After conservative Christians have been confronted with the objective immorality of their God condemning homosexuals to a torment-filled eternity in Hell merely for a mere brief human lifetime of “sinning” (via merely enlivening their innate desires to express love with the same sex, no less), I often hear the following patently ridiculous excuse: “But God doesn’t send homosexuals to Hell; they choose to go there.” … Now to be fair, what Lucy & Dan are saying (at least in this thread – and what many of their fellow evangelicals are saying elsewhere) is that it is a homosexual’s choice to sin that has them in effect inadvertently “choosing” their own eternal damnation, and thus that it is no one else’s fault that they spend eternity writhing in pain in the Netherworld.  Of course, as even the youngest among us can readily intuit after hearing such nonsense, this argument fails to hold water on so many fronts … Consider a few of them that follow:

 

First of all, as a matter of basic fairness, if God did indeed created humankind, and if He thus did indeed endow us both with our neocortex (which has made us innately curious creatures who constantly strive to reason & know & discover) and our limbic system’s “conscience” (i.e. our innate knowing of Right vs. Wrong and Fair vs. Unjust; sometimes called the “Advocate Within” – or the “Holy Spirit” – or the “Spirit of Truth”; see John 14:12-26), then it is fully unreasonable for God to punish anyone merely for using those same gifts in good faith – even if he or she does so errantly … Indeed, for God to do so makes Him a tyrant of the most diabolical degree – far worthier of loud rejection than pious worship!

 

Secondly, and for this discussion quite importantly, Oliver Clyde Allen is – at least according to the texts of the Bible itself – not sinning, and as such neither he nor any other non-lusting, sincerely devout homosexual need worry about being sent to Hell at all!

 

Thirdly & finally, as a basic matter of moral consistency, the following critical question still remains – and that question is this one:  If gays do indeed inadvertently choose to go to Hell, then will they be allowed to leave that most awful place after petitioning the all-Loving, all-powerful & all-knowing God for mercy?  In other words, if conservative Christians are correct and homosexuals will indeed be cast into Hell for making the mistake of manifesting their natural urges to couple with same sex partners – and if God is indeed an all-powerful deity who did indeed create the entire Universe and everything in it (including Hell), then will God grant the homosexual sinners’ pleas for mercy once they arrive in Hell and realize their error – or will He turn a not-so-all-Loving shoulder to those cries and force them to remain in torment for eternity?

 

This last point is quite the crucial conundrum for Christians, as to affirm the former option (and admit that God is indeed just and that Hell is therefore not even close to eternal) is to make Hell a fully non-threatening affair that we will all experience to a fair degree based upon what we each have sown (Jesus agrees – see Mark 9:49) … or,

 

… to affirm the latter (and state that God will ignore the cries of the damned) makes God out to be an unequivocally evil despot – and thereby a celestial being fully unworthy of our respect (much less our worship) … or,

 

… to avoid the question altogether by feebly claiming that “Hell is simply forever” (and that God thus cannot do anything to help the unjustly damned once they arrive there) is to make God essentially impotent – and thereby fully unworthy of our reverence as well.

Fortunately for our conservative Christian Friends, The Apocalypse of Peter (a Biblical writing that was cited in the canon listed in the Muratorian Fragment, and thus a writing that was accepted as valid Holy Scripture for the first several hundred years after Christ’s death) notes quite clearly that all Hell-bound sinners – gay & straight alike – will indeed be ultimately freed from their fiery bondage.   The man-carved Christian church, of course (which later discarded The Apocalypse of Peter from its present day canon), says that they won’t.  Either way, at least one thing remains clear:  if homosexuals are indeed forced to remain in Hell forever, it will most certainly not be on their decision to go there – but rather will be on God’s decision to keep them there … period!

 

“This is my Commandment: that you Love one another in the same way I have Loved you … Be perfect [in LOVE] therefore, just as [the LOVE] of your Father in Heaven is perfect … There is no fear in Love, but perfect Love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in Love.” ~ John 15:12 + Matthew 5:48 + 1 John 4:18

“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast Love.  The Lord is good to ALL, and His Compassion is over ALL that he has made.” ~ Psalm 145:8-9

Filed under: Burnishing Bigotry by Scaughdt