If you have been following my videos lately, you know that we’ve been looking at some memes that people are spreading on social media to see if there is actually any substance to them. So, today the one I want to look at was actually posted by someone as a response to a video that I made. Let me show it to you, and we’ll discuss it.
Ok, so according to this meme, God gives us an ultimatum: worship Me or be tortured forever. And oh, by the way, have a nice day.
If you are not a Christian, you might say, “Well, that’s true, right?” If you are a Christian, though, this might initially upset you, but after you think about it, you might say, “Well, I guess that is true!” After all, there is an ultimatum clearly spelled out in the Bible. Each of us will end up in either Heaven or Hell, depending on how we respond to God and His offer of salvation through Christ.
So, in a sense, there is a truth shared by the words of this meme, but like many memes, it twists this truth so badly that the truth becomes an untruth.
Let me explain what I mean by pointing out what exactly is wrong with this meme.
First, what’s up with the picture of the old guy? God is spirit—not a centenarian who can barely keep His teeth in and should be confined to a wheelchair and nursing home. Any time you see God portrayed as a human, you should immediately be skeptical of the theology of the artist.
Second, it’s not worship that determines a person’s final destination. It’s faith. Jesus clearly demonstrated in John 3:16 that salvation comes through belief. You could substitute the words “trust” or “faith.” God does deserve worship, and we should give it to Him, but that’s not what He requires for salvation.
Third, to say that God is torturing people who don’t worship him, or even believe in Him, is misleading. Will people who reject Christ be tortured? Yes. But it is their fault—not God’s. Our sin is what makes us deserving of Hell—and don’t forget that God is the one who stepped in and made salvation possible, which brings us to the fourth problem with this meme.
The words “Have a nice day” make it look like God has a flippant, if not gleeful attitude toward sending people to Hell. It’s as if He satiates His sadistic desires by cheerfully tossing people into the flames of an eternal Hell and watching them writhe in agony forever. Yet, that’s not at all how He is portrayed in the Bible. In the Bible, we see Him offering opportunity after undeserved opportunity to rebellious people, reaching out again and again in mercy, even to the point of sending His Son to the cross. Those who don’t respond in faith unnecessarily seal their own fate, but that’s no fault of God’s.
So, while there is a hint of truth behind this meme, the overall message is one of a God who arrogantly demands worship and punishes those who don’t give it to Him. Because of that, I give it an unequivocal thumbs down. It does an abysmal job of portraying God as He really is, and was designed by someone who is either ignorant of the Bible or willfully wants to misrepresent God. It’s just another example of why we should always engage our brains and think beyond the meme.
Brother,
This is a very good writing, Looking like a IFB
This doesn’t change the mechanics of the gospel though. The centenarian anthropomorphizes a god who hear, sees, laughs, and speaks, and is older than time.
God is the author of everything, by proxy or not. God, by keeping your spirit immortal while in hell, is the one torturing you by keeping it alive. Immortality is his alone to give, and he keeps the damned alive forever while in hell. He causes every moment we exist; he most certainly causes the damned to keep suffering his wrath.
As regarding the flippancy, what’s so special? God in the Psalms laughs at the wicked, and the slightest moral lapse is the same sin that makes you as evil as Mao, in God’s judgement. God is the one that ordered 36,000 Midianite virgins to be taken as “wives” by Israelite soldiers, the same God who took away from every Egyptiantheir firstborn child in one night because of their government’s regime’s actions. God cares more about infants and animals than about us who are morally imperfect (Jonah 4). He raises up people for the very purpose of punishing them (Pharoah). Lives are cheap. God makes us suffer, and those in hell suffer much more than he ever has or will. And we can’t do anything about it (Romans 9:20)
I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, but it is clear that God hates sin more than he loves us. That’s why we have to hide behind the Son’s flesh to assuage his unending hatred, and why the door is so narrow.
I find it strange you guys can’t see cruelty when it stares you right in the face. You sit here and acknowledge that anyone, even good people who have different beliefs (like native american beliefs for example) are actively being tortured in hell for that (and that it’s their fault not God’s). But yet he went through the trouble of creating a torture prison for people who just have different beliefs (he didint allow an opt out or just be cool with people who have other beliefs) where they get melted forever and you say it’s their fault. Make a cool heaven for your peeps if they have your back, but there’s no need to torture everyone else who has other beliefs. God is a truly malevolent being who has tortured most humans who have ever lived and you guys have the audacity to acknowledge it’s going on but blame just normal people for it living normal lives and believing in other things like the wind or Hinduism or just in each other. I gotta admit, you guys suck almost as much as God himself does … and that’s alot. Hopefully the idea of hell gets stripped from the bible one of these days because it has nothing to do with the kindness and awesome message Jesus portrayed…God is just a small childlike psychopath who destroyies cities and worlds and tortures his little playthings like ants.
Alysa, I think you’re mischaracterizing the Bible and the message of God. He didn’t just make a place of torture for those who didn’t “Have His back.” In His holiness, He must punish sin. Therefore, we all deserve punishment. However, in His love, He provided a way of escape. It is too easy to focus on the audacity of God to create Hell and forget about the incredible love where He would allow anyone to be rescued.
Your god can’t cure sin, so he must quarantine it.
Your god can’t remove sin from those who pick the wrong religion, so he must immortalize it and make an eternal monument to it.
Your god can’t enlighten sinners when his arbitrary deadline is up; he must lock them into their sin and make them perpetuate it forever.
Your god can’t destroy sin, so he has to punish it.
Your god can’t fix sin, so he must avenge himself without end.
And you god can’t actually punish sin, so he must punish sinners instead.
Your god can’t punish sin without punishing sinners, so he had to make sinners.
Your god couldn’t create sinners directly without getting his hands dirty, so he made sin an inherited condition and made the ancestor a sinner.
Your god engineered sin, your god dedicated eternity to sin, your god perpetuates sin, your god found it in himself to create agents for the sin, and your god found a condition for a select few to escape it, but only if they do it your way.
Your god made sin, and has obsessed over it, empowered it, weaved us into it, had us born into it, raised us up for it, and will never destroy it.
Your god worships sin, and so do you.
“God”, as portrayed by his human lackeys, who “serve” him out of fear, is a sadistic spoiled 6 year old with an ant farm, can of lighter fluid, and a box of matches.
For all of you hypocrites who love the doctrine of eternal torture more than the legendary 18th Century preacher Jonathan Edward’s, who was, in reality an abusive wife-beating psychopath, whose preaching caused more suicides than conversions, I have a real life scenario for you…..I have an aunt nearing 100 years old. 59 years ago her daughter, my cousin, died at the age of 14 from meningitis. Now then, preachers love to cite the mythical “age of accountability”. According to all sources, any 14 year old knows right from wrong, and is therefore accountable for their lives. My cousin had all of her faculties at the time of her death. There is absolutely ZERO indication that she EVER “accepted Jesus as her personal Savior or said “the sinner’s prayer”. That family was all lapsed Roman Catholics.
I challenge ANY AND ALL adherents to this evil doctrine to contact my aunt and inform her that for the last 6 decades, her precious daughter has been writhing and screaming in liquid fire, and shall do so FOR ALL ETERNITY.
Any of you losers can contact me by e-mail and I will supply her telephone number.
Any takers?