Christians: Do you, personally, feel that eternal torture is justified for non-belief?

Question

I've been told, for the 10,000,000,000,000,000 time that I'm going to hell.
If that's true, do you think my non-belief justifies such eternal torture. I'm not asking if that is part of your faith, I'm asking if you as an individual think that is just?

Answer 1

Yes. Cause God gives everyone a choice.

Answer 2

That's up to each individual to decide. I DO know that I personally believe that belief and obedience are very little to ask in exchange for eternal life. "Torment and torture" is relative. I'd feel tormented if I were deprived of an eternal afterlife.

Answer 3

It is not unbelief that warrants eternal punishment, but your sin. Every thought, every act, every aspect of your entire life is lived out in a state of settled rebellion against the word and the will of God.
God summed up the state of mankind in this way, back in the days of Noah:
" The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time."
Genesis 6:5
Nothing has changed. Men are exactly the same to day. They hate God and they hate His people.
They oppose the work of Christ, whom God sent from heaven to save them.
Take heart in this: God is perfectly just, and you will not suffer anything more than what perfect justice demands. However if you had any idea what you really deserved, you would fall on your face and cry out to God for mercy.
I know whereof I speak. I was a damned fool - and I use the term advisedly, up until the age of 18. Then one day, totally unexpectedly, Jesus Christ revealed Himself to me as the One who died for my sins. I have never doubted since that day, over 36 years ago, and I am an entirely changed man today, through His amazing grace.

Answer 4

An alternate possibility to the "I'm going to hell just because I disbelieve" thread.

Why does someone OWE you to let you into some place if you can't follow the rules?

Short answer: they don't

What is it like being apart from God once you've experienced God directly?

Short answer: Hell

Just a possibility. I'm not a Christian, but I find the whole argument a little silly. I'm not even religious, just well read.

If the nonbeliever wanted "saving", he'd join.

If the nonbeliever doesn't want saving, they he's trying to convince the Christian of something. What? That the Christian system is unfair?

If it's true, there is nothing that Christian can do about it.

If it's false, there is nothing that the Christian can do about it.

Of course it is just. Where you end up in life is your own choice, especially if you know the rules ahead of time.

Nice? No. Just? Yes.

Answer 5

You know, sir, I too have been told many times that I was going to 'hell.' If I remember well, the first was when I was 9 years old, a cotton-mill boy in the '40s and '50s, a 'linthead,' as the rich white folks in the Jim Crow South chose to call mill workers, who stood and raised a fist against the prevailing state-sanctioned hate. Honestly, an argument used was that this "n.....-lover" was going to hell.

Would it be "just" if you were tortured by the invisible god of a Bronze Age tribe of murdering desert nomads? Yeah, and then they'll stone you to death...like they did children who sassed their mama and daddy, as their god commanded them to do.

Answer 6

Think about it this way: God created everything, the universe, heaven, you, me, all of it. If you follow God's commands, you can spend your eternity with Him in heaven. If you don't, then you spend your eternity in a lake of fire, eternally seperated from Him. If you live your entire life rejecting God and His son, Christ, then you will spend an eternity in the lake of fire, forever seperated from God. In a way, God is giving you exactly what you wanted. By living your life rejecting Him, you are telling Him you want nothing to do with Him. So, when you die, that's what you get: an eternity without God. Is it just of us to expect to spend an eternity WITH God, after a lifetime of rejecting Him? Of course, since God created everything, He could have left it at that, saying "well you made your choice...too bad for you." But He didn't. God doesn't want anyone to perish, because He loves all of us. He loves you so much, that He sent His son to die on the cross, to pay the penalty for your sins. The wages of sin are death...so when we sin, we die spiritually. Christ paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, so God can look upon us with the penalty for our sins having been paid. All we have to do is repent and put our faith in Christ.

Here's an analogy...it's not perfect, but it gets the idea, I think. Imagine a hot campfire. Then picture a dried leaf that flies up and lands next to the fire. What's going to happen to that leaf? It's going to get burned. The fire doesn't necessarily want the leaf to burn, but because of the nature of the leaf (being dead and dry), it's going to burn if it gets too close. That dry leaf cannot exist in the presence of the fire. If you die not having repented of your sins, then you are like the dry leaf. Sin cannot exist in the presence of God and it's penalty is death. If you repent and accept Christ, however, your penalty has already been paid and God will hold you blameless on the day of your judgement.

I hope that helps.

Answer 7

In the first place, only you and God Almighty will know what your choice is at the point of death. Christians can tell you what God says and Jesus taught about death for a believer and death for a non-believer.

But God gives us freewill. He loves you. He WANTS you to CHOOSE Him freely, so the ultimate choice and decision is yours alone.

Personally, I know, I do not deserve Jesus, Heaven, & Eternal Life, but by God's grace, love, & mercy and Jesus Christ sacrifice made for me, I will be spending eternity in Heaven.

So if you or anyone else CHOOSES to refuse to accept Jesus' love, ignore His sacrifice for you, & deny He is The Christ, then you have WILLINGLY earned yourself eternity in The Lake Of Fire.

A Hypothetical:

If a man is on a cruise, & he falls overboard, & the Captain of the Ship throws him a tethered life preserver, & people at the railing are shouting & pointing to the life preserver and encouraging the man to grab it, put it around his neck, so the Captain can pull him to life and safety, but the man refuses to believe he is going to drown, his ignores the shouted advice, he ignores the life preserver floating next to his face, ignores the Captain's assurance that he can and will save him, if he grabs the preserver and puts on the life-saving device.

Despite everyone's offered encouragement, direction, and offer of aid and rescue, the man refuses everything and he eventually drowns and dies and sinks beneath the crashing waves...never to be recovered....

Are the people, the life preserver, or the Captain responsible for his death? Of course not.

Is it just/fair for the Captain to report it and record it as a death by choice, suicide, or misadventure? Yes it is.

Jesus suffers for those who willingly refuse Him.
It breaks my heart for those who choose Hell over Heaven.

But are the consequences of every person's choice justified...Yes they are.

Answer 8

Yes because your rejecting the free gift of salvation. All we have to do is believe, repent of our sins, and seek God.

For those of us who do believe in him we will be in His presence for eternity.

How could you be in the presence of someone for eternity if you don't even acknowledge their presence?

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." -Ecclesiastes 3:11

Answer 9

I believe that God honors my choices of free will. If I choose to live in a way that He has said will result in eternal separation from Him, then He will honor that choice and will not force me to spend eternity in His presence, in contradiction to my stated choice.

Answer 10

You can't get an honest answer out of a theist because they think they are always under surveillance. Maybe that's why they make such "good" Americans...

Answer 11

of course it's justified

they (Christians) have almost sacrificed their lives because they want to get to heaven, they have given their lives to their god, because they want to go to heaven

and they will NOT stand the idea that ANY non-believer will get to heaven just because the said non-believer has been a good person all their life

it is really not fair