Quote from stu:
Seriously, is that response supposed to be some sort of an analogy?
It has little if anything to do with a ritual killer making promises of eternal life as if that was in some way being 'saved', only to allow the killer himself to be worshipped. It only takes a little thought to notice that is nothing to do with love and not a very attractive proposition at all.
I guess I know where you're coming from. Perhaps we can
see better where the Father is coming from in this.
The Father is not evil. If He was this is what would happen.
He would delight in torture. The torture of every human in
this life and forever after. There would be no reason to spare
anyone. If the Father were evil there would be no reason
to show mercy to a single person ever.
The Screwtape Letters (by C.S. Lewis) may help
you understand how Satan would rule. You may not want
to read them so they will be at the far bottom of the post.
I think understanding pure evil might help you in this stuff.
What the Father did do by sending His only Son is an act of love.
The Father loved (and loves) Jesus but also humanity.
The Father gave His son. To me it's a big deal.
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The Enemy(that is, the Heavenly Father, {S.Szpak}) takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His "free" lovers and servantsâ"sons" is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals.
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If, on the other hand, by steady and cool-headed application here and now you can finally secure his soul, he will then be yours foreverâa brim-full living chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please.
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For the first time in your career you have tasted that wine which is the reward of all our laboursâthe anguish and bewilderment of a human soulâand it has gone to your head. I can hardly blame you.
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He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himselfâcreatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food...
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But, of course, it is most likely that he is "living in the Present" for none of these reasons but simply because his health is good and he is enjoying his work. The phenomenon would then be merely natural. All the same, I should break it up if I were you. No natural phenomenon is really in our favour. And anyway, why should the creature be happy?
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The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger.
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Sex might have been, from our point of view, quite innocent. It might have been merely one more mode in which a stronger self preyed upon a weakerâas it is, indeed, among the spiders where the bride concludes her nuptials by eating her groom.
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Bring us back food, or be food yourself.
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-Stephen