Can Christianity Survive These Objections?

0:00The question isn't why would God judge them? The question is why would God have mercy on us? It seems that love, when it comes to God and hell, is the only thing that's often talked about. This is probably the most emotionally difficult doctrine in Christianity. I'm Mike. I'm Ryan. This is the caffeinated Christian. Where we take the look at things everyone is talking about. And ask what we should think about them as Christians. So grab your coffee and let's get into it. So Mike, how are you doing today? Just spill my coffee. Yeah. We're leaving an end, Mike. We're leaving an end. Oh, ruin. My day is ruined, Ryan. The question I have for you is, what did your table just taste? My table just tasted maple pecan flavored coffee. Maple pecan pie flavor coffee to be nice. I got some cinnamon roll going on in the classic old school

1:04caffeinated Christian logo. So that's awesome. Can I kick in an old school today? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, if you all are tuning in with us today for the first time, welcome. We are actually in part two of a two-part series where we're responding to eight objections to Christianity from Dr. Todd Phillips, a deconstructed pastor. And we walked through and responded to the first four objections he gave. So if you haven't tuned into part one yet, we want to encourage you to tune into that. Ryan, I should ask you, is there anything additional you wanted to add that you didn't have time to talk about on the last episode? I wanted to hound on the fact that we're trying not to call Dr. Todd Phillips foolish or stupid or not all-gent anyway. These are very difficult topics. And have been circling throughout Christianity

2:04for generations. I still don't find them very convincing or reasonable. In my opinion, after looking at the arguments, and but I do want to say they're difficult topics. So you can see why they are a struggle for him. But I don't think the arguments against God existing or Christianity, as we've slowly mentioned through every single one, how I don't think it follows that Christianity isn't true from it. And those these arguments, these objections shouldn't be dismissed. They should be taken seriously. They should be given thoughtful consideration, absolutely. Yeah, and our 10 minutes or 15 minutes on each one is not to say that's all we have to say about it. It's just we have eight to get through. Yep. They could be series in and of himself, which a lot of them I've done series on, and you can go back and take a look at some of the conversations we've had on it. That's what I wanted to add to our listeners before we get into part two of this series that there's way more that we could say on these topics.

3:04So if you hear an objection from him and you don't get what you feel is a full response from us, it's not because we don't want to give a fully-orbed response to these objections around any given topic that is laid out here. It's simply that we have so much time and we can only get through so much in the amount of time that we have. But please understand that this is not the last time that we're going to talk about these issues. They're gonna come up again, absolutely. Yeah, and it's just to alert you that very intelligent scholars throughout the generations have thought about these things and have offered what I think are very plausible and a reasonable response as to these supposed objections. And we're not just making it up. So this isn't just like his arguments aren't new. That is what they want to say. This has been well articulated throughout the generations. 100%, 100%. So we're gonna get into part two of us responding to some of Todd Phillips objections,

4:05one of which is really fascinating because it's around the subject of hell. So you're gonna want to tune in to the end of this video or if you're listening to this podcast to hear our response to his objections around hell. And we hope that you will set your calendars for next Friday because next Friday we are gonna be dropping a podcast where we respond to the Netflix Docky series, Death of a Pastors wife. And we are looking at how the church ought to respond to some of the things that this Docky series is bringing forward. And so we hope that you'll tune in and join us in those conversations. And now let's get into part two of responding to Todd Phillips. You ready for objection five there, Ryan? Let's do it. All right, here's the fifth objection from Todd Phillips. And it's that there are thousands of Christianity's. There isn't one Christianity. There are thousands of Christianity's.

5:05The Baptists think they have the correct version. The Catholics think they do. The Calvinists think they do. The Pentecostals are certain that they do. The Progressive Christians, they think so. And they all point to the same Bible. So I decided to do a simple thought experiment. Let's just take eight major Christian doctrines and use extremely conservative numbers for how many major views exist in each one. So baptism, two views, communion, three views, salvation two. Can salvation be lost, two views, predestination and free will, three views, hell, three, end times three, biblical inspiration, three views. Now multiply those together. Don't add multiply. The result is 1,944 possible combinations of Christian belief. And remember, I intentionally grouped many views together and ignored dozens of other doctrines that Christians still disagree on. Like creation, women and ministry, spiritual gifts, church authority, LGBTQ inclusion, atomah theories, divorce and remarriage, and many others.

6:06Once you add just a handful of those, the possible combinations explode into the millions, millions. So when someone tells you that's not true Christianity, I hear that all the time. What they usually mean is that's not Christianity. The question isn't whether Christians interpret the Bible differently. They all clearly do. The question is why a supposedly clear message from a perfect God produces thousands of denominations, thousands of interpretations, and nearly 2,000 possible combinations from just eight major doctrines alone. And listen, if you're deconstructing because you couldn't make all of that make sense, you are not the problem. You were handed a Bible that Christians have never agreed how to read. Then told the message was clear. You didn't fail to understand Christianity. Christianity failed to ever speak with one clear voice. Even so this fifth objection, that there isn't really one Christianity. There are thousands of different Christianity,

7:07thousands of different denominations, thousands of different beliefs around specific doctrines. And we're going to be honest with Todd here. He's right about that. There are thousands of Christian denominations and traditions around the world. Some figures estimate there are upwards of 30,000 different Protestant denominations alone. That's a lot. That's a lot. And on its face, that might seem convincing. That might seem like a good argument. But I think we need to slow down and consider some really important things. One is that just because we're saying there are thousands of denominations, doesn't mean there are thousands of completely different religions. He seems to be conflating those things. Yes. There's a huge difference between what we'll call open-handed doctrines and closed-handed doctrines in Christianity. There are things that are open-handed. Things that Christians can genuinely disagree about and still enjoy fellowship with other groups.

8:10And then there are closed-handed doctrines. Close-handed doctrines are things like the triune nature of God, the deity and humanity of Christ, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, the reality of sin, the authority of scripture, the bodily death and resurrection of Jesus. These are doctrines that are at the core of historic Christianity. And so when somebody says, like, look at all these different Christianity's, my response is, yeah, Christians disagree on things. But disagreement alone doesn't prove that Christianity's false. The early church disagreed on things. Paul wrote to the Roman church about how to handle people who were eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. This was a real dispute among Christians. I mean, even what you said, Paul goes, hey, some of you, spirits not testifying to your conscious, not to do this. If it does for this person, great, who cares?

9:11That goes what the spirit says. So it innately, internally within scripture, it automatically assumes we're going to have differences. Yeah, yeah. And what does love require of me towards my brother or sister here? That's the question that Paul's addressing. Now, I think this comes back to our understanding of scripture because that's where these different denominations spring from. We have different interpretations of scripture. Certain scriptures get emphasized more than others, have greater way to importance than others. And you have these two enormous challenges that every single person living in our century have to deal with, chronological distance and geographical distance. And we've separated, we're separated from the biblical world by thousands of miles and thousands of years. We don't live in first century Judea. We don't speak coin Greek as our native language. We don't. We don't automatically understand ancient Jewish customs or Roman politics or ancient literary conventions.

10:14So yes, there are some difficult passages in the scriptures that are interpreted differently. But that just says Christians can get certain things wrong. Mythology can be wrong. Your theology can be wrong. And that's one reason we don't agree on everything. But the distinction is the fact that human beings can misinterpret God's revelation doesn't mean that God communicated poorly. Didn't mean that he got his message wrong. He just meant we got our interpretation wrong. So anyway, that's my rant. Yeah. So this has the smell, Mike, that I talked about with divine and his hiddenness that there is sort of this epistemic side of the coin from our side of the coin. Like you said, this is not a God does not exist. It has this, I have expectations on God that he seems to be violating. If God is all powerful, he ought to do this. And my question is, what do you mean he ought to do this?

11:15Like what, what argument do you have that got ought to do this? Right. I don't know what argument you have. It just seems that you think this is or expect God to act in this way. And he's not acting in this way. Therefore, you don't think he exists. To me, that I don't think that's a good reasoning. But like you said, Mike, there are a lot of things that aren't clear in scripture, that humanity being fallen however you want to talk about, because I know we'll talk about that in the next category. Whatever the case might be, not perfect, not omniscient, doesn't have all of the answers. And we tend to look into things that we can't know and claim we do know. And then we get angry at other people. So the timing of when Jesus is coming back, there are churches that divide over it. The question is why. I don't know. But to me, that has nothing to do with Christ or else from the dead, it has nothing to do with the God exists or Christianity.

12:16All it has to do with us overstepping our epistemic bounds, just like this argument does. Absolutely. And so I don't see how this at all is a hindrance on God's goodness or God's existence. I just don't see it. Yeah, yeah. I don't either. And the most important question for me is not how many church organizations exist. And I don't think that's a problem at all, because I think it takes all different types of churches to reach all different types of people. And I think God in his foreign knowledge knew that not every form of ecclesiology was going to speak to each individual person. Like I've talked to people who experienced the spirit of God just wash over them and they were transformed by walking into a cathedral. And I've had people who were like, yeah, I walked into that thing and it felt dead to me. And is it possible that God has hardwired us spiritually to encounter him in deeply personal ways?

13:18Great book, this is a rabbit trail, but a book by Gary Thomas called Sacred Pathways. It's an excellent book that talks about how God speaks uniquely to individual temperaments, depending on how you are hardwired, really, really good book. But my issue is not how many church organizations exist. It's what doctrines here are actually being disputed, because Baptist, Presbyterians, Methodist, Anglicans, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, they may disagree on some significant things, but they aren't all claiming radically different things about who Jesus is. There is a remarkably consistent theological center running through historic Christianity. And that gets conveniently ignored in this objection. And Mike, what's funny? Because if you steer from the fundamentals, I would say you're not a Christian. So you can even go through it.

14:18You might take the label, but the substance of who you are is different. Like it's like a milk carton holding orange juice. You could say that the label's milk, but is it in substance? Yeah, that's the, so anyway, this sixth objection is going to be a fun one, I think. And it is around a core Christian doctrine called original sin. Let's take a look. Gospel has an Adam and Eve problem. Original sin only works if Adam and Eve were real historical people. And I don't think they were, because if Adam and Eve weren't real people, then there was no historical fall of man. And if there was no historical fall of man, then one of the central pieces of evangelical Christianity just collapses. Now, I know people in the Christian community will say, hey, people still sin. And of course people do harmful, selfish, cruel things. And that's not the point. The point is original sin. The point is the idea that humanity

15:20inherited guilt and corruption, death, and a broken relationship with God because the first human beings, Adam and Eve just disobeyed God in a real garden. At least that's the story. But if Adam and Eve aren't historical people, then there wasn't a single first couple who brought sin into the world. There was no moment when human nature fell. There was no curse that suddenly entered creation because two people just ate from a tree. And that creates a massive problem for the version of evangelical Christianity I preach for more than 20 years. Because the story that I preach was simple. God created the world and it was good. Adam and Eve sinned, humanity fell, sin entered the world. We inherited guilt and separation from God from Adam and Eve. And then Jesus came as a solution for Adam's fall. That was it. But if Adam isn't historical and I don't think he is, then what exactly did Jesus come to undo? Did he come to undo a metaphor? Did he come to undo a symbol, an ancient origin story? Look, I know there are versions of Christianity and other theories of atonement

16:21and why Jesus came other than what I give or what I used to talk about for the reason Jesus came. And that's fine. But evangelical Christianity, especially the version built around substitutionary atonement, this isn't a small issue. No historical Adam means no historical fall. No historical fall means no inherited guilt and no inherited guilt means no original sin. And if your gospel depends on Jesus dying to fix what Adam broke, then the entire structure falls. There's no main argument here is that Adam didn't exist. And so if the first man and first woman did not exist to initiate original sin by their actions, therefore original sin itself does not exist. Now, the first issue with that argument is that he doesn't give anything substantive to bolster his claims whatsoever. He just says, eh, I don't think Adam and Eve existed. So therefore original sin doesn't exist. And that's just silly and lazy.

17:21It just is. And original sin I think is a doctrine that needs attention because it can sound bizarre if it's presented poorly. Sure, you can. But the basic Christian claim is that humanity is born into a sinful condition because of the fall of humanity. There's a conscious choice that our forefather and mother, Adam and Eve made in a definitive point in history that ushered in sin, death, brokenness, all things that are wrong with the world. And the obvious objection to original sin is not just that Adam and Eve didn't exist. So I'm not going to even entertain that part of the argument because I just don't think it's worth engaging. The better question is, why should I be held responsible for something someone else did? Right? I think that's the better question to be asking. I don't know what your thoughts are, Ryan. Yeah, so like you said, this wasn't,

18:22this was just the statement of belief versus such like, it's not a clear objection. Ready? So here it is. I'm going to neutralize his argument. I believe Adam and Eve did exist and therefore he's false. That's basically what he did. Yeah. Yeah. That's his argument for what he did. But I mean, I don't, I just, what was, I don't know what the argument was. I don't either. And so I mean, if he's worried about, like I think there's some people out there, like I think Francis Collins is wrong. I don't think he's updated on his research, but you look at someone's work like Craig or Joshua Swamy-Dance, who's a computational biologist in 2017 has proven. If you push, like there, if you pushed humanity back to a certain, I think it's past 500,000 years, you can actually get the genome down the two original, I mean, pairs. I mean, in its, it is scientifically proven that this is a true thing now. I mean, you can look at his work, his peer review. Yeah, he is, he is a geno. He does, he's MD and PhD in like genomic medicine.

19:25Like his, his work is unbelievable on that. But there's a lot of work coming out in China now that has proven this over and over and over again. So to say we can't get to original pairs, just false. Second of all, yeah. So there's, there's three main views of original sin that I have sort of come across. The first is this. There's sort of this really reformed one where Adam and Eve had the freedom of choice. I mean, there's different like methods of that. And then once they sinned, everyone was determined. To have a sense of nature. Everyone, or there wasn't determinism, it just sort of corrupted everyone's nature. I don't know if Roman's five necessarily points to both of those. And we could argue that, Theologically, I do like a certain view where now that humanity has a moral distinction being made in God's image and we have sort of innate sort of natural disposition to selfishness, we choose things against God, which then violates everything that he's told us. Sure. And so I lean more towards that

20:25because I think it combines both theology and sort of science. But I don't necessarily understand, well, I'm gonna say I don't understand his argument because he didn't give one. I don't know if he really didn't. It wasn't really an argument. It's just I don't believe this therefore. That granted, if Adam and Eve didn't exist, I agree like then original sin doesn't follow, but you just can't say they don't exist. That's not an argument. And saying I haven't inherited a broken condition that I also personally participate in. Well, right. So I think problem. And I, with more reformed, that it's not just that we have violated natures which I can get behind more, but the sin of eating the fruit is on my account when I wasn't there. Yeah, I don't think that's true. And I don't think, I think there is a vicarious liability to Christ because of the benefit of it.

21:26I think could justify it, but I don't see a vicarious liability of sin on our account to purposely condemn as a good justification, especially when he doesn't want anyone to fall. So it's a very weak, I think theology to hold in my opinion. Yeah, and you look that, the doctrine of original sin doesn't say necessarily that human beings were born bad, initially bad. It says that we are good. Like very good is how Genesis 1 describes humanity. But after Genesis 1 is Genesis 3, it says there is this corruption, this this vandalization of God's good world on the account of his image bears. Sure, right? And I think of the various ways that we can accurately reflect God's image, like creating art and being self-sacrificing and loving our children and fighting injustice. And at the same time,

22:27the human race produces genocide and abuse and exploitation and racism and murder and trafficking and war, all of this awful, awful stuff. And the Christian doctrine of original sin says, there is something fundamentally broken in us. And there is a historical point of origin that we can look back to and say, this is where it all started. Anyway. Yeah. And if I could add something to it, Mike, I know some theologians out there that don't think original sin is a thing where corruption or legality is inscriptured at all. And they argue very strong for that. But what I would say is even if that's the case, I don't need, right? Let me disclaim this. I think Adam and Eve existed. I think something stemmed from them, whatever that might mean. But if they didn't exist, you can still have the fall of all humanity with a third option, I presented. Does that make sense?

23:28So the fall and the position that we are as humans doesn't necessarily require original pair, though I think the original pair was the fountain head of everything. Does that make sense? Yep. Oh, yeah, for sure. So you can deny both of those and still think Christian theology because theologians do it, especially if you want to argue that our concept or that sort of Augustinian understanding of original sin is not true. And so I just, if my mind is just cross this off the list as an objection. Let's get to the second to last objection. And this is a very common one and that is unnecessary suffering. Unnecessary suffering is one of the reasons I know a lot of her believe in the Christian God. Every worldview has to account for suffering in some way and I get that. Christians often explain much of it through free will. In other words, human beings harm each other. We have the free will to do that. So war, abuse and cruelty, those all flow from human choices

24:29and that explains why those things happen. But that's not the suffering that continue to press on me. It's leukemia in a four-year-old. That's not the result of someone's moral decision. Genetic disorders aren't chosen. Earthquakes aren't acts of rebellion by humans. Parasites that blind children aren't caused by a human freedom. The predator prey, reality of nature and the extinction of most species on the planet happened long before humans ever showed up. The Christian theology says God is all powerful. He's all knowing, he's all loving. And if that's true, then suffering that serves no clear purpose raises a lot of questions for me. And I'm not asking why suffering exists at all. I'm asking why there's so much suffering that appears just unnecessary or gratuitous. Suffering that doesn't build character. It doesn't arise from moral choices and doesn't seem required for any greater good. For years, I said that God had reasons beyond our understanding. I would say his ways are not our ways. His thoughts are higher than ours.

25:30I said those things and accepted them for a really long time. But eventually, I had to admit that when I placed the attributes of God next to the world, because it actually is, they just didn't fit together. I could keep affirming both, but I couldn't make them fit together. And that's why I no longer believe. One of the... So this seventh objection is the problem of suffering. And I think this is probably one of the more emotionally powerful actions that somebody can raise. Right? And he makes this important distinction in the video, which I appreciate. He seems to believe that there is necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering. There's the sort of suffering that helps you develop and grow and change into a better human being. And there's this sort of suffering that just seems kind of pointless. But his use of the word unnecessary is really interesting. I think that's the key word because who determines what suffering is unnecessary?

26:30Who determines that? We assume that if we can't identify a good reason for it, then there can't be one. And I think that's a pretty big philosophical leap because there's a difference between knowing why something is happening to you and there's no possible reason why this could be happening to you. Right? Those aren't the same statements. Like take a child that's sitting in the doctor's office, not understanding why he has to get a vaccination. Right? I don't know what people's views on vaccination are listening, but just use this as an example. The child might not understand why he's experiencing pain in his arm. But the doctor knows what he needs. His mom or his dad knows what he needs. And now I'm not suggesting that we give somebody a trite answer if they're going through grief or they just lost their job or they got a health diagnosis of some kind. We just say, well, God has a reason for it. But the Bible actually gives us a specific category

27:31for how we handle suffering that doesn't make sense to us. And that's called lament. The songs, Job, Habakkuk, Jesus and Gesemini, the scripture never pretends that suffering is bewildering and horrific and difficult. And again, I think Christianity gives us something unique because we wholeheartedly believe that God did not remain distant from our suffering. He chose to enter into it. And that might not suffice Todd Phillips, but that's the answer that scripture gives us that God did not create the world and stand back at a distance. He chose to enter into its brokenness and redeem us anyway. Never promising that life was going to be easy. So. Right. So. Yeah. What are your thoughts, Ryan? It has the scent of an epistemic from the human side of violated expectations of the suffering from our angle

28:37of what what we can understand doesn't seem necessary. Therefore, why does God, why would God allow this? God is not good. God doesn't exist. Type of feel. But it's just sort of from the mindset of our angle. And what we ought to think God should do. That's what I'm saying. Like it's very weird. These arguments. It's almost like it's almost like the me is the center of everything. This is what it ought to be. And if it doesn't match what I think then you don't exist or you aren't good or like it's the otherness angle of his Christianity seem to turn in reverse. There's like a reverse cause. And I don't know what in his life caused that. But Mike, think about this. He gave the categories of we have we have the necessary that can cause growth and all these things, right? What is it what makes you think that everything can't cause growth?

29:39Right. You can give me one example. Even the most extreme that we can see or hear from that we can't look at in surrender of, hey, I stumped my toe this time. I'm going to watch my language because it's not Christ like. Sure. So in his own words, everything could be growth. Therefore nothing is unnecessary. But let me just look at this argument another way. Who says there's unnecessary things or I should say this? Maybe unnecessary isn't the word he wants to use. Or maybe he wanted to be like non-useful suffering. Maybe that's what he was going for. But if God has this kind of knowledge and knows for billions and billions and billions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, how every single disposition and every little cause and effect would happen that God couldn't arrange a world that even the most terrible things can't be used by him, even though it's going to suck in the moment for certain

30:43people. So I don't know one, I think his usage of unnecessary in his own example fails, but I don't also think he means necessary, not necessary. I think he means to his point of view, what seems beneficial or what seems good or what things should be. Sure. And I believe that even the most horrific thing that could happen to any human being can be brought to the maximal, the maximal amount of good. Yeah. God, he can do that. He is good enough and beautiful enough to bring about horrific tragedy and use it for something beautiful and amazing. What's to say if God stopped a terrorist attack that the world that would come out a million less people would be saved? Right. So God, as the ultimate goal of salvation and eternity with him, allows a particular event, especially if you can arrange things that he can still get everyone who would say it would believe it. There's so many counterfactual angles to this that every this argument just fails logically

31:46to me. I don't sure the premises don't follow to the conclusion in my mind. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Much more that we could say to that, but we'll leave that there for now. And then this eighth and final objection, this is going to be our last one, is an all loving God and hell cannot coexist. Let's watch. Foundational bricks to fall that cause the math of my faith, the kind of stop mapping. I guess you call it. It was the realization that an all loving God and the concept of hell literally cannot exist in the same reality. It just can't. Look, I know the traditional counter-argument. I preached it. People will say, well, God is all-knowing. So he knew I'd sin, for example. And because he's all loving, he sent Jesus to die and provide a way out of sin and out of hell. And they'll say he used his power being all-powerful to defeat death through Jesus.

32:49And so we wouldn't have to go to hell. But that actually, from my perspective, now makes the problem worse. It ignores the fact that God is the actual architect of the entire system. Look, if God's all-powerful and all-knowing, he's the one who decided that the consequences for decades of sin, just a few decades of our lives, no matter how many sins we have and human mistakes, the consequence of that should be eternal conscious torture. He didn't just find hell out there one day, existing, and then try to save us from it because he's loving. He's the one that created hell as the default destination because of our sin nature. I mean, he could have chosen any other consequence. Literally, he could have chosen rehabilitation or like a timeout or even just a, I don't know, not existence, annihilation. That would have been better than hell. But instead, he designed a system of never-ending torture and then asked for praise from us because supposedly he provided a loophole to escape the very nightmare that he built in

33:50the first place. That's not a rescue mission. It's like a hostage situation. Realizing that hell was a tool of control for me, rather than kind of a logical necessity, it was one of the big bricks to fall in my deconstruction. So none of these questions. All right. Finally, we come to hell. This is a topic that we could spend a lot more time on and I want to do a series, some point in the future where we dive into the different theories of hell and the biblical credibility of each of these theories. But we're using broad brushstrokes for this particular one and this is probably the most emotionally difficult doctrine in Christianity. That how could all loving God send people to hell and I want to begin by saying that I understand why people struggle with this and I don't think that Christians should respond with a smug answer like, well, you know, with their sinners and they deserve it because the doctrine of judgment for those who commit perpetual sin and evil and continue

34:55to vandalize God's world, that's a terrifying proposition. It should, it should sober us. But we also need to ask, okay, when we're talking about hell, what are we, what are we talking about? Because hell is oftentimes been reduced to God tortures people forever because they didn't say the right prayer. Right? That's what hell is oftentimes reduced down to and that's not an adequate representation of what Christian theology actually teaches around it. And the scripture used several different types of imagery to describe hell, the final judgment. It uses words like separation, darkness, fire, destruction. Some Christians have debated the precise nature of hell for centuries, but one thing is clear that hell is a doctrine that reminds us that God takes evil in this world seriously. And I don't want to live in a world where God just says, yeah, nothing matters.

36:00Nothing is important. Nothing actually has a consequence. Like imagine a world where murder, abuse, exploitation and genocide ultimately receive the exact same response from God, which is nothing. And ironically, the same people who argue that God is not good because he allows for suffering is the same people who say, like, I don't like God actually putting out a punishment for people who commit these acts of suffering in the world. Does that make sense? Yeah. So if God is truly good, then he has to oppose evil. He does. And if God is just, he can't be ignored. The problem is that when we talk about God's judgment, we have to imagine ourselves as innocent observers looking at all of these terrible people out there. But Christianity declares it all of sinned, all of fallen short of the glory of God.

37:02And the question isn't why would God judge them? The question is why would God have mercy on us? That's the fundamental question. I don't believe any of us deserve eternity with God, but it's not a matter of whether or not we deserve it. It's a matter of how God has chosen to respond to us in our broken state. There has to be choice comes back to that to either choose God or reject him, right? And hell, again, I'm using the most simplest terms possible is an extension of the human will. Meaning before God, God will either say, that I will be done or we will say to God, that I will be done. I believe C.S. Lewis said something to that effect. Now there's much more than we could say at hell that we don't have time for in this particular episode. But I believe God has gone to extraordinary lengths to offer reconciliation to humanity, but it's not a given that all of humanity is going to receive the grace of God available

38:06in Jesus. Sure. Yeah, 100%. So, yeah, I guess what I have to say, Mike, once again, I don't want to go on a 20 minute rant. This is an episode in itself. I, I don't know why. I love and God can't say, hey, this is how it works. And if you decide to freely not choose me, you don't get to have me. And you have violated the rights of the locality. You have violated other people. And I also love those other people who are coming to heaven as well. And justice needs to be served. And so I'm going to love them by giving justice as well. So here's a problem, Mike, that I've noticed. And I have a lot more to say on this. It seems that love, when it comes to God and hell, is the only thing that's often talked

39:13about. All of these other attributes like justice, like things like that, right, mercy. There's aspects of wrath. There's assets of him being jealous, right? All of these things. They're never in the conversation. And if God is perfectly loving, and he is perfectly good, and he is perfectly all of these other categories, just and perfectly merciful, perfect judge, to just eliminate all of the other ones for a category of what we think love is. Seems to be a violation of any violation of reason and how to look at this topic. Because I don't know how in all loving God, who is also perfectly just, can just not give what's due in punishment.

40:14Right. I don't know how that is. And then we can talk about the following characteristics of what a punishment is needed. But we need to look at all of who God is. And he is loving and, and, and, and, and, and, and so on and so forth. And if you want to get rid of all of the other ones or diminish it, you're not actually talking about the God of the Bible in your objection. For sure, for sure. Yeah. And again, like you said, there's much more that we could say on this topic. And we're going to leave this conversation here today. If you have questions or objections or disagreements, we invite you to put them in the comments. If you are watching on YouTube, we genuinely want to hear them and engage with as many of them as we have the ability to engage in. And if you want us to tackle other objections to Christianity or other false teachings, please let us know by reaching out to us on Facebook or Instagram at the caffeinated Christian that is at the caffeinated Christian. And as always, until next time, have a terrific day.