| Subject: God and the Individual |
Author:
Biff
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Date Posted: 12/11/01 1:04pm
In reply to:
ozboy
's message, "Go Don...." on 12/10/01 9:51am
>Your second point is interesting! ... and somewhat
>reminiscent of the discussion here a while back about
>whether babies go to heaven or not.... if you just
>can't understand! ... how can god blame you for not
>knowing?
I hate to drag this one up again, but I had some thoughts about it.
Some use the concept of "age of accountability" to answer that question. There are indications of this concept in the Bible, enough to make a good case for it. Others argue that no person who would have found salvation through Christ dies before they are able to make the decision (i.e., if a baby dies and goes to hell, that individual would have gone to hell even if they had lived their full life expectancy). But personally, I don't care one way or the other.
It seems to me, and I haven't researched this yet, that the age of accountability concept is a response to modern individualism. Over the past couple of centuries we've developed the idea that each individual is responsible for his/her own behaviour and nothing more. That doesn't seem to be the prevailing idea through history, and I theorize that it does not adequately explain God's actions.
Collective responsibility seems to be much more prevalent through history. From God's perspective, all of mankind has been tragically tainted with sin. If this means that people who die before making a decision about beliefs go to hell, then that is how it is.
Many would question the justice in that. But I do not. Did all Nazis kill Jews? No, but we continue to hold them all responsible to this day. Was the entire Taliban responsible for the WTC disaster? Of course not, but we hold them guilty by association and consider it justice to kill a large percentage of them, even if some women and children die in the process. In the Bible, check Judges 19-20, when the entire tribe of Benjamin was held responsible for the rape of one woman. It doesn't seem to me that these people would have questioned the concept of collective responsibility from God's perspective. That was the way it was.
I believe that we as a society are responsible for the actions of our people. When one man kills another, we have done something to make the act possible and even justifiable in the killer's mind. That doesn't excuse his behaviour, for to let it go furthers it. But something in our society has taught him to be who he is.
So, if God holds mankind collectively responsible for its actions, then that is his nature. It is not for us to decide that it is unjust. We are not the supreme beings, he is. We are to understand his nature and conform to it. That doesn't sound unpalatable to me, for if he created everything, he should know how operates best.
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