Reply to commenter on Matthew 8

I actually appreciate when I am challenged by those not having the same viewpoint as I do. It helps me to strengthen my beliefs while attempting to make a defense with “a mild spirit and deep respect.” So just within the last 24 hours I received a comment on my recent commentary on Matthew 8:29. Due to my health struggles, I haven’t posted an article in several months, so I was surprised that the commenter was still reading my blog. The commenter mentioned so many things, that the only way to address it is with yet another blog article.

I will put the commenter’s words in blue to differentiate them from my reply. You can read the entirety of his comment at the end of the aforementioned article on Matthew 8.

There’s some rather simplistic reasoning going on here, some of it based on conjecture on your part (spoken as though fact), and you probably shouldn’t presume to know God’s thoughts, i.e. “God knew”.

“Rather simplistic reasoning:” Simple and clear, yes. Simplistic, no. There is no reason to convolute the Bible. While there are things that do require a great deal of deep, contemplative research, that is not the case with the passage under consideration. Clear, accurate and concise is what I aim for. I consider brevity is a sign of intelligence.

Conjecture: Since you didn’t qualify/specify which reasoning was at fault, it is a bit difficult to address your charge of it being personal conjecture. However, I’ll take a stab at it: The crux of my article was that demons cannot be tortured in the sense that we humans understand it. Since they are spirit creatures, they cannot be restrained with shackles and chains; they cannot be burned; they cannot be drowned. My background on this, which I failed to mention, was that someone who was a relatively new student of the Bible asked me how demons could be tortured. The passage confused him because he knew demons are not bound to the limitations we humans are. For those that believe in a “hell fire,” even they note that the demons are torturing the humans sent there. According to their beliefs, the demons are immune to the fires of hell, instead, they are guardians of it. If you have a belief different than this, make the effort to define and explain your own. Do you want to teach me? I’m listening. Teach by use of scripture and reasoning that makes sense. Allow me to question you. In that regard, that is one thing I have always appreciated about Jehovah’s Witnesses. When I started studying with them, I was adamant that they were wrong. But they never resorted to personal attacks. Instead, they would always say, “But Bart, what does the Bible say?” When I still wouldn’t agree, they would ask me to read my own Bible and attempt to find scriptural grounds for my claims. Since becoming one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, no other religion has treated me with the same dignity. Instead of being willing to calmly discuss the Bible, they choose the low road to insult me.

Knowing God’s thoughts: To add some framework for those who don't know: Paul wrote "for who has known the mind of the Lord?" In addition, the prophet Isaiah wrote that God's thoughts are higher than man's thoughts. Taking those two scriptures at face value, one might wrongly conclude that knowing how God thinks is impossible. Indeed, a few people I've met have actually been taught that and believed it. But is that really so? One key point I have always believed is that if God is truly unknowable, then why did he go to such an extent not only to give the nation of Israel his law covenant, not only to preserve his word the Bible through thousands of years, not only to send his only begotten son for our sake, but finally to help us clearly know what he wants through the teachings of Jesus. So knowing how God thinks becomes clearer as we diligently read the Bible, follow what it teaches, and challenge ourselves to speak to others. But the commenter’s specific criticism was that I couldn’t possibly know that God would teach us by way of illustrations that we could comprehend within our limited framework. Yet the Bible itself is full of examples of just that. The dreams and visions that various faithful ones in ancient times had were put in terms they could relate to. Daniel’s explanation of the vision the king had of the tall idol made of various metals. Daniel’s vision of a very tall tree that was chopped down. The illustrative lessons that Jeremiah received from God regarding God’s judgment against a rebellious nation. There are literally dozens more examples. Then there is the whole matter that the Bible wasn’t written for angels; wasn’t written for animals such as the dogs, cats, elephants, etc. It was written for the benefit of mankind. To me, that makes it a foregone conclusion that concepts written in scripture would be for our understanding. But maybe I misunderstood the point the commenter was making.

So, far from conjecture, it is a logical conclusion that the reference to torment would be one we could relate to. And again, my only point was to address my friend’s quandary regarding how demons could be tormented. But coming back to knowing God’s thinking: Some try to take Paul’s and Isaiah’s words as an excuse to make no attempt to obey God because he is some mysterious being that is illogical. Such a conclusion is an insult to God. Since he created our brains, surely he is smarter than we are. But this brings up another observation I’ve made recently: I’ve noted some youths seem to feel that adults are stupid. One time, I was so frustrated by the arrogance of a teen, I asked: “Tell me, do you think that the older you get, the stupider you will get? Or do you think you will gain more experience, knowledge and insight as you grow older?” He knew exactly what I was driving at. But the same seems to be true with the way some humans treat God. They act as if he’s just some old fogey that’s too illogical to understand. The complete opposite is true. While at times the way God handles things may baffle us, once a matter is done, in retrospect we see the wisdom of his ways. One great example of this was when God lead the nation leaving Egypt to the sea. According to man’s shortsighted perspective, God was leading them to sure destruction, pinning them in-between the sea and the advancing army of Pharaoh. Even though at the time even the wisest man may have questioned God’s action, God knew full well what was going on and how things would work out. Again, by reading the Bible, we can indeed know God.

You are importing your own speculation into Rev. 20:1-3 that simply cannot be gleaned from the passage itself.

Revelation 20:1-3 reads: “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 2 He seized the dragon, the original serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for 1,000 years. 3 And he hurled him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not mislead the nations anymore until the 1,000 years were ended. After this he must be released for a little while.” I’m not sure why the commenter can’t easily, readily see the scripture says that Satan (and by association all the demons) are imprisoned. Since nothing I or my religion has to say on the matter is of value to the commenter, perhaps he’ll accept the outside comments of Matthew Henry.

As I read further, I see that your aim is to ‘lead’ the reader to the desired conclusion, and to reinforce the argument against the existence of Hell.

Interesting that you reached that conclusion. Again, my point was to prove that physical torture of demons is not what the scripture in Matthew 8 was talking about. But you are right. I readily and proudly acknowledge that I believe the teaching of hellfire is a blasphemous insult to a loving God. He doesn’t need to permanently torture evil ones to feel justice. He just does away with them. Death is the result of sin, not permanent torture.

Bart I agree with you that God cannot tempt or be tempted by evil (James 1:13), but your insinuation that Jeremiah 19:5 is an example of very evil He wouldn’t perpetrate against humans (i.e. torture humans in ‘hellfire’) is an overt attempt to bias the reader’s reasoning towards the desired conclusion (that God wouldn’t torment humans in a ‘firey hell’).

Jeremiah 19:5 reads: “They built the high places of Baal in order to burn their sons in the fire as whole burnt offerings to Baal, something that I had not commanded or spoken of and that had never even come into my heart.” So we have to ask ourselves: What was it that never came into God’s heart? Was it that they shouldn’t sacrifice to idols or was it that they shouldn’t have made human sacrifices to anyone, idols or not? The nation of Israel by that time was well established they had the Mosaic Law. They knew that idolatry was wrong. They also knew that murder was wrong. So the point God was making was that it was repulsive to him to burn humans as a sacrifice. If burning humans is evil, doesn’t logic dictate that God would never invent a system to burn humans forever? If you had a disobedient child, one that was deserving of death, would you torture that child first, keeping them alive as long as possible to see them suffer? Even in today’s world such a parent would be arrested for cruelty. Even in today’s world, the controversy over “waterboarding” has made the news. Yet some have no problem accusing God of being that cruel.

It is also rather questionable (and suspicious) in my mind why you would go back six centuries even before Christ came, to pluck a solitary verse completely out of its context in order to support your argument that God would never do such an ‘evil’ thing to a human.

Okay, so I didn’t go into a long explanation about why I chose that scripture. But your point about going back six centuries doesn’t make sense to me. Are you saying that because the passage is old, that is reason enough to ignore it? When Paul wrote “all scripture is inspired and beneficial,” he was, at that time in history referring to the Hebrew & Aramaic scriptures (what some call the “Old Testament”). In contrast, “the letters” that early disciples read from the apostles were, while viewed as God’s direction, not called “scripture.” So yes, I reached back to an appropriate passage that would demonstrate how God feels about torturing others.

Let me ask you, was God perpetrating ‘evil’ when He rained ‘fire’ down on Sodom & Gomorrah, or directly commanded the Israelites by the sword brutally slay every last man woman & child of peoples (Canaanites, Amalekites, etc., even entire tribes & nations of peoples? What about killing all of Egypt’s first-born? What about the Flood? There’s so much more still.

All the examples you provide were swift and sudden destruction of evil, not a continuance of torture as proposed by hellfire. Yes, the punishment those received was more than just going into non-existence. As for the deposing of the nations residing in Israel’s promised inheritance, perhaps you’ve forgotten Deut.20:10-15. You might also remember the Gibeonites were a stellar example of the humble way the others could have acted to save their lives. For a more in-depth look at war as it related to Israel, read this.

Of course God is sovereign, and can elect to do what He wills to do in His Creation and with His created creatures…but I also know that He is supremely moral and spotlessly righteous & just. Thus these are all instances of His sovereign will at work, but I must trust never in a way that violated His pristine moral goodness. And that’s why the existence of a ‘hell’ (while unpalatable to my sensibilities) isn’t unacceptable to my own mind. Righteousness & unrighteousness, justice & injustice, good & evil, freedom & incarceration, life & death…logically then, just is there is a Heaven lit by His glory, in all likelihood is a Hell far removed from His Light. 

You choose to believe in hell. I get that. I understand your nearly poetic contrasts. However, that “just as there is a heaven…. In all likelihood is a hell…” is not what the Bible says. The correct contrast is “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I welcome your researched, well-reasoned, and scripturally annotated response.

After thought: I realized while proofreading this, I bounced back and forth from directing my response to the commenter and then to the general audience reading this blog article. I readily admit that is not a good thing to do. While I realize the following is an excuse, it is one I have to deal with: I am indeed dealing with a cancer that is slowly killing me and, I’ve noticed, is taking its toll on my brain. Things I used to be able to respond to quickly, now takes me several days to mull over. My speech is becoming slurred; I forget simple things frequently; and I’m sadly coming more and more housebound. Still, I feel compelled to stand up for my beliefs the best I can. After spending several hours on this article (over a period of a day) with multiple edits, I just became too tired to continue, so I posted it in its current state. This is also the reason I haven’t posted anything here since Feb.2016.