U: Why do I have to repent?
M: So God can forgive you.
U: That’s dumb. God can just forgive me without repentance.
M: How?
U: …um…just…forgive me. He’s God, right?
M: Right. He’s God. That’s why He CAN’T just forgive you.
U: You are making zero sense.
M: You’re saying that God ought to shrug, smile and forget your rotten behavior?
U: Yes! The Bible made up the idea of ‘sin’ anyway!
M: Should God just forgive everyone’s bad behavior?
U: Sure! Why not?
M: God should forgive people for lying?
U: Yep!
M: And forgive people for stealing?
U: Yes!
M: And forgive people for voting Trump?
U: …wait…
M: And forgive people for abusing children?
U: …uh…
M: And forgive people for human trafficking? Forgive rape? Forgive cold-blooded murder?
U: …that’s different.
M: Do you want God to treat child abusers the same way he treats you?
U: I’m not a child abuser!
M: That wasn’t the question.
U: …oh…what was the question again?
M: God treats child abusers, rapists, and YOU exactly the same. That cool?
U: …um…
M: Nobody needs to apologize for anything. God doesn’t care how you live your life!
U: …um…
M: Do you want to spend forever with a God who doesn’t care about justice?
U: …maybe…?
M: You want to spend eternity as neighbors with an unrepentant child molester?
U: NO!
M: Well, if God forgives all sin, why should a child molester ever stop sinning?
U: …because…because…sin is wrong!
M: Who says?
U: God says!
M: So what should God do with us when we do things He says are wrong?
U: …punish us…I guess.
M: Yep. And he will punish us unless…we…do…what?
U: Repent.
M: Congratulations! You’ve answered your own question.
18 Responses
John,
Dan Barker is barking up the wrong tree. His quote is dishonest, and I am sure he knows it.
When broken down, he says that God causes us to sin and then wants us to ask payment for it.
Pretty silly.
And I am suspecting that even atheists desire for their children to be repentant when they intentionally harm someone, and would come up with a reason it is “wrong”.
Atheist Dad: “Now, Billy. You pushed your sister down the stairs and hurt her. But I forgive you. After all, there really is no true right and wrong. The reason you should not have pushed your sister down the stairs is that you would not want to be pushed, right?”
Billy: “That is true, father. But the very fact that I am stronger than my sister Sally means that I can do it her, but she would not be able to push me down the stairs. So that makes it okay. I am fitter to survive, as I have displayed by my actions.”
Atheist Dad: “Billy, you have a point. Sally? Come here, so I can push you down the stairs again. And thank your brother for giving us this lesson in why there is no such thing as sin.”
Dave
Romans 1:21 (ESV) – For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
I also like the analogy of the stranger at the door. It takes the “God” part out and makes it personal:
Ask an atheist: If a stranger came to your door and said, “I want to come live with you,” what would your answer be?
No, of course. But why?
– I don’t know you.
– I don’t know what your motives are. You never called and talked to me beforehand.
“But everyone knows your house is the place to go when we have nowhere else to go.”
– That’s true. But they talked with me beforehand and I know they understand my house rules. We’ve had a relationship.
– You, however, denied that someone like me existed and besides, no one could be THAT gracious and forgiving even if someone like that DID exist.
“Well yeah… but I’m here now and I want in your house and full access to your hospitality and stuff. Are you going back in your word?”
– What word? The word(s) you never heard and denied existed?
“But I’m a good guy. It’s not like I stole stuff and hurt people.”
– I don’t know that because I don’t know you. My word stands for those who know me.
BbBennett,
I like that analogy.
I do wonder, though, whether the atheists who know that God is Who He says He is, yet reject Him, would instead stand outside of the house, trying to warn others away, perhaps spraying graffiti on the walls of the house.
Dave
Matthew 23:13-14 (ESV)
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
i believe c.s lewis said
“There are only two kinds of people – those who say to God, ‘thy will be done’ to God or those to whom God in the end says, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.” (The Problem of Pain)
wanted to find it if i site it…
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-willingly-do-people-go-to-hell
This is the other point… that hell is not necessarily what people want… could the truth be in the tension of the two…
We tend to want mercy for ourselves and Justice for those that have wronged us.
As a stubborn person, I totally understand what it’s like to willfully choose something I don’t really want. 🙂
Good thoughts!
Hell, a true testimony to God giving you what you really want (i think someone else said something like that)…. chime in those more intelligent on the source of stuff…
I believe that Hell is just thousands of Theologically-deficient morons, clapping each other on the back for stuff like this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/9c/2c/81/9c2c8136b11f07392e8d2c2160c960cf.jpg
https://pics.onsizzle.com/Facebook-Really-its-the-only-way-to-34fda7.png
…although, in Hell, there won’t be any Christians to react to these brilliant memes. There will be no one to make fun of, and no one to make a scene (which is what people like “Twig” are aiming for) with these super-duper-clever memes. I’d much rather be neighbors with a former-rapist, who admits that he was a rotten sinner and begged God for forgiveness….than to spend eternity with a self-important jerk who talks out of his depth for thousands and thousands of years and STILL believes he has something worthwhile to say.
The rapist admits his sin… That’s the whole point.
Yes.
ALL of us know by instinct that humble, repentant neighbors are better neighbors. It doesn’t matter what they did before.
It’s the selfish ones (who think they’ve done no wrong) that nobody likes…
Hell will be full of those. :/
And they might never realize they’re in hell…
They might think they’re still in the comment section of your blog. lol.
Hell: where the ones who
knew that God existed are
The demons themselves.
“You believe that there
is one God. Good! Even the
demons believe that…”
James 2:19
In fact, here is a little snippet from a post I wrote about, among other things, the fact of sin and God’s view of it:(unabashedly stolen from Ray Comfort)
But let’s get more specific. It’s easy to toss out the general idea about how we are all sinners by nature and by choice. But we should actually discuss some particulars of our sin. Most people would agree that the Ten Commandments are a major source of a great number of the specifics of God’s Law. We should give ourselves a test. By the way I fail this test miserably!
Have you ever told a lie? Any lie, small or large. Any lie, whether a little white lie or a big black one? What is a person who tells lies called? A liar of course
Have you ever stolen anything? Big or little. Have you stolen a pencil at work? Run copies on the company printer? Have you cut in line? Then you stole that person’s spot. What do you call someone who steals? A thief of course.
Have you ever used God’s name in vain? This doesn’t even have to be the most obvious one where we actually use His name as a curse word. Have you called Him “the Big Guy?” Any use of the Holy name of God in a flip way is considered blasphemy by God.
Ever looked at a member of the opposite sex with lust? Of course we all have, unless we like the same sex. Jesus taught that to look at a woman with lust is to commit adultery of the heart.
We really have not gotten through all of the Ten Commandments, which are His moral law, and we have established that for the most part we are all lying, stealing, blaspheming adulterers at heart! (Thanks to Ray Comfort for that little test by the way)
So, the only question that remains is: Someday when you stand before God will you be found innocent or guilty? Based on our test, the answer obviously seems guilty is the only possible answer. To really get this, we have to understand and try to look at the issue from God’s perspective. We might look at some of those things and just not consider them to be a big deal; however, God disagrees. The real issue is this: Do we get to rate ourselves, so to speak, against our own human thoughts about right and wrong, or are we subject to the evaluation of a Perfect and Holy God?
Have you been watching Ray Comfort?
That was like his good person test
Wally,
I am a Ray Comfort fan, myself.
At first, I was not comfortable with his style, until I took the time to learn how he works. He is gentle to the humble, but confrontational to the proud.
That would make a good Bible verse…
Dave
1 Peter 5:5 (ESV) – Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Dave
I had the same thoughts about him actually. Until I watched him talking with receptive people.
He talked about it once, how his preaching method is completely different to the way he talks one on one.
He impresses me.