This is a great question, and is related to that gnarly conundrum some theologians have labeled the problem of pain. The question is essentially this: How can a God, who claims to be loving, allow his creation to suffer? For those who may be looking for the long answer to this question, one of the most thorough and scholarly works (though admittedly not an exhaustive treatment) written to address it can be found in an old book by C. S. Lewis titled “The Problem of Pain”.

A compilation of quotes from this book organized by topic can be found here at goodreads.com. And of course the book itself is readily availble for purchase or to loan from your local library. For those who are merely interested in the Dented Knight’s answer to this gnarly question, please, read on.

The problem of pain is perhaps a broader subject than the question being asked in this post, so allow me to narrow the field just a little to clarify the question of whether or not God, who the Bible defines as “love”, is really going to consign some people – whom he loves – to an eternity of torment. The short answer is, that while I do not believe God, “sends” people to an ete

rnity of torment, there will, sadly,  be people who end up spending eternity in torment, utterly and completely separated from God. They will find themselves there, however, not because an angry hostile God is punishing them for rejecting him, but because a loving, merciful God is choosing to honor their freedom to make this horrible choice to reject him. He could, theoretically, force us all to accept his offer of redemption, but that would remove our “free will” to make the choice to love him in return. The Apostle Paul describes it this way. “but God show his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) In other words, God risked loving us desiring that we would all respond by loving him in return, but also knowing that some of us would not.

The concept of hell is described in scripture in various ways, a place of torment, outer darkness, and most importantly, eternal separation from God, was never meant to be used as a threat to scare people into heaven. It is simply described as the consequence of human rebellion toward God. Similarly, the issue of human suffering is not so much God punishing us for being disobedient, as it is allowing us to bear the consequences of our rebellious choices. Now, this may bring to mind the question of those who appear to be innocent of wrong doing who suffer in this life. That is perhaps a question for a different post, and leads us to the question of whether or not any of us are truly “innocent”.