God tells us to take every thought captive. Now this is a moment by moment exercise. The problem is what many of us do, if we even try to capture the thought, is decide what to do. A is the right thing to do B is the wrong thing to do. Either way we are trying to do something and soon we get weary. What we are doing is trying to work out our salvation in the flesh.

Here is an example. You’re driving and someone cuts you off. What many of us do is decide whether we should get mad (wrong thing to do) or not get mad (right thing to do) Not getting mad is our effort, us trying to work it out. But here is an interesting fact. The anger in this case is a secondary emotion. The underlying emotion is helplessness. Recognizing that being cutoff has caused us to feel helpless is the moment when we can exercise faith. At this point we have the thought captive. Now we can chose to get angry, or we can chose the thought that we are not helpless, Our Helper, as Jesus called Him, is with us. This is an expression of faith. Now the Holy Spirit is free to work in us and through us.

As we exercise this faith, moment by moment. We begin to feel God’s peace and in time other fruits of the Spirit. We can actually put aside this kind of anger (secondary) and really live by faith. Our entire part in this whole process is faith, God does everything else. We are being sanctified by faith.

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;(1 Peter 3:1 KJV)

It says nothing about what you are saying.

There is no doubt that Christianity has a very strong logical basis. In fact, people such as C.S. Lewis and Modern day Apologists like William Lane Craig, for example, have proved this time and time again.

However, some things just can’t be explained, but only experienced. But even if we could explain and prove everything, there would still be a number of people who wouldn’t accept it, because they love doing evil; and to accept the truth about who and what they are, would put them in a situation of having to give up what they love to do. But they don’t want to do that. Thus, they would rather believe a lie than to accept the truth…

No, a thread where Christians pull out the old “hell is justice” bullshit.

I was raised in a Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church, but since my teen years, I have questioned many things, especially the Bible. I found so many inconsistent accounts and read many things that didn’t make sense to me. I went to different churches trying to find answers, although I didn’t realize at the time that was what I was doing. I have never stopped seeking “the truth”. I now consider myself to be a Gnostic Christian… a seeker of truth who also believes that Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible was written by humans, and humans are fallible. God does not behave like a human… He is all knowing and logical, and I know He is a loving and caring God.

I think it is very sad when I run across someone who is rigid in their beliefs. No matter what evidence you point out when you are pushed into a corner (with them saying you are wrong and will be going to hell), they can’t hear you. They insist the bible is the Word of God. I try not to push my beliefs on anyone, but I will defend my beliefs when challenged. I pray for them, and not for them to think like me, but to find their own truths… to be open minded.

Anyways, I have my own struggles with the concept of Hell. I believe in it–between an understanding of justice and the Biblical witness, I can’t bring myself to be a universalist (as much as I’d like to be, sometimes). However, I think a big problem with this discussion is one which also often hamstrings discussions about the nature of the Atonement. It’s this hardcore forensic understanding of God and His relation to man. Laws–all laws–point to a higher moral ideal. Laws of the land against murder, while negative, point to a positive ideal of respect for human life, for example. The Laws of God are not only no different, they are the basis for this. When God gave the Israelites the Law, it was not just so they could follow a bunch of do’s and don’ts–it was to point to a higher ideal. Sin is not merely breaking laws (Jesus’ disputes with the Pharisees ought to show that much), but violating a higher, divine ideal. God doesn’t just have a huge list in His infinite divine brain of things He’d rather have us do and would rather not have us do. The Lord has an ideal of what kind of humanity we are to be, what kind of Creation is to exist. Our moral and spiritual choices affect our characters, our souls, making us either heavenly or hellish creatures–more like God or less like Him. Christ’s defeat of sin and death on the cross effectively frees mankind of its inclination towards hellish, self-destructive choices. This is why faith in Christ saves us–the substitutional understanding of the atonement is a forensic metaphor more than anything else (indeed, the truth of the Atonement can really only be described metaphorically). If we trust that God, through Jesus Christ, lifted up mankind toward Himself and overthrew the power of sin and death, then we are free to not be weighed down by our own selfishness and self-destructive behavior. Sin is corrosive to the soul, and when one passes on into eternity, the damage is done, and one’s soul is corroded and cut off from God. This is damnation, this is Hell, and this is what God ultimately rescued us from at the cross.

This basically means that Jesus is the incarnation of a universal principle, of God’s intellect and wisdom by which He created the Universe. Similar concepts about Jesus are expressed in Colossians (1:15-17), and elsewhere. Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” because He is the embodiment of a Truth open to all humanity, indeed the very Truth which made humanity and the world in which it lives. The Gospel transcends religions, even the Jewish and Christian religions.