If God Made the Rules About Hell, Isn't It His Fault If We Go There?

An influential apologist for atheism seems to be a man by the name of Matt Dillahunty. I’ve seen him a few times on YouTube, and recently in a short clip on TikTok. In this short clip, Matt gives the following analogy (paraphrased in my own words.) He says that if anyone goes to Hell, God is to blame for that, seeing as He makes all the rules, and needn’t have made the rule that sinners go to Hell. The analogy he then gives is that if a man makes the rule in his home that if his wife raises her voice, he’ll slap her. If, then, the wife raises her voice and he slaps her, is it not the man’s fault for making such a rule? And this argument, based on the reception in the comments section of the video, appears very wise to many people. But actually it’s quite a flawed analogy, and not a very sound argument. Why would Matt choose for his analogy a rule like slapping a wife for raising her voice over a rule like, for example, going to prison for murder? The government makes that a rule, and yet if I commit murder I can hardly say “Well, it’s the government’s fault that I’m now going to prison because they make all the rules.” So even on a human level this analogy is flawed. But when you consider that the one making the rules about Heaven and Hell is God, it really doesn’t hold up at all! The man who makes the rule about slapping his wife for raising her voice… What wisdom did he have in arriving at such a rule? What consideration did he have as to the justice of such a law? Was he right to make such a rule in the first place?

When you consider the laws of God in the Bible, you have to remember who the law-giver is. Perhaps part of the atheist's struggle here is that they take for granted that these laws were really just devised by men who attributed them to a higher authority. But let me give an analogy of my own… Imagine you start a new job and the company director tells you on your first day that there are various company rules that must be complied with. They are, for example… No deliberately turning up to work in pyjamas. No riding motorbikes inside the building. No defecating on the floor… Three examples of what nobody is ever likely to do anyway, right? Well, that’s precisely what God’s laws are like. If we did not have a sinful nature and were perfect as God created us in the beginning, His laws would appear just as absurd and needless to say. That is, they would appear to be a list of things that nobody would even dream of doing anyway. The first of the ten commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me.” If we were not sinners, this would seem just as needless to say as your boss asking you not to work for another company during the hours you work for his company. And even so, most of the other of God's laws do seem needless to say; “You shall not murder”, “You shall not steal”... well, obviously! And yet we do these things. So, going back to the analogy of the workplace, imagine that your new boss tells you that the penalty for breaking any of these rules is death. Would you care? I mean, what risk is there that you might face death? I think I’d accept that job despite the possibility of the death penalty, because I know I’m never going to do any of those things. (Note also that in human terms we may not trust our boss not to falsely accuse us of something in order to put us to death for some reason, but with God we can trust His perfect judgement.)

Now you may wish to interject that even if God is right, from His perspective, to make laws that nobody would bother to break; surely He has to take into consideration that we are not like Him and are unable to keep them? God does indeed know that we are unable to keep them. In fact, the Bible says that anyone who thinks they are without sin deceives themselves (1 John 1:8). We cannot keep God’s laws and God knows it. Who, then, can escape the sentence of Hell? Presumably nobody can. And this is precisely the gospel message. Nobody can escape the sentence of Hell by keeping God’s commandments. But there is another way, and that is what theologians call “the substitutionary atonement of Christ”. The key word, there, is substitutionary. That is because Christ, the Son of God, is a substitution for us. In dying on the cross, Christ suffered the punishment due to us, instead of us. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is by faith. That is, belief that Christ is the Son of God, and that His death and resurrection saves us. We are saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8); believing in Christ is all that God asks. Why? Because this is the only thing, when you break it all down, that makes a difference. Jesus explained that what we believe will affect everything about us (Matthew 15:18-19 for example). There are many things that should characterize a Christian, but they are all the result of that belief in the reality of Christ. Love and good works are some of those characteristics. Believing in Christ… that is, truly believing in Him… one desires to please Him. But our belief remains in His work on the cross. We can believe that our good works please Him, but we cannot believe that our good works save us. He is the only salvation that there is. And knowing that my salvation does not depend on my own efforts, I then have no fear of Hell. If it were up to my own efforts, I would certainly fail. Not one of us would succeed in saving ourselves. So Christ has saved us. More than that, He has given us the Holy Spirit to transform us and keep us in that very faith which saves us.

To bring this back to Matt Dillahunty’s point… his point was this: Isn’t it God’s fault if we go to Hell since He makes the rules? Well, the rule He’s made is that if we believe in Him then we have nothing to fear of Hell. How is that unreasonable of our Creator? This is like one of those silly rules that should be needless to say. Who wouldn’t believe in their own Creator? Who really needs to be told to? The analogy Matt used doesn't even work in human terms. The government sets the law that those who murder go to prison but those who refrain from murder can avoid prison, and nobody thinks this unreasonable, nor do they blame the government if they go to prison for murder. If the analogy fails for imperfect human laws, how much more does it fail for God's laws which are perfect? We are given a means to avoid Hell, and that means is well within our grasp. All God is asking us to do to avoid Hell is that which should be natural for us to do anyway. Believe in Him.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
Romans 8:1-3

Is Coronavirus The End Of The World?

Folks, the title of this post deliberately echoes a post I wrote in 2014. It was titled "Is Ebola The End Of The World?" Back then there was an outbreak of Ebola and I find it incredibly interesting that everything that people are saying now about Coronavirus is similar to what I then outlined as the typical response to a crisis like Ebola. I'm not going to re-hash what I said in that post, but if you read it, it's precisely what I would say in response to the question "Is Coronavirus The End Of The World?" In short... I don't know if it's the end of the world. That's up to God. But what difference does it make? There is an end coming at some point, and we need to be ready for it by sorting out the most important thing of all... Do we believe and accept who Christ says He was and have faith in Him for eternal life?

With regard to Coronavirus... mankind has experienced many plagues throughout its history. The most famous, probably, is the bubonic plague. One wonders how much damage the bubonic plague might have done if the people of that day had the technology we have now; the Internet to forewarn one another, and the medical knowledge to organize proper quarantine and testing? And even though we have these things, the Coronavirus is taking a serious toll on the world. You cannot escape the purposes of God. But what is God's purpose?

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I don't presume to know what God's specific purposes might be. What I do want to do is share what the Bible says about plagues and God's purposes behind them. The first would be what people think of when they associate such a plague with the end of the world... to punish the world for their sins. This is in keeping with various Biblical references to plague. For example, when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Lord (that is, the same artifact depicted in the Indiana Jones movie), God sent a plague on their cities. Or when the Israelites built an idol in the desert, a plague broke out amongst them. A plague was one sign that God was punishing people for their sins. So was famine and war. Nobody wants these things, and the response should always be to turn to God. When King Solomon spoke at the opening of the Temple, he said:

If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own heart and stretching out his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind), that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers.
1 Kings 8:37-40

Note especially that it says "hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive..." In other words, the assumption should be that these things are God's response to sin. This is all the more clear since, in a few places in Moses' writings, God literally says that if the people obey Him they will be prosperous, but that if they disobey Him they will see curses like plagues and famines and so forth. The thing we need to remember here is that mankind is always guilty! Does the world, right now, deserve a plague for their sins? Of course it does. But it has always been deserving of this, and we ought not to forget that God has shown mercy all the years that we haven't had a plague on our doorsteps.

Now, we should recognize that it is a good thing for God to withdraw His mercy a little from time to time. There's a verse which says:

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.
Ecclesiastes 8:11

If God never reminded us that there is a punishment for sin, who would turn from their sin? The greater purpose of God in sending the plagues and the famines is to remind us that we are at His mercy, and that He will indeed judge sin. Many turn from their sins because they believe the Word of God when it says that there will be a coming judgment, and they believe the Word of God that speaks of the judgments which God brought upon the Earth in the time of Noah, upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and upon Israel. But it is right and just for God to give us a very real reminder in our own lives from time to time. In fact, any time that a person dies of anything it should be a reminder of "the wages of sin", as the Bible calls it. What difference does it make how and when we die? Let no one say there was a lack of evidence of the consequences of sin; not when God Himself has told us through His Word, if we will believe it, why there exists death and suffering. Coronavirus may not be the end of the world, but it serves the same purpose as the plagues of the Bible, along with the famines and the wars... and it has the same purpose as the bubonic plague, or the Ebola outbreak... all of these things point to God's judgment of sin. That's the most Biblical answer I can find. These things are designed to provoke us to turn to God for salvation.

Finally, I want to draw our attention to how God, even while punishing us, can have a purpose for good. When Italy went into lock down because of the virus, it was widely noted that the canals in Venice and other water ways around the country, began to clear of all their silt. With no one using them, the water became clear and fish could be seen swimming around in them. And it occurred to just about everybody... though they put it in more sort of New Age terms... that "the Earth was healing itself." Or that "mother nature was taking back what was hers." But to my Christian sensibilities, it reminded me of what God did when the Israelites went into exile in Babylon. God had declared in His laws that Israel should keep the Sabbath; that is, that no work be done on the 7th day of the week, and also that the land rest from farming every 7th year (Exodus 23:10-12). But Israel hadn't done that. So when the Israelites went into exile and the land of Israel itself became essentially uninhabited, the Bible explains:

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.
2 Chronicles 36:20-21

Not that I'm saying that our sin has been not keeping the Sabbath, but simply to note that it is of a similar vein. The people hadn't let the land rest as they ought to have, and so God's punishment served the secondary purpose of giving the land that rest. We're all so aware these days of how we have exploited the Earth's resources, and industry just marches on and on, never ceasing to consume and pollute. It may well be that God's purpose is very much about giving the Earth the rest it needs as we all hunker down in our homes. The economic ramifications of this may be significant, but we ought to read and understand the Words of Jesus in the Book of Revelation. According to my understanding of the Book, we are to expect famines, wars, plagues such as this Coronavirus... and economic collapses. Consider Revelation chapter 18 about the "Fall of Babylon", (which I think is symbolic of all society)...

As she glorified herself and lived in luxury,
so give her a like measure of torment and mourning,
since in her heart she says,
"I sit as a queen,
I am no widow,
and mourning I shall never see."
For this reason her plagues will come in a single day,
death and mourning and famine,
and she will be burned up with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.
...
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore
Revelation 18:7-8,11

Again, I'm not saying that this passage refers specifically to current events with Coronavirus, but rather that the Book of Revelation speaks of the kinds of things God will do in the world, so that when we see them we might remember His words and turn to Him in repentance for salvation. The end is coming. This may not be it, but this is a reason for people to write posts like these and for people to be thinking about these kinds of questions. And that's really the purpose of God in all this, I think. Seeing the disasters which God brings upon the world for its sins, the sensible thing would be to repent. But sadly there are those who still will not...

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons wand idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Revelation 9:20-21