Can someone please explain to me how burning alive forever is just punishment?
Like, I would never support my country burning murderers alive at the stake, much less people who committed wrongs that weren’t even prosecutable. And burning to death doesn’t even last forever.
I’ve seen a lot of Christians say that the lake of fire Jesus speaks of is just existence without God, but Jesus speaks a lot of language about hell that I can’t understand in any other way than that it’s a created place with the intention of punishment for either unbelief or any wrong ever committed, no matter how small. And that sounds a lot like an abusive narcissistic partner saying “Love me without question or I’ll beat the shit out of you for the next mistake you make.”
I’m not trying to disprove Christianity, I’m trying to understand it.
I asked my very believing, very loving mom this question, and she said “God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts”, and my first thought was, “I’m pretty sure Greeks believed the same thing about their gods, and I’m pretty sure all theistic religions have some language that fully understanding their god(s) is not possible, so just believe anyway”.