep my eyes open. Generally, in the context of a conversation, I try to drop a word or two or a statement, that might open the door to spiritual things. I toss ought some bait and see if I get a nibble. I don’t try to force the situation, but sometimes–to continue the fishing metaphor–I do throw some chum in the water to see if I can trigger a little appetite.

Sometimes I get that opportunity when people ask me what I do for a living. Since I’m a writer, an educator, a student, a seminar speaker, a talk show host, and a CEO, I can say a lot of different things. I try to choose that particular description of my work that I think would offer the best opportunity to introduce spiritual things with the particular person I’m talking to.

So my goal is to be available to the opportunities God sovereignly gives me to be obedient. I look for a chance to plant a seed somewhere. I don’t do it because I feel moved by the Spirit, led by the Spirit, prompted, nudged, pushed or anything like that. I do it because I want to be faithful, to be obedient. My goal as a Christian is not to follow whatever I think my feelings are telling me, but to do those things I ought to be doing, and I don’t need a personalized message for that.

He then goes on to give an example of how he puts this into practice.

One of the things I like about Greg is that he comes across as a tough, non-sense Christian. I think a lot of men would be a lot more interested in Christianity if they realized that they could get into disagreements and take bold stands and be the pilots of their own lives – instead of waiting for the right feelings.

Soldiers don’t wait to feel like fighting when they are on the battlefield. They just do their jobs. There is plenty of time to talk about feelings with other Christians after you you finish the battle. Then you can be as emotional as you want – once the fighting is done.