Why didn't God only make people who would follow Him?

God knows everything, right? So God knew who would choose not to follow Him and therefore who would go to hell. So God could, clearly, have prevented a lot of suffering by simply not creating those people. But God didn't.

How does one respond to this issue?

What I would say is that if it was that easy for God to solve the problem, then God would do so, based on verses like these:

1 Tim 2:3-4: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."

Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?'"

2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his word, as he seems to some, but he is waiting in mercy for you, not desiring the destruction of any, but that all may be turned from their evil ways."

Matthew 23:37: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, putting to death the prophets, and stoning those who are sent to her! Again and again would I have taken your children to myself as a bird takes her young ones under her wings, and you would not!"

Turning to philosophy, what I might conjecture is that God can make us knowing everything we'll do, but not use that knowledge to make or not make certain people.

Creating a person could be a bit like flipping a coin that will come up 50/50 heads or tails. You can't make it go heads or tails. So just like I can't make a random coin toss always come up heads, God can't make people who will always choose a certain way.

However, unlike flipping the coin God *does* know everything about us before we are born. So in that respect what we have here is something very unlike flipping a coin. God knows but this knowledge is not 'actionable', God can't avoid making the people who will choose badly.

This is venturing further into speculation but it might be that once a soul exists God knows everything about it, including how it will choose in all possible situations. So once God guarantees that a soul will exist, God knows everything about it. However, without making the soul there is nothing can God know about it, because the knowing is based on that soul actually existing - not merely potentially existing. Because before it's created there is not a potential set of choices, there is actually no set of choices at all, because you need a real person to have a potential set of choices to look at, not a mere idea of a person.

(I found this answer interesting as well).

Location heaven versus state of mind heaven

There's a common perception out there that heaven (or eternal life in the new creation) is just a place. There's a common view that all God has to do to let people into heaven is put them in heaven. And that God doing this would instantly make hell empty.

The Bible also talks about heaven as a state of mind rather than a location:

Romans 14:17: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 36:8-9: They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

Luke 17:20-1: Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

In the Bible, heaven and eternal life also involve one's mind or self being deeply and intimately connected to God.

So heaven isn't just about going to a heavenly location in a spiritual dimension, it also involves a state of mind. Judging from the verses above, this state of mind involves experiencing whatever happiness or contentment God feels through being reconciled fully to God.

The question is: how do you get reconciled to God to experience a state of mind heaven? The problem is that our wrong actions (sin) separate us from the kind of closeness to God that is heaven. The Bible's answer to this problem is that God/Jesus Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Pe 2:24). This meant God could "[make] [us] alive with Christ" dealing with the problem (Col 2:13) - meaning that although we can't avoid sinning in this life (1 John 1:8), our fundamental orientation has changed.

This analysis says that going to heaven isn't simply a matter of God letting someone into heaven. Intentions, thoughts, desires, and so on need to be different as well, and a two-way loving relationship needs to exist between us and God.

One way of interpreting hell

Hell is described in pretty awful terms in Revelation, but we must remember that it is described in other places as simply not being with God. 2 Thes 1:9 "Whose reward will be eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength".

I've noticed on forums that it's easier to criticise Christianity if you accept the 'Revelation' view of hell but it's not as easy if you accept the '2 Thessalonians' view.

Maybe Revelation talks about hell in such a terrifying way because doing so will ultimately get more people into eternal life? Proverbs 14:27: "The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death".

But if hell isn't all that bad then the Bible is being a bit deceitful about how awful it is. And if hell is awful, then why would anyone would choose to go there?

I think a good illustration of how people could choose to go to hell, and yet hell involves an eternity of suffering, was given in a Twilight episode called 'A Nice Place to Visit' (quoted from here):

"A two-bit thug, shot to death by the police, wakes up on the far side. Given his life of crime, he is puzzled to find himself in what he takes to be heaven: a penthouse of Pascalian divertissement has been provided for him in which he can sate his every sensuous appetite. The supply of booze and broads is endless, and he can't lose at the gaming tables. But soon enough our man tires of the 'good life' and heads for the door — which is locked. Turning to his host, the thug complains that he'd rather be in the other place. "This is the other place!" the host demonically laughs."

I think if we were forced to live with the happiness we have now for let's say... a trillion to the power of a trillion years, then eventually we would be weeping and gnashing our teeth in pain. The happiness we have now cannot sustain us for that long.

There is another interesting take on this in a quote from the science fiction novel 'Permutation City'. In it Greg Egan tries to imagine life as an eternal being:

"The workshop abutted a warehouse full of table legs – one hundred and sixty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine, so far.  Peer could imagine nothing more satisfying than reaching the two hundred thousand mark – although he knew it was likely that he'd change his mind and abandon the workshop before that happened; new vocations were imposed by his exoself at random intervals, but statistically, the next one was overdue.  Immediately before taking up woodwork, he'd passionately devoured all the higher mathematics texts in the central library, run all the tutorial software, and then personally contributed several important new results to group theory – untroubled by the fact that none of the Elysian mathematicians would ever be aware of his work.  Before that, he'd written over three hundred comic operas, with librettos in Italian, French and English – and staged most of them, with puppet performers and audience.  Before that, he'd patiently studied the structure and biochemistry of the human brain for sixty-seven years; towards the end he had fully grasped, to his own satisfaction, the nature of the process of consciousness.  Every one of these pursuits had been utterly engrossing, and satisfying, at the time.  He'd even been interested in the Elysians, once. No longer.  He preferred to think about table legs."

The eternal existence of 'Peer' in this quote indicates what our existence might be like if it lasted forever.

Is there another kind of happiness and way of being? According to the Bible there is, which everyone can find in God's presence. Talking about eternal life, Romans 14:17 says "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit". So the happiness of heaven actually involves people experiencing God's happiness. This joy will make us complete and fulfilled forever, in a way that we have never known and literally cannot imagine (1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'").

The catch in experiencing God's happiness is that it requires someone to want to live under God's standards, because we get it through the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17) - who is Christ's spirit. Since we experience God's contentment through Christ's spirit, we need to be willing to be 'in' Christ. As Galatians 2:20 puts it: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me". This is how close we need to be to God to experience His happiness. In Christ we can express our personalities however we want minus actions that treat others in a way we wouldn't ideally like to be treated.

And yet people can and it seems would choose to go to the 'hells' described above rather than heaven, if heaven requires entering into a state where we love and serve God with all heart, soul, strength and mind, and love and serve our neighbour as we would ideally like to be loved, which is God's standard (through trusting in Jesus' death on the cross for us).

A philosophical account of the gospel in pictures

This picture summarises this site's theology in one go, more detailed pictures below this one:

[Click to enlarge]



(Explanation of this picture here).

Part 1: how are humans made in the image of God? Where does consciousness, free will and morality come from?

[Click to enlarge]



Part 2: what is sin; where does it come from?



Part 3: what is hell, why does it exist, and why do people suffer? The atonement.

Hell In Three Paragraphs

Hell In Three Paragraphs
Will G
12/17/07

As I've written about the doctrine of hell, and salvation and the need for it in Christian theology, I can't emphasise enough that there is one core concept, I (personally) think, that is the 'foundation of stone' for any defense of hell, both to others and to ourselves. It is that hell has to be based on free choice. So much does the Bible say. But I argue that it never works unless you fully take that concept of free choice to its extreme. That would mean people in hell get the choice to go to heaven, and that people going to hell who are alive today, if everyone knew the truth of Christianity, would still make the choice to go to hell. Otherwise what kind of choice is it? There should be no time limits and it should be a reasonable one, otherwise no one would freely choose hell.

This leads me inexorably to draw a conclusion about hell, that it has to be a reasonable choice. The best way of making it a reasonable choice is to redraw the boundaries of Christian theology so it's more of a 'fifty-fifty' thing and not so ridiculously unbalanced in favour of heaven. I say that hell is either a finite (because it's timeless) amount of suffering, or is more like limbo of no suffering and happiness over an eternity. Then I say that heaven, due to our necessary imperfection which not even God can fix by some other way, must involve a massive loss of individuality and autonomy, when we accept it, by the joining our spirits to the Holy Spirit. This makes the choice more difficult and hence reasonable someone might say no to heaven. Ah yes, but then you might say, it's still the case that no one would choose to go to hell despite that loss of individuality and autonomy, given that heaven still involves perfect happiness forever. Well, how far are you willing to go with me on the loss of autonomy and individuality to agree with my point? I say to you, however far it seems reasonable to you that the loss of autonomy and individuality is so great that it's a difficult choice to go to heaven or hell, that is how far we should go - however far it takes, although we can't be robots and have to have choice involved somewhere.

This is the only thing I can possibly think of to make heaven and hell possible, because it is the only thing I can think of that makes it a reasonable choice. But, it can make the doctrine *work*, along with an explanation of why this choice, salvation, heaven and hell, has to be this way. I encourage readers to take a look here and here to know why I think we do have to face this choice; why it's plausible that we do, and for other elements of such a theology.

The Problem of Hell

The Problem of Hell
Will G

Summary. This is intended to be a shorter article explaining my views on hell, offering a coherent solution to many of its problems. Basically, I argue that hell is based on a choice, the choice to accept or reject Jesus. But this choice must follow an important principle: it has to be made knowing the consequences. And no atheist finds it plausible that a person could knowingly choose to go to hell. My solution is to redefine heaven and hell so that heaven involves joining part of ourselves to God in order to do perfect good over an eternity, and hell involves either just exclusion from God or a finite amount of pain (finite despite it lasting forever.) I also argue that people's choice to go to such a heaven or hell defines whether or not they are a Christian in this life.

A good view of how this theology fits in with a greater picture is provided here.

Edited 12/17/07
12/19/07

Introduction

The problem of hell is regarded by those skeptical of Christianity as a very significant difficulty in Christian views on salvation. Rather than go on about the difficulties in Christian views on salvation, I will simply state a revised philosophical perspective on the issue that I think is conceptually clarifying and makes a great deal of sense.

Why Hell is a Choice

Christian views on salvation have always maintained that hell is a result of judgement. That is true. However since everyone allegedly has the ability to accept Jesus Christ and from then on face no judgement whatsoever, it is not just about judgement. It is about judgement, but there is something more to it than that. It is a specific judgement, relating not just to someone's sins, but to someone's refusal to do anything about those sins. In other words, it is not just about sin, it is also about accepting Jesus Christ. It is also about choice.

Two Key Principles of Choice

Since we are about to discuss choice, it is important to discuss two principles of choice that are involved in the choice to go to hell. The first principle is the principle that if you choose something, you are responsible for that choice. This principle supports the idea that people can be condemned for rejecting Jesus Christ. The second principle is that for a choice to be a real choice, it has to be made knowing the consequences. This is the area which atheists object makes the idea of choice regarding hell nonsensical.

The first principle of choice is that if you genuinely choose something, then the results of that choice cannot, really, be laid on someone else. If I choose to shoot myself, then who has the blame? Unless I was forced into it, I do, because I chose to do it. Similarly, if I go and join the army, and I get sent into a combat zone because there is a war on, then whose fault is it that I am in danger? It is mine, because I knew when I joined the army that I could be sent into danger. So if I go to hell, then whose fault is it, if I freely and fully chose to go there? Granted, hell is terrible. But the principle of choice has overriding power. Even though hell is really, really bad, if I freely choose to go there, it is all my fault, not God's. Hence if hell cannot be freely chosen, then hell can never be justified. But if hell can be freely chosen, then hell can be completely justified. That is how powerful the principle of choice is; properly employed it can justify hell. So if people freely choose to reject Jesus, then they deserve to be punished and to go to hell. If that choice is freely and fully made, then, logically, there is no problem with hell.

Now it is important to note the second principle that needs to be followed for a choice to be genuinely made. This principle needs to be followed for the above principle to work, and is the principle atheists say has been violated in the choice to go to hell (and that, hence, hell is unjustified). This principle is, that if I freely choose to do something, then it can only be genuinely be called a choice if I know what the consequences of my choice are. For example, suppose I give a tropical islander who has never seen a gun before a firearm. Suppose they then point it at another islander and pull the trigger, killing them. Did that person freely choose to shoot his fellow islander? Obviously not, because he did not know if he pulled the trigger, the person would die. So, the doctrine of hell makes no sense if people who go to hell do not choose to go there, and they can only freely choose to go there if they choose to go to hell knowing the consequences. So our doctrine of hell must show how people who go to hell freely choose to go there knowing the consequences of their choice.

Because atheists don't believe they reject Jesus because they want to go to hell, rather, they choose to reject Jesus because they see no evidence of Christianity, no atheist would agree that the concept of choice makes sense when applied to hell. To be sure, the concept of choice COULD theoretically justify hell, but it doesn't, as non-Christians would say, because non-Christians don't knowingly choose to go to hell.

How Hell Can Be a Choice

So does the Christian view of hell make sense given the atheist's objection? Christians have always maintained that when a person goes to hell, it is of their own free choice. But why would anyone choose to go to hell, really? Would a perfectly sane and healthy man, suffering no depression at all, leave his loving wife and kids and choose to jump off a cliff for no reason? It doesn't make sense. And, sad to say, many an atheist would say that the standard doctrine of hell makes about as much sense as that. Atheists may dislike God, or hate God, but why on earth would they choose to go to hell if they will get tortured there forever?

My modification to this position is to modify what heaven and hell actually are, from a Christian perspective, so that it is possible for some people to knowingly choose to go to hell.

On hell, it is true that hell will consist of suffering, but that suffering has been considerably over-emphasised. It is not necessary for an idea of an eternity of pain for that pain to be infinite. Let's say one day I break my leg. Let's say that every second I suffer 10 units of pain, hence over a minute I suffer 600 units of pain. That is why I do not wish to break my leg. But let's say time was stopped the moment my leg was broken. If so, then I would suffer 10 units of pain forever. That kind of thing is what hell could be. Or perhaps, as some argue (see here) it consists of no suffering at all, just the pain and shame from exclusion from God. This means if heaven involved a sufficient cost, some people could freely choose to go to hell.

And I argue that heaven also involves a large cost, one big enough to make an eternity of limbo a reasonable option for some people. While our souls and bodies will remain separate, our spirit will become one with God's Holy Spirit, as part of the perfection process where we will do good over an eternity. This means that we partly become part of God, and lose some of our 'self'. Of course, one may object this is not such a large cost. But what this choice is, what it really involves, is something we cannot really imagine. This may involve a considerable loss of self, to become partly part of God and/or lose a significant amount of autonomy and individuality. I find it difficult to conceptualise this, but I think that the extent to which we lose autonomy and individuality is the extent to which we would have to in order to have a lot of people choose willingly to go to hell/limbo. So some people will freely choose to go to hell.

Why do I think you have to join with God to go to heaven? In another area of my theology I have outlined (see here) I believe the only way to be completely morally perfect, or perfect in any respect, is to be God, because only God can, by definition, by perfect. Everything that is perfect is God, everything that is not God is not perfect, although it may be incredibly good. Total perfection is something only God can have. To be sure, God can create things outside of himself that are very good, extremely good, but not 100% perfect. So when God creates beings outside of himself, in order to create and love something apart from himself, the creatures he creates are extremely good, but not completely perfect. This is why the Fall occurred, because any being outside of God cannot do perfect good over an eternity, only God has that power. This explains why God did not create everyone perfect, and how everyone will be perfect in heaven. The way God will make everyone perfect in heaven is by joining our spirits with His Holy Spirit, so we will be able to do only perfect good over an eternity, using God's Holy Spirit to do so (I feel this is a good position to adopt because it also explains why there must be moral evil in the universe.) God has to do this otherwise we get eternally cut off from him due to our (necessary) imperfection.

How this Choice Can Show the World we See

Alright, so some people can freely choose to go to heaven, and some people can freely choose to go to hell. But that doesn't explain the world we see. It still doesn't defeat the problem that atheists don't knowingly choose to go to hell. Because even if it is a choice that can be rationally made in favour of hell, atheists and those who reject Christianity don't get to make it in this life, because no atheists and non-Christians know about the Christian hell in this life.

But as I argue, God is omniscient, and since he knows everything, he doesn't have to offer us this choice in this life. Instead, God knows which among us will choose to go to heaven, and who will choose to go to hell, if faced with that choice. So God doesn't have to offer us this choice right now in order to determine who will reject Jesus Christ. He knows who will reject Jesus already. So God is free to work as though atheists have already made a knowing choice to go to hell, even though they haven't. Because presumably God knows what they would choose if they were offered such a choice. And I believe we all get to face such a choice in the afterlife, but it won't contradict what God knew we would choose.

But that still doesn't explain why every Christian is a person who will choose to go to heaven and why every rejecting non-Christian will choose to go to hell if faced with the choice. After all, there are many kinds of Christians, and many kinds of non-Christians.

But I argue this objection is actually putting the cart before the horse, or rather, looking at a puddle and then remarking how lucky it is that the puddle is shaped around the hole (as Douglas Adams said in another context). God has omniscient knowledge, so he knows who would choose to go to hell or heaven if given a knowledgeable choice in the afterlife. Even though everyone who goes to hell currently lacks knowledge that hell exists, God knows what they would choose if they did make that choice freely, and thus ensures that they go to a place that honours that choice if they did make it (as they someday will.) And based on this knowledge, God makes people Christian or does not make someone Christian. So it is not surprising that all people God has made Christians go to heaven, and all those who would rather not make the choice for heaven go to hell: God has selected us, we haven't selected to accept or reject Christianity ourselves.

Of course, one objection following from this, is that there are many non-Christians who think they would actually make the choice to join with God, but don't presently have a Christian belief. But I would say this is a deep, internal choice, that we can only really fully make when faced with it in the afterlife, being shown the complete consequences of joining with God with His help. And it may not relate obviously to what we consciously think we would choose. We may think that we would choose to go to join with God, but we don't really know, for it is only with God's help that we can consciously and fully choose such a thing. I can't really explain what it would be like to consciously make such a choice, neither can any human. What would it be like to have one's spirit completely joined with and made subservient to God's Spirit, possessing some individuality but not all of that which you had before? I don't know, but I can guess it involves a cost to some people more than others.

Finally I will touch on one last objection, which is that it seems somewhat incongruous that there are clumps of Christians and atheists in the world, and the children of Christians tend to be Christian, but not the children of atheists. Another mechanism I think needs to be brought in to explain the distribution of Christians and non-Christians. That is that God actually allocates souls into this world, and that in some way souls must 'pre-exist', with God knowing their choices. So, hence, the makeup of Christians/non-Christians is the way it is to in some way to serve his mysterious will. On this point, I personally would like to think those who die before the age of accountability go to heaven, because they would have made the choice to go to heaven if they had gotten older, and those who never hear of Christianity do have some chance of being saved.

Conclusion

To summarize: hell can theoretically be justified if it can be explained how everyone who goes to hell chooses to go there fully knowing the consequences of their choice. But since no sane person would choose to do this, atheists argue, hell makes no sense. However, as I reply, some people could choose to freely go to hell if heaven involves a cost to one's self, and hell involves no pain or finite pain over an eternity. But why would people's choices in this matter be divided along Christian/rejected Christianity lines? Because God has made only those people Christian who would make the choice to become part of Him, and has caused those who reject Christianity to reject Christianity who would not make this choice to join with him in the afterlife. And God knows that we all would make that choice in a certain way because he is omniscient and can foretell what we would choose if we made that choice in the afterlife (which we do get to make in the afterlife, probably, but it's redundant.)

The discussion is continued here.

Will G
First written: 2/10/07