Shooting down J. Warner Wallace's "quick shots": God SENDS people to hell

This is my reply to a "quick shot" argument from J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Quick Shot: 

“A loving God would not send people to hell”

Posted: 24 Jun 2019 01:05 AM PDT 

In this article, we’re offering “Quick Shot” responses to the objection, Quick Shot: “A loving God would not send people to hell.” Response #1:
“What do you mean by ‘loving?’

We mean the only kind of love you can rationally expect an unbeliever to recognize:  human love...which, if it exists, would never say that it "delights" in inflicting sadistic tortures on people, as God expressed "delight" to do in Deuteronomy 28:63.

A loving God must also be just, or His love is little more than an empty expression.

But in the bible, God's love is also manifested by unexplained apathy toward "justice" for sin, for example, while David's sin of adultery and murder required death under the Law (God's expression of justice) God also apparently was able to conveniently bypass that requirement of justice and merely 'take away' those sins in conveniently unspecified manner, in the sense of refusing to impose the just penalty on David.  God instead tortured a baby to death over a period of several days, not because of David's sin, but because the Lord's enemies were given occasion by that sin to laugh:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. (2 Sam. 12:11-18 NAU)

Let's see...God finds it this easy to exempt deserving sinners of the "just" penalty God required under law?  Apparently, god's own sense of justice magically becomes malleable whenever such justice might hurt his favorite political candidate.

If everyone was offered the same experience in the afterlife, how loving (or fair) would it be for Mother Teresa and Hitler to receive the same reward?

how "fair" is it that the guilty pedophile makes it into heaven just as easily as you do?  How "fair" is it to threaten women with rape, as God does in Isaiah 13:15-17?  How "fair" is it that sinless Jesus should pay a penalty he didn't deserve?  How "fair" is it that we inherit Adam's sin even though God could just as easily have prevented future generations from inheriting that sin? 

Most of us can think of someone who should be punished: serial killers, child molesters, rapists. I bet you can also think of someone worthy of punishment, right? How loving would God be to reward these criminals rather than punish them?

Very...God's love apparently sometimes causes him to use his magic fairy dust to change the attitude of pagan idolaters so that they do whatever he wants them to do (Ezra 1:1).

How fair would that be to their victims?

If you can employ "God's ways are mysterious" to get out of a theological jam, will you extend to skeptics the same courtesy?  Or is there some bible verse that says only conservative Protestants are allowed to hide behind that dodge?

Can a loving God be completely unjust and still considered loving?

Yes, God tortured David's infant son for 7 days before killing it.  See above, yet you still think God was "loving" regardless. God can also be "delighted" (Deut. 28:63) to inflict horrific torments on children, including causing parents to eat their own children during prolonged divinely-imposed famine (v. 56 ff).

How loving would God be to reward criminals rather than punish them?

How often does God "allow" criminals to escape justice?  Will you trifle that this is any different than 'rewarding' the criminal for the crime?  What else does such apathy do but embolden the criminal to engage in future criminal conduct.

If a parent "allowed" their older teen son to proceed unhindered in his known plans to shoot up the school, would they be exhibiting the same degree of respect for their son's freewill than God had for Hitler's freewill during WW2?  Is that loving?  Or did you suddenly discover how useful it can be to cry out "God's mysterious ways/God is holy and righteous no matter what" whenever expediency dictates?  Sure is funny that when "heretical" Christians use that excuse to escape their own theological difficulties, you don't find it very convincing.  Apparently, I missed that bible verse that says this excuse is exclusively owned by Protestants.

How fair would that be to their victims?

How "fair" was God in torturing David's baby to death?  How "fair" was God to threaten women with rape (Isaiah 13:15-17)?  How "fair" was God to the fetus whenforcing women to endure abortion-by-sword (Hosea 13:16)?  How "fair" is God when using force described as "put a hook in your jaws and turn you around" (Ezekiel 38:4 ff) to force certain nations to commit the sin of attacking Israel? 

If you wanna blow a mental gasket, ask yourself how god could possibly think it "sinful" for a person to act in the way that he intended (Ezekiel 38-39, forcing them to attack Israel, something he plans to "punish" those nations for doing)?  God is also telling unrepentent sinners to continue committing sin in Revelation 22:11.  Will god then bitch at these sinners when they fulfill this divine desire?

Gee, only in Christianity can God be displeased with you after do everything God wanted you to do the way he wanted you to do it!

Can a loving God be completely unjust and still considered loving?

Yes.  Since it was "just" to demand the death penalty for murder and adultery, it was thus "unjust" to allow David, obviously guilty of both sins, to be exempt from said penalty. 

No, you cannot argue that David was repentant and this somehow justified lifting the harsh OT restriction. The law of Moses neither expresses nor implies that one's repentance can secure them immunity from the consequences the law imposes on their capitol crimes.  Otherwise, when adults commit adultery 70 times per day and then seek forgiveness from the ruling priests and elders for each of those 70 times, the priests would be obligated to forgive them and exempt them from the legal penalty of death.  Such a possibility is neither expressed nor implied in the OT, and is implicitly denied in the NT statement that mercy was not even available for those who transgressed the law (Hebrews 10:28).

Response #2:
“What do you mean by ‘send’?

See the word "depart" in Matthew 7:23 and 25:41:

 23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.' (Matt. 7:23 NAU)

 41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; (Matt. 25:41 NAU)

In 7:21 "depart" in the Greek is ἀποχωρέω, a verb that is imperative present active 2nd person plural from ἀποχωρέω.

In 25:41, πορεύομαι is a verb, the imperative present middle 2nd person plural from πορεύομαι.  It means to "go".

As you know, an "imperative" is a command to do something.

Finally, that your stupid meandering "god doesn't send people to hell" is nothing but apostate liberalism is clear from how the NT presents the judgment of God as his sending people into eternal torment:

 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:15 NAU)

Now what?  Maybe you'll trifle that "we throw ourselves into the lake of fire by rejecting the gospel?"

Then read the context, the 'throwing' occurs in the context of God's final judgment on the wicked as the world appears before him in his heavenly court (v. 12), and it is therefore showing an outside force imposing itself on unwilling sinners no less than one observes when unrepentant criminals are convicted in courts of law.

By the way, "thrown" is the Greek verb βάλλω,  it is indicative aorist passive 3rd person singular from βάλλω.  No, that "passive" doesn't mean "self-throwing" is clear from the way most English bibles translate it:

KJV  Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
NAS  Revelation 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NAU  Revelation 20:15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
NET  Revelation 20:15 If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the lake of fire.
NIV  Revelation 20:15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
NKJ  Revelation 20:15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
NRS  Revelation 20:15 and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
RSV  Revelation 20:15 and if any one's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
YLT  Revelation 20:15 and if any one was not found written in the scroll of the life, he was cast to the lake of the fire.

Conservative evangelical Christian scholars agree that the heavenly justice here is reminiscent of the earthly justice of kings:

The final judgment is depicted in vv 11–15 in the traditional eschatological imagery derived from the role of kings as dispensers of justice.

Aune, D. E. (2002). Vol. 52C: Word Biblical Commentary :
Revelation 17-22. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 1104). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Then there are other NT passages that make it clear that the guilty criminals are not accepting their punishment, they are trying to avoid it out of fear of pain and misery, even if fruitlessly:

 15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;
 16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Rev. 6:15-17 NAU)

Wallace fruitlessly continues:

Our eternal destination is predicated by our choice, not His.

You apparently are more interested in collecting Facebook friends in modern democratic America, than you are in reading your bible.

God wants us to join Him in heaven,

5-Point Calvinism, a legitimate form of Christianity that accepts the Trinity, Jesus' full deity, his physical resurrection,  salvation by grace, justification by faith, and bible inerrancy, teaches that God does NOT love everybody, and intended from all eternity to damn certain sinners, by refusing to change their heart, to make sure they'd never "choose" god.

So your answer is merely begging for the reader to automatically construe Calvinism as false, when in fact Calvinism and Arminianism have split the church since the 17th century, and before that, Augustine and Pelagius disagreed similarly.   If Calvinism were "obviously" unbiblical, we wouldn't expect it to have divided the church anymore than we expect the question of Jesus' gender to divide the church.

but He won’t force people into his presence who don’t want to be there.

But your God is "wrathful" in doling out his justice, and his forcing people to endure his fearful judgments is also clear from the bible:

 10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. (Rev. 14:10 NAU) 

In a context describing divine "wrath" and "anger" that brims at "full strength", it is perfectly reasonable to credit the "tormented with fire" to a torment that god is inflicting on sinners unwilling to endure it by choice.

 26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
 29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?
 30 For we know Him who said, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY." And again, "THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE."
 31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Heb. 10:26-31 NAU)

 What a shame!  A Christian apologist, in all of his allegedly sincere "walking with Christ" and prayerful bible study, is more ignorant of the bible than an atheist!

Some people hate God;

I also hate the Big Bad Wolf and other fictional villains.  What are you gonna do, notify adult protective services that my delusions make me a danger to myself and others? 

others ignore Him entirely.

If God is going to deprive them of his direct communications they can experience with their empirical senses, God has no right to complain if sinners take their cue from him and likewise deprive him of their direct communications he can experience empirically. 

Draw close to sinners, and we will draw close to you.

They don’t choose to seek Him,

5-Point Calvinism says this is because God refuses to change their heart, which logically must come first before they can will to seek him, so blaming sinners for not seeking god is about as sensible as blaming dogs for barking.  So unless you are prepared to show Calvinism is "unbiblical", skeptics will have a valid excuse:  we refuse to seek God because only God can change our hearts, and he obviously doesn't wish to change our hearts.  If you can stop the fan's annoying rattling by fixing it, but you just sit there letting it rattle on and bother you, you have nobody to blame but yourself. 

You will say human beings are not analogous to inanimate objects, but Paul pushes his person/pot analogy to an absurd extreme in Romans 9:20-23.

and they don’t want to spend eternity with Him.

If you found out somebody tortured your baby to death over a period of several days (2nd Samuel 12:15-18), would you want to spend eternity with such a sadistic lunatic?  Me neither.  Glad we established at least some common ground!

God honors those kinds of choices.

But under Calvinism, we don't have the power to make good choices, so God's refusal to spread his Ezra 1:1 magic fairy dust on some unrepentant sinners is still the ultimate reason those particular sinners refuse to repent...and therefore you are being biblically dishonest by pretending that the sinner's accountability ends with noting that they refuse to repent.  They suffer from a freewill defect they are not capable of fixing, so they aren't going to repent in the first place unless God makes the first move.  God's unwillingness to change their heart is no less the cause of their resistance than is their own sinful state.

Who is at fault when your older teen, with your knowledge, gets drunk?  Them, because they had a choice? Or you, because you could have prevented it?

You will trifle that God makes that first move with prevenient grace which is enough to overcome the defective freewill, but which can still be resisted, but Ezekiel 38-39 proves God's ability and intent to force sinners to sin (i.e., put a hook in thy jaws and turn you around), so it follows logically that if God seriously wants you to do something, he will employ this level of force, he will not merely issue commands and arguments, then wring his hands in hopeful expectation that you'll deviate from the sinful course of action he infallibly foreknows you won't deviate from.

When you have infallible foreknowledge of how a person will respond to your command, you do not "expect" them to respond in any different way.  So if God in the bible acts as if he "expects" sinners to obey his commands, its probably beacuse he doesn't have infallible foreknowledge....or the ancient barbarians writing about him did so in an inconsistent fashion.

People who neither seek nor want God in their lives won’t be forced to spend eternity with Him.

And how fucked up would America become if our justice system took the same attitude, and said "convicted criminals who neither seek nor want jail in their lives won't be forced to spend time in it."

We also won't be forced to spend eternity with those who torture babies to death.  This is a good thing, so I'm not seeing your point.

How much more loving could God be?

If he stopped threatening to "stir up" men to rape women (Isaiah 13:15-17), that might be a start.   If he stopped torturing babies to death, that might show progress?  Or did I forget that you automatically equate the inerrancy of the bible with the inerrancy of your acceptance of classical theism?

Don’t you want Him to honor the choices of those who deny Him?

No and yes.  No, because we don't want earthly judges to honor the choices of those criminals who refuse to acknowledge the judge's authority.

Yes, because we also want him to honor the choices of some of those who accept him, such as little Christian kids who end up being raped, because God just stands there at the foot of the bed, watching and refusing to protect them.

People who neither seek nor want God in their lives won’t be forced to spend eternity with Him.

Criminals who neither seek nor want jail in their lives won't be forced to spend time therein.

Wallace, were you high on crack when you wrote this piece?

How much more loving could God be?

How loving is it to avoid forcing criminals into the jails they neither seek nor want to spend time in? Where did you get your idea of loving?  A toddler?

If our merely not being forced to spend eternity with god were all there was to say, that would be loving.  But the bible doesn't merely say God will honor the wishes of the unrepentant., it also says he will inflict torment on them against their will (i.e.,. "let the rocks and trees hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne", supra).  Under your idea of "love", God would not judge these people as long as they continued hiding, because they neither seek nor want that god in their lives.

(!?)

And don't forget that the case of apostle Paul (Acts 9, 22, 26) proves that if God really wants to, he not only knows about, but approves of, a forceful method of evidence-presentation convincing enough to convert even those who are in the middle of acting out their murderous hatred toward the Christian god.

What else was God doing when manifesting himself to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus, except violating Paul's freewill?

Would it take too much energy for God to give a less convincing display to skeptics who are less inclined to murder Christians?

Maybe you think causing your opponent temporary physical blindness (the way God inflicted in Paul) constitutes "respect" for their freewill?

Response #3:
“What do you mean by ‘hell’?

That's your problem, as Christians disagree about the nature of hell, and whether it is a place of eternal conscious suffering or something less.  Skeptics are under no obligation to give two shits about biblical issues that Christian scholars disagree with each other about.  When God's like-minded ones get their act together on the nature of "hell", let me know.

Most of us hold a notion of hell that is shaped more by tradition and culture than by the scriptures. For example, the Bible never describes hell as a place where people experience torture.

Then apparently you never read Luke 16:

 22 "Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried.
 23 "In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.
 24 "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'
 25 "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.
 26 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.'
 27 "And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house--
 28 for I have five brothers-- in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'
 29 "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'
 30 "But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'
 31 "But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'" (Lk. 16:22-31 NAU)

Notice that last verse:  most Christian apologists don't believe it.  They think that proving the resurrection to skeptics is far more likely to convince them Christianity is true, than would a mere bible study on Moses and the Prophets.

Wallace continues:

Instead, it’s described as a place where people will be tormented. You can be tormented, for example, by simply making a bad choice (like choosing to deny God’s offer of heaven).

Sorry, but your word-game is abortive:  The issue is not whether torment can result from your own realization that you made a bad choice.  The issue is what does the bible say the nature of hell-torment is?  In Luke 16, a passage that has convinced millions of Christians over 2,000 years that hell is a place of eternal literal conscious torment, the torment is inflicted by "flame", and as shown earlier, Revelation adds to that flame angels as the instruments through which the torment comes.

The Bible describes levels and degrees of punishment. Some will be punished severely, some will only experience the torment and regret of being separated from God and believing family members for eternity. Have your notions of hell be shaped by popular fiction rather than the scriptures?”

No.

Our “Quick Shot” series was written specifically for the Cold-Case Christianity App (you can download it on Apple and Android platforms – be sure to register once you download the App). When confronted with an objection in casual conversation, App users can quickly find an answer without having to scroll beyond the first screen in the category.

One wonders how the Holy Spirit obtained the success he did before the advent of the internet.   You seem to think that Christians who are without your gimmicks are thus deprived of significant apologetics sources.  One would think, from Acts, that the Holy Spirit is quite as dead as your ceaseless employment of psychological tricks implies.  If you seriously believed the Holy Spirit doesn't need your gimmicks to do his job of convicting the world of sin, common sense says you'd probably pay more attention to bible study and less attention to interesting marketing ideas that your publicist tells you will likely increase sales of your highly unnecessary book.

Use the App “Quick Shots” along with the “Rapid Responses” and Case Making “Cheat Sheets” to become a better Christian Case Maker.

And don't worry if you are just a stupid teen Christian with nearly zero biblical knowledge.  There's nothing requiring a foundation of spiritual maturity or watching out for spiritual wickedness in high places. No, arguing about Jesus no more puts demons on your trial than would arguing about the sanitation procedures that must be followed by Denny's dishwashers.

Don't worry about whether you are even "ready" to do apologetics and battle demons at this level.  JUST BUY WALLACE'S BOOK.  If you find out later you've jumped into a spiritual wrestling ring you were never prepared to enter, Wallace will be happy to send you a google search list of christian counselors and Pentecostal churches in your area.  Have a nice day.  And don't forget to make a donation to our "important" work.  Nothing fails quite like prayer, and nothing succeeds quite like money.  Have a nice day.  Sincerely, J. Warner Wallace.