Answers to the Blog "God the Conditional Lover"

I started to respond back to Sarah with a comment on my blog but then it kind of got lengthy and profound and I thought some others might like to read about some of these thoughts...

What I'm talking about in the book, "Searching for God Knows What" by Donald Miller is on page 27, second paragraph. when he's talking about that tv preacher guy.

But basically what I was saying in that blog was that I can't believe that God, the loving one he claims to be, and the one I KNOW him to be, punishes people for their sin.

The second part of the blog being me explaining how I thought the sin punishing thing works itself out by saying that because God gave us free will, we choose the path of hell by choosing sin meaning we choose to go to a place where God's presence cannot be found. Now this will really throw you off, but I actually don't QUITE believe in a physical place, "Hell." I don't believe that God would make such a place, and since God created everything, that would mean that he would have had to create the place we come to call Hell. What I believe to be Hell is exactly what it is, being the place where sin is. And since that is the place where sin is and God hates sin and can't be around sin, the only thing that Hell is to me is a place where God is not present. Now I don't want you to dismiss the importance of not going there though by mistaking me for trying to play down the fact of that being ALL it is, because God not being present somewhere is a BIG deal.

Let me say that again...God not being present someplace is a BIG BIG deal.

THAT to me is what Hell is. Now through the years and generations, people have come to try and describe what that would be by saying it would be eternal punishment, lava and pointy horn red dudes running around stabbing you with pitch forks and all that junk we've attached to it, but I feel that what the essence of Hell is, is a place where God is not present.

And since I feel that we as people, with free will, choose to "go to hell" by not accepting Jesus and his teaching and his gift of sacrifice for our sins, our "punishment" so to speak is God ultimately giving those people what they ask of him...a place where he isn't present.

And since God loves those people JUST as much as he love you or I, as a final act of love, even though he knows they'll regret it, he gives it to them. And only God knows what it could POSSIBLY feel like to not feel his presence. :( it scares me just to think about it.

Anyways, I hope that answers some questions and maybe sparks some new ones ;)