(In response to: "How can the Lord’s plan be merciful or just if it requires every accountable individual to be baptized when billions of people have died without the opportunity to hear the gospel and choose baptism?")
Your are assuming that God owes humanity a favor when we chose rebellion over obedience.If we all were to receive justice,we'd be vaporized in a millisecond.Just be thankful that there is a chance for salvation,and take advantage of it,but don't wait too long.
No person will be unfairly judged,because God is just and merciful to all who believe,and doesn't desire anyone to be condemned.A person's sins condemn him or herself,not God.He is bound by His own nature,which demands holiness,only possible through Christ,where justice and mercy meet.
So is it unfair that someone dies without ever hearing the gospel?No,only that anyone is ever saved at all.We are all defendants and not in any position to sit in judgement of our Creator and Judge.The cool thing is that He has already punished the sins of the faithful by having His own Son take the punishment,and then looks at them as if they are as sinless as His own Son.
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And that is exactly why your god is a monster that is not deserving of worship. If its idea of "mercy" and "justice" is to murder everyone , regardless of what they did, then I'd rather go to hell rather than spend a single second in that thing's presence.
Not to mention, what kind of father would have his own son tortured to death as some convoluted excuse, when all it can do is just not be a murderous asshole?
Oh, and just because it's mandatory: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!!!
Pretty standard fare. How do you fix up the wretchedness of a view of morality that envisions God punishing people for being too far away from where he sent his message for them to have heard it yet at the speed of human communication in the year 33AD? That's easy: Just re-brand his cruel punishment as normal, call it the default, and then brand any escape from that punishment as a "gift".
It's like when a grocery store wants to have punitive pricing that fines those who refuse to participate in their data mining privacy invasion scheme (i.e. "member cards" that track your purchasing trends and sell that data on). They could be honest and brand that as "Here's the normal price everyone pays, and here's the extra price you pay for caring about privacy rights." But they won't do that. Instead they brand it as "the punishment price is the 'normal' price and the people who don't want privacy get a 'sale' price." Either way the grocery store is choosing both of the two prices, the bigger one and the smaller one. They could call the larger price "normal" and smaller price "sale" or they could call the larger price "increased" and smaller one "normal". When the same entity is setting both prices, it's not a sale. It's a calculated decision to create two prices, both of which are profitable, but one more so than the other is, and then use the difference in the two prices as the incentive to make people give up privacy.
Just like a God who chooses to send people to Heaven and to Hell. You can be honest and call "Heaven" the default and call "Hell" the penalty, or engage in a bit of deceptive marketing and call "Hell" the default an call "Heaven" the neato special deal. Christianity has had many centuries to iron out the kinks in their marketing messaging and do the smart but less honest thing of choosing the second phrasing.
Being build in their own image, the god of fundies is just as prone to victim-blaming and refusing to take responsibility for his actions as the fundies themselves, who, affter all, are not hateful, but just telling God's opinion.
"Imaginary rewards can be yours. Unimaginable torment is the only alternative. All that separates them is a lifetime of trying to fulfill impossible and arbitrary tasks."
Yeah....no, I'll pass, thanks. I'm not in need of any death cults today. And please take my name off your calling list.
Your 'God' owes humanity an apology:
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For thinking he had the right to have ideas above his station.
He is now our bitch.
Just as a tyrant is humiliated, shown the error of his ways, put before a kangaroo court - because he never had any 'rights' in the first place: he denied others of theirs, therefore it's only right that he is denied his - found guilty and immediately executed.
Why should your 'God' be thought of as anything more than Hitler 2.0...?!
Your are assuming that God owes humanity a favor when we chose rebellion over obedience.
Cursing all of humanity for what the supposed first two humans did is not just. Especially since God set Adam & Eve up to fail. Why even have a fucking Tree of Knowledge in the first place?
No person will be unfairly judged,because God is just and merciful to all who believe
Sure sucks for all those people who never had a chance to believe, or believed in the wrong religion because their culture demanded it, etc.
A person's sins condemn him or herself,not God.
God, the all-powerful creator and ruler of the universe invented this plan. It's entirely God's fault.
He is bound by His own nature
I guess he's not all-powerful after all, since he can't show mercy and save those poor souls who never heard of him from burning in Hell for eternity. And he must not be very smart if that's the best plan for salvation he could come up with.
So is it unfair that someone dies without ever hearing the gospel?
Totally.
We are all defendants and not in any position to sit in judgement of our Creator and Judge.
We are when he doesn't even hold himself to the standard by which he judges us.
The cool thing is that He has already punished the sins of the faithful by having His own Son take the punishment,and then looks at them as if they are as sinless as His own Son.
Which must be why so many of them think they can do whatever they want since they've been "saved."
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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