Do you cry about those who are on death row? Do you stay up night worrying about their fate?
How is a quick and virtually painless death equal to an eternal hell?
Do you think letting them out would be a good idea especially when some of them would kill again? If the answer is "No" then I'll assure you that most people aren't worrying.
If you'll remember, I said they would have the option, besides hell, of oblivion. How is that equivalent to releasing them? You're being intentionally disingenuous, but only with yourself.
A world full of sin and death because of God?
No. God, if It exists, merely created a universe that spawned the likes of us with the ability to choose to violate the rights of others ("sin", if you will) or not.
It's God's doing in that everything is part of His plan. Our love for him is without value and means nothing if we have no choice, and our devotion is meaningless if we don't choose to worship Him.
And we worship God by the pursuit of Truth, not the invented myths of the ancients. And part of that Truth is acknowledging that we can't really know if God exists or not.
Our misery on earth will be nothing but distant, brief blips on the radar of our eternal joy with our Father. Pain and suffering on this earth serve to temper, hone and prepare us.
I agree. The pain we cause each other, and the suffering we endure due to natural causes, would be a fading memory against the backdrop of eternity.
But God created Satan and knew that would happen, thus, God is still responsible.
God (if It exists) only created us with the gift of free will. That makes
us responsible.
You can hold Him responsible for creating mankind, but you can't hold Him responsible for the actions of man. Free will often keeps us at odds with God. My will vs God's will is our decision, not God's.
I'm sure that God is only watching. If we knew God exists and was watching, it would influence our choices. God (
if It exists), has gone to a whole lot of trouble to hide It's existence, AND not to plant any evidence making it seem that It doesn't exist (which would be a lie).
He did know the struggle we would have with sin and Satan. But He wanted eternal children. He wanted us forever. So, He sent a remedy for any problems Satan may create for us.
And the remedy that both Jesus and John the Baptizer promoted, is repentance.
The adversities in this short vapor of time on earth strengthen us.
"This short vapor of time", I like it, similar to my "backdrop of eternity".
You have to understand that this brief time of the tempting of God's children by Christ's adversary Satan, is less than a second of your eternity. Christ is coming back down and Satan is goin down. This is just the beginning. And the next phase is awesome.
If we accept Satan/the Devil as a symbol for temptation, I agree. There's no external force tempting or trying to influence us--that's the meaning of free will.
