Did the Jewish prisoner who wrote this go to hell?

[Frankj]

So much for free will...

I'm not understanding how this relates to free will, could you explain your thinking more?

BTW, good to see you back again.

 

[Lucian]

I'm not understanding how this relates to free will, could you explain your thinking more?

BTW, good to see you back again.

If all MUST come in front of Jesus for judgement, there is no free will, because some people would exercise their free will to refuse to come before Jesus for judgement. Moreover, if free will ends after our physical death, then free will was merely a curse on humanity because it brought suffering.

 

[Frankj]

If all MUST come in front of Jesus for judgement, there is no free will, because some people would exercise their free will to refuse to come before Jesus for judgement. Moreover, if free will ends after our physical death, then free will was merely a curse on humanity because it brought suffering.

Actually, if you think deeply enough about it, it was man's ill advised use of the God given free will he had that brought human suffering, we had a choice to follow God's directions and get the resulting blessings of it or follow our own and get the results, which can hardly be called blessings, of doing that instead.

Free will only applies to the living, not the dead. After your death you have no free will, no choice in what your future holds or ability to change it.

That's the way I see it, but I am also aware that people have debating this for thousands of years without a definite consensus emerging from that debate.

When you contemplate such things, do you try to argue it within yourself from all angles and examine all points of view to form your own opinion?

It's one of the more interesting discussions we can have, whether it be as a Christian or a Secular or a whatever.

 

[Lucian]

we had a choice to follow God's directions and get the resulting blessings of it or follow our own and get the results, which can hardly be called blessings, of doing that instead.

Again with the "We"? Who is this "we"? You Christians keep talking about humanity as if it was a hive mind. We were born with individual, independent consciousnesses and ridiculously different abilities. There is no "we". And you can clearly see that even people who did follow God's direction, even the most obedient religious people, even monks, priests, pastors, missionaries, who dedicate their lives to serving others, praying and doing good deeds, even they suffer - sometimes they suffer terribly, and their suffering is not always related to human free will. They die in earthquakes or attacked by animals or get diseases that are not related to any human's actions.

If something is enforced upon you, with the possibility of causing terrible suffering if it is not used in perfect accordance to the will of the person who designed it, then that is not a gift. It's a curse. It's as simple as that.

 

[Frankj]

Again with the "We"? Who is this "we"? You Christians keep talking about humanity as if it was a hive mind. We were born with individual, independent consciousnesses and ridiculously different abilities. There is no "we". And you can clearly see that even people who did follow God's direction, even the most obedient religious people, even monks, priests, pastors, missionaries, who dedicate their lives to serving others, praying and doing good deeds, even they suffer - sometimes they suffer terribly, and their suffering is not always related to human free will. They die in earthquakes or attacked by animals or get diseases that are not related to any human's actions.

If something is enforced upon you, with the possibility of causing terrible suffering if it is not used in perfect accordance to the will of the person who designed it, then that is not a gift. It's a curse. It's as simple as that.

'We' is mankind, the collective whole of it from Adam onward.

And we suffer not because of free will but because of how we use, and have used, it.

As is said in the Bible, it rains on the just and the unjust. The rain falls on a Christian the same as it falls on an Atheist or a Satanist, we all live in the same world and share the same environment.

You point out that we all have different abilities, something I fully agree with, but you seem to overlook that we all have the same nature, usually referred to as human nature, which is what binds all of us, past present and future, into a singleness, an organic whole which makes all of us a part of 'we'.

Looking forward to hearing more of your view of things, we all touch different parts of the same elephant and need each other to understand the whole of it.