Hi everyone - I've been a Christian since I was 15 (I'm 30 next year) and it's been an awesome journey - I'm a big thinker, a doubter, a sceptic at times but the undeniability of Christ's prescence in my life is what has brought me through.
I'm sure this will have been asked before but I'm not sure what to search for in order to find it. My question is this;
We live sinful lives, apparently deserving of eternal punishment. We often speak of suffering in the sense that once compared to an eternal life with God, it pales into insignificance, and will actually become easier to deal with, if one has that perspective. Converse to this, couldn't the same be said about sin/hell? Once an unsaved person has spent 10,000 years (and set to endure infinitely longer) being punished for the sins of what is an incredibly short life in comparison, couldn't it be said that the sins committed will pale in comparison to the eternal suffering to which they are condemned? And therefore isn't it unjust?
I've heard arguments about our lack of understanding on the severity of sin, but it just doesn't sit right with me. If I lived a completely sinless life apart from the acknowledgement of Jesus (maybe I only heard of him once in the passing and discarded it), do I deserve to be eternally punished for this?
Yes, only God knows the severity of sin, but do I just have to accept this?
Hey, mcphee123.
As I said to Miles, I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle. When we introduce the concept of guilt, then the situation has one more dimension to it. Often we break the law over things that are of contingent, finite and revocable nature, but the fundamental implication of breaking the law is that we demean other moral beings' intrinsic worth(the victims of the crime that is). That same thing is done when we sin against God, even if the crime has nothing to do with God - say, we broke into someone's house and stole their possessions, - it is still an offense against God, because it goes against His revealed Law and intended order for creation. So, fundamentally, we don't only carry guilt for demeaning the guy's whose house we broke into and whose possessions we stole, but also for offending God's intrinsic worth, for breaking His intended order and for stripping Him off of His rights to be in that position - to guide His creation.
See, if justice had only to do with revocable loss, and the repayment of it, then God would have simply made Adam and Eve puke the fruit they ate. But, that's not the case. Justice has to do with intrinsic worth, essential being and the legal rights that come with those. And when Adam and Eve sinned against God, God didn't make it a big deal, because He really cared about this fruit, but because they rebelled against Him and didn't acknowledge Him as the rightful being to guide them, and listened to Satan instead.
So, justice does not only deal with loss of certain material - finite and contingent - possession and their eventual recovery at the expense of the criminal. It deals with intrinsic worth, essential being and the legal rights that accompany those. For example, an animal is not a moral agent, or even if one grants that it is, it's not of the same intrinsic worth and essential being, as human beings are. And, then, there are things that aren't OK to do with human beings, but are OK to do with animals - say, it's wrong to murder human beings and then eat them, but it isn't wrong to slay an animal and eat it. If justice was all about recovering material possessions that were unlawfully broken, or damaged, then we would be legally guilty for stepping on an ant and deserving of punishment. However, that's not the case - and justice is not only about these, although they are essential to justice, but more about intrinsic worth and essential being(having God breathed spirit and being a moral agent) and the legal rights that come with them(rights to life, rights to freely choose, rights to speak your mind openly, rights to think for yourself, rights to have things you have produced yourself, through your own effort to belong to you and be your lawful property, etc.), and when these are stepped over, then a crime has been done. And such crime carries guilt - say, a dictator denies the right to his opposition to speak against him in public and instill negative opinions about him, but then, after 30 years of such policy, he changes and lets people speak against him for another 30 years... justice wasn't done, because these 30 years of freely expressing negative opinions of him, do not redeem these 30 years of opression. So, there's a guilt that needs to be redeemed by that dictator, and the mere revocery of free speech, does not erase the guilt for his previous opression of it.
That's how I understand it. Sorry for the long post.