Teach the Controversy: Question Belief!
Free Will? God Decides who Gets to Heaven by His Election
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, July 30, 1999
September 2004
Disgusting Doctrines
Christianity, in one or another of its myriads of manifestations, entertains doctrines like grace, election and predestination, original sin and universal sinfulness, hell and salvation by faith. Yet these doctrines are morally disgusting for a supposedly good and just God. No good God, considered omnipotent and omniscient, could have laid such doctrines down, and Christianity is not credible as coming from such a God. Either Christianity is in error, and they are worshipping Satan, as the heretics always said, or the Christian God is a total fabrication of sick control freaks.
All Christians have to do to get God’s salvation, many argue, is to trust Him through faith. Anyone who has faith is saved, but those who do not are condemned:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.John 3:16-18
Christians tell us God excludes no one because anyone merely has to believe, but those who do not are excluded! They are excluded, Christians say, because they exclude God from their lives, voluntarily. Is this God’s idea of free will?
You can do just as you like, but if you do not do as I like, you will be roasted forever.
Do Christians seriously think this is a loving God? It is obviously not because plenty of people exclude the Christian God from their lives for a variety of reasons while remaining good and caring human beings. Many other people never get introduced to the salvific faith, and many others examine the feeble Christian case for belief and honestly decide it is unbelievable. God’s own message is unbelievable, but those who do not, therefore, believe it, or never get to know it, are eternally punished. It cannot the ruling of a good and just God. Moreover, Paul says:
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.Romans 9:18
Paul says that God decides how people behave, and therefore who will be saved. So free will does not exist, and faith is no more the criterion of salvation than are good deeds. If faith is necessarily the criterion of salvation, then God grants people faith according to His grace, and faith is not an individual expression of free will at all! Salvation must be entirely according to the whim of God, and so too, then, is eternal torture by burning. Any God that can decide to torture someone for eternity cannot be perfect, or even good.
