Does God HATE Satan?
I mean...isn't God above hate? I think people on earth who think God has hate are seriously anthropomorphizing the Deity. They believe their hatreds are righteous, and so they conceive of a God who shares in their hate. A God who even delights in their hate. This God, that these supposed Christians are praying to...are they sure it's God? It sounds a bit more like the Other Guy.
These people need to rethink their conception of the infinite.
Now, don't misunderstand me. Me saying all of the above doesn't mean that I'm one of these pansies who claim Satan and everybody else in Hell gets a get-out-of-Hell free card at the end of Eternity, when God pulls the plug on time. I'm not in that camp. While I do concede it's a neat little trick, how they argue it: God was at the beginning of time, and God will be at the end of time. So when we say "Eternity", we're really only saying "until the end of time." Therefore (the argument goes) you might be scheduled to burn for eternity, but there could still come a point where God calls an end to eternity. Has mercy on you. And you are released.
I don't truck with that theory. Not me personally. Maybe others might. Not me.
I'm also not one of those milquetoasts who claim there's no punishment in hell. I'm not one of those people who say "hell is simply the eternal absence of God, which is BAD ENOUGH once you die and you acquire an understanding of what you have missed out on." Nor am I one to say "those who are not saved simply die forever" i.e. no afterlife whatsoever for those who are not saved.
I'm not one of those people. I'm not one to say that. Although I have a certain sympathy for the position. Nobody with the grace of a loving and merciful God in their heart really wants to think too close about...you know...torture.
Anyway. Where was I. On top of all that, far be it from me to second-guess however it may actually be set up. ANY way that God wants to set it up, God has my full blessings and permission on that. That's God's call. But when you're dealing with your real abhorrent types, I tend to think that winking them out of existence doesn't quite satisfy the requirements of justice. I mean...I don't like to invoke the cliches, but the standard Hitler example is hard to argue against - and I for one am not naive enough to believe he's the worst that humanity has had to offer up over the millennia.
People like that shouldn't get to wink out. But the operative principle here isn't hatred. It's justice.
Justice is the key concept. God does not need hatred - God has justice. At the end of mortal life, evil beings are punished by God, for the sake of justice. God's punishment comes down with perfect absence of malice. Hatred is a petty human emotion, not for God. In most of us, when we hate, that hatred is fueled by our sense of our own powerlessness. We hate the evil or the enemy that we can't stop or control. We hate because we are helpless. When we are in control, we deal with the bad never needing to resort to hate! Hate is a substitute for being able to act. Whereas God is not generally subject to feelings of powerlessness.
Hatred is beneath God. Hatred was invented by mankind.
Of course, some of us will always blame Satan for that. But you know...even way back in the Garden, that snake was having too much fun spinning temptation to really put his heart into hate. Then he slithered off, having helped us wreck our paradise.
And that was when hate entered the world. Not from Satan! Satan wasn't feeling powerless - Satan was happy and smug from his first victory. No, that first bloom of hate came from us.
We hated that snake.
I mean...isn't God above hate? I think people on earth who think God has hate are seriously anthropomorphizing the Deity. They believe their hatreds are righteous, and so they conceive of a God who shares in their hate. A God who even delights in their hate. This God, that these supposed Christians are praying to...are they sure it's God? It sounds a bit more like the Other Guy.
These people need to rethink their conception of the infinite.
Now, don't misunderstand me. Me saying all of the above doesn't mean that I'm one of these pansies who claim Satan and everybody else in Hell gets a get-out-of-Hell free card at the end of Eternity, when God pulls the plug on time. I'm not in that camp. While I do concede it's a neat little trick, how they argue it: God was at the beginning of time, and God will be at the end of time. So when we say "Eternity", we're really only saying "until the end of time." Therefore (the argument goes) you might be scheduled to burn for eternity, but there could still come a point where God calls an end to eternity. Has mercy on you. And you are released.
I don't truck with that theory. Not me personally. Maybe others might. Not me.
I'm also not one of those milquetoasts who claim there's no punishment in hell. I'm not one of those people who say "hell is simply the eternal absence of God, which is BAD ENOUGH once you die and you acquire an understanding of what you have missed out on." Nor am I one to say "those who are not saved simply die forever" i.e. no afterlife whatsoever for those who are not saved.
I'm not one of those people. I'm not one to say that. Although I have a certain sympathy for the position. Nobody with the grace of a loving and merciful God in their heart really wants to think too close about...you know...torture.
Anyway. Where was I. On top of all that, far be it from me to second-guess however it may actually be set up. ANY way that God wants to set it up, God has my full blessings and permission on that. That's God's call. But when you're dealing with your real abhorrent types, I tend to think that winking them out of existence doesn't quite satisfy the requirements of justice. I mean...I don't like to invoke the cliches, but the standard Hitler example is hard to argue against - and I for one am not naive enough to believe he's the worst that humanity has had to offer up over the millennia.
People like that shouldn't get to wink out. But the operative principle here isn't hatred. It's justice.
Justice is the key concept. God does not need hatred - God has justice. At the end of mortal life, evil beings are punished by God, for the sake of justice. God's punishment comes down with perfect absence of malice. Hatred is a petty human emotion, not for God. In most of us, when we hate, that hatred is fueled by our sense of our own powerlessness. We hate the evil or the enemy that we can't stop or control. We hate because we are helpless. When we are in control, we deal with the bad never needing to resort to hate! Hate is a substitute for being able to act. Whereas God is not generally subject to feelings of powerlessness.
Hatred is beneath God. Hatred was invented by mankind.
Of course, some of us will always blame Satan for that. But you know...even way back in the Garden, that snake was having too much fun spinning temptation to really put his heart into hate. Then he slithered off, having helped us wreck our paradise.
And that was when hate entered the world. Not from Satan! Satan wasn't feeling powerless - Satan was happy and smug from his first victory. No, that first bloom of hate came from us.
We hated that snake.
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