Thank you :)

> So you truly believe I can find peace via religion?

It's not through religion but instead through a relationship with Jesus. Religion is generally us try to be good enough or smart enough or empty enough to find God; Christianity is where God does what is necessary to find us—because He loves us and wants us to come and be part of His family. It's a completely different kind of idea. We want to know God, not just know about Him.

> And I should start by talking with God throughout the day as well as reading the bible?

Yes. I talk to God all through the day. Just what I'm thinking about, what's going on, and thinking about the things I've read in the Bible and figuring out what they mean. Prayer is not mostly asking for things (I don't often ask for things from God), but just talking to Him.

> Are there certain things I can keep in mind throughout the day that would help me find peace and freedom from depression & apathy?

I found (and find) that certain Bible texts helped me find peace, and I said them over and over.

Psalm 23, just a beautiful Psalm
Psalm 6.3-9
Matthew 5.3-10
2 Corinthians (I just love the whole book)
2 Cor. 1.3-11
2 Cor. 4 (the whole chapter)
2 Cor. 12.9-10
Romans 8 (the whole chapter)
Isaiah 40

There are just so many good ones.

Joshua 1.9
Philippians 3.7-21
Philippians 4.4-9

After a while, I just got hungry for the whole thing. I read the Bible, especially the Psalms and the New Testament, like a starving man.

Ps. 5
Ps. 13
Ps. 18.1-6
Ps. 25
Ps. 27

and so many others.

Feel free to keep talking to me, or to talk to me anytime.

Thank you for clearing everything up :)

So you truly believe I can find peace via religion?

And I should start by talking with God throughout the day as well as reading the bible?

Are there certain things I can keep in mind throughout the day that would help me find peace and freedom from depression & apathy?

It's not like someone sat around thinking, "Let's see, what should I make the First Cause look like and be like?" It's more like "It is what it is." I mean, if nature were always there, I guess you could struggle with, "Why was energy the eternal part of nature? Why not gravity or electromagnetic radiation?" Um, I dunno. It is what it is.

Except to me there's actually a sense and a logic to it. If something were adequate and sufficient to be the First Cause, it would have to be outside of nature, powerful, timeless, personal, intelligent, able to act in nature but not be part of it, and purposeful. Well, we just described the concept of God. God actually fits this picture.

But God didn't come from nothing for no reason. He was always there. He had to have been. When you think back far enough, no matter what it is, you have to come to an answer where you can't go any further and the answer is just, "You've come to the logical beginning of things." God is actually a logical thing: sufficient, eternal, powerful, etc. Arguments to the existence of God are arguments to a complete explanation of the phenomena we see. The choice is not in how God came to be of such power and knowledge, but rather whether the universe or God is the stopping point of explanation. Nature has no sufficient explanation outside of a personal, metaphysically necessary being. God is the terminate of explanation.

Richard Swinburne writes, "There is a natural connection between theism and causality: intelligence, personality, intent, freedom, power, and laws. Theism has sufficient prior probability (simplicity of explanation) and complete explanatory power. The intrinsic probability of theism is, relative to other hypotheses about what there is, very high."

There is quite a chance that if there is a God he will make something of the breadth, depth, and complexity of a universe. It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused. The existence of the universe is strange and puzzling. It can be made comprehensible if we suppose that it is brought about by God.

I want to be clear. The main concept I struggle with in relation to Christianity is the concept of a God coming from nothing for no reason. Why him? Is what I keep thinking.

Thanks for continuing to talk to me. I think you're right that there has to be a point to all of this. Our minds go in that direction: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why is there something rather than nothing? How is it that I am self-aware? (...and about a dozen other questions.)

But we as Christians don't believe that God came to fruition out of nothingness. We believe that God was always there. Something had to have always been there. To me, when I look at the evidence, the evidence points to a metaphysical being (not from nature), who is personal, powerful, and eternal. I know—it's a lot to wrap one's head around, but something had to have always been there.

Another thing that weighs on me is that science, as good as it is, can explain only part of this picture (how things got here; why they are the way they are), but theism can explain it all. Theism has sufficiency of explanation. And theism is actually the simpler explanation (Occam's Razor), whereas science has some real gaps to jump (like abiogenesis, the origin of DNA, the existence of consciousness, and what made the Bang go BANG).

I think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. But it is a very hard concept for me to grasp. You’re right, it makes sense that there has to be something or someone that created all of this. But I can’t grasp that there was nothingness and then a God came to fruition out of this nothingness. Then what created God? Nothing? It makes it really difficult for me to understand.
To be honest my view of the world right now is that there has to be a point to all of this. We are conscious of our own consciousness. We are more than our body’s. However, as I stated above, how can there be nothing yet someone came to fruition from nothing and that person is therefore God? It’s really hard to understand from my point of view. Why is God, God? And how is any of this even possible?

> for some reason I find it very difficult to grasp the concept of god

Here's one way that might make sense of God to you. We know that everything is not material. Some things are real even though they are non-material, like time, or our memories.

Evidence of our thoughts and feelings shows that we are more than just material objects, even biologically. Part of what we are born with and our nature as humans includes non-material realities. Biologically it comes from the same place everything else comes from: our human nature.

What's more, our sense of self (and perception of self, not just in thought, but as an entity) gives evidence that we have a conception of a non-material self.

Our perceptions of truth and falseness (which are necessary for scientific inquiry) betray a belief that among the random and chance happenings of evolution and naturalism, content (apart from natural phenomena that we can empirically experience) has arisen that we can trust to be reliably true. (The conditional probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism together with the proposition that we have come to be by way of evolution, is low.) The reliability of cognitive content in addition to self-perception gives evidence that something besides pure materialism is present in our beings.

OK, so since we know that non-material things exist, and that some of those non-material things are part of us, then it's fair to extrapolate that there also exist non-material things that are NOT part of us. The concept of God isn't all that "out there."

>So your main point is that there has to be something that started all of this. That makes sense.

Sure. If something doesn't exist, it can't make itself come into existence. Something else has to make it come into existence.

Another thing that science tells us: first causes always have to be personal. Sure, there are endless complex chains of cause-and-effect, but anything that starts a new chain is personal. Those billiard balls will sit there on the table for eternity unless someONE starts them moving.

So if we have the possibility (and evidence) that non-material entities exist, and that those can exist outside of ourselves as well (like time), and if we know that all first causes are personal causes, then the causal mechanism to the universe was likely outside of time, non-material, and personal. Aren't we getting close to a concept of God?

> But why him? Why is he the person that is the ultimate being that came from nothing?

If there's only 1 ultimate being that had no beginning, then it wasn't exactly a choice. But if the first cause had to be timeless, eternal, powerful, and personal, along with purposeful (since we see purpose all through science), we are honing in on a description of God.

And, just to add in here, I don't think it's possible that there are more than one ultimate being. If there were, they would eventually come into conflict with each other, as free agents. And if they never came into conflict with each other but instead were in perfect harmony, they would be ultimately redundant, which would be meaningless. So I don't think it's possible that there are more than ultimate being. Which is taking us even closer to a concept of God. Every step of logic takes us closer to an ultimate, supreme, supernatural being who is eternal, powerful, personal, and purposeful.

And there's actually so much more I haven't touched on yet. I think it adds up to a strong case.

What do you think?

That makes so much more sense to me. It is a sense of torture due to separation but not necessarily literally burning alive for years.

I have to be honest, for some reason I find it very difficult to grasp the concept of god. I’ve tried being more spiritual and it made me feel a little crazy. So your main point is that there has to be something that started all of this. That makes sense. And we are here because the person (or entity) that started all of this wanted to spread his consciousness. That makes sense. But why him? Why is he the person that is the ultimate being that came from nothing?

> So if someone doesn’t love god then they will be tortured?

As far as my reading of the Bible, the only "torture" of hell will be the agony of being truly separated from God. The figure of "fire" is just a figure of speech; it's not literal fire. Sometimes hell is described as darkness. Fire just an image of how awful it will be to be truly separated from God.

> I think it would make more sense that they would just cease to exist or something like that.

The problem with "ceasing to exist" is that there's no sense of justice there. If they just cease to exist, then a guy like Hitler got away with it. "Do whatever you want, 'cause you won't have to pay for it. You'll just cease to exist." So Hitler, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Pol Pot, or Josef Stalin—they just get away with it. There's no justice in that. We might as well all just do what we want—rape, murder, theft, who cares! We'll all get away with it. When life is over, we cease to exist. That doesn't make more sense to me.

> But even that seems a little extreme considering there are people born into muslim families who are brainwashed to believe in Islam.

Yes, people are brainwashed, and God will take that into account. He will take all things into account. But there are millions of Muslims coming to Jesus. I have heard first-hand reports from people in Iran and Iraq, as well as Syria, that there is a great movement of Muslims to Christianity. (Of course, you never hear about it on the news.)

> Is hell sort of a meaning for something that isn’t actually what it is?

There's every reason, if we believe the Bible, to believe that hell is real. But the images of hell are exactly that: figures of speech. Hell is no more "fire" than heaven is "harps and clouds." It's figurative language to speak of agony vs. peace, and isolation rather than love relationship.

> Or do people who are not Christian really burn for eternity?

I don't think anyone "burns." And it may not be for eternity. Not all Christians, you should know, believe in the traditional concept of hell. There are theories about reconcilationism, semi-restorationism, modified eternalism, and annihilationism, all with some kind of scriptural backing. In other words, hell isn't necessarily eternal for all who enter it. It may only be eternal for those who refuse to be reconciled.

There is no indication of different levels of heaven or of hell (like Dante's Inferno), but there are degrees of reward and degrees of punishment, so that it's all perfectly fair.

[list][*] Matthew 11.22-24 & Luke 10.12: Jesus says it will be “more tolerable” for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah than for the people of Capernaum. That would indicate to me a more harsh punishment and a less harsh punishment.
[*] Matthew 23.14: Jesus tells the Pharisees they will be punished more severely for the way they are deceiving the people and living as hypocrites.
[*] Revelation 20.13: Each is going to be judged according to what he has done. Since that is the case, then the punishments and rewards can’t be the same for everybody.
[*] and finally, Luke 12.47-48 (workers are punished with more or fewer blows). There are degrees of punishment, and even sins of ignorance are treated differently than sins of intention.[/list]

Why I bother to point this out is because often those who consider hell to be unfair are picturing the same punishment for all, which is most likely not the case, and infinite punishment for finite crimes, which may also not be the case. People will be punished according to the works they have done (2 Corinthians 5.10).

In other words, here's the real deal about eternity, what the Bible is SO emphatic about: God will be perfectly fair with everyone. There is no need for anxiety that God has created a system of horror, that people will be judged unfairly, that injustices will be done and people will be sent inappropriately somewhere, or that God will somehow go against his attributes just to torture people. We may not know about the real character and duration of hell, but there are ate least two truths that bear on the issue: God will be fair, and God is not cruel.

So here's the scene: God invites each person into a loving relationship with himself. He has prepared a wonderful place for them, and leaves the door wide open. It doesn't make God barbarous that a person refuses to come in and chooses of their own free will to stay outside in the chaos. There's a Book of Life, but there's no Book of Death. But people who reject God choose to be separated from him, and they will go to a fate that was never meant to be theirs. We are free agents, and the choices we get to make regarding spiritual truths are real choices. God does not force anyone towards heaven or hell. Those choices are ours alone to make.

What the Bible says is that God loves you (Jn. 3.16), knows that you can't save yourself (since no one is worthy), and so has made every provision for your rescue, offering it as a free gift to all comers. We must repudiate what separates us from God (repent of our sins), and turn to him in love (very different from "religion". It's much like a marriage ceremony, where you forsake all others to commit yourself in love to the one who loves you.) But since love must always be chosen and never forced, he informs and invites all people to come to him for rescue (salvation). The choice belongs to each individual, and it is always ours to make. No worthiness is involved, but only choice and love. All sincere comers will be accepted. All who refuse and choose to have nothing to do with God will endure the consequences of that decision: life without God, and eternity without God, if they get all the way to the end of life spurning his every invitation. They weren't created bound for hell, and Jer. 18.1-12 lets us know that they always have a legitimate choice to do as they wish with their lives. God will make adjustments according to their free-will choices. The path to hell is never a certainty unless the person in question makes it such.

For the sake of analogy, let's suppose there are two doors, one leading to eternal separation from God, and one leading to eternal joy in his presence. Door #1 was only prepared for Satan and his sycophants, and door #2 was prepared for all people. Jesus is standing between the doors, and as people approach, he expresses his love for them and invites them to enter door #2 and bliss. But when people grab the handle to door #1, he cries out to them, "Don't do that. It's a terrible thing. You don't want to go there. Come this way, into door #2." But they choose to enter door #1 anyway.

Here's the bottom line: If you know the Christian God is one of perfect love, mercy, and justice, then turn to Him and become part of his family. That is the real message of the Bible: come, share the life God offers you, and come into unity and belonging with the God who loves you. There won't be anything unfair. You just want to make sure that neither you nor anyone else you love or know ends up in the category of "the doomed." Come to Jesus and let His life fill you. I can guarantee you that the absolute truth of the Bible is that no one will be dealt with wrongly, unfairly, or unjustly. Take that to heart. If you don't really want to face God with a heart against Him, then turn your heart towards Him.

C.S. Lewis makes some interesting observations about hell. I'll reword them and summarize some of them here: You object to the doctrine of hell. What are you asking God to do? To wipe out past sins at all costs and to give anyone who wants it a fresh start, smoothing difficulties and offering help? But He has DONE that. That's what his death and resurrection were all about. OK, then, are you asking God to forgive you? It's a RELATIONSHIP. He will forgive anyone who wants it, and cannot forgive those who choose not to be forgiven. To leave you alone then? Well, I'm afraid that's what hell is.

If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If there is a way that must be found by the will, and by love, then it must be possible to refuse it. If the happiness of a person is honestly the result of self-surrender, then no one can make that decision except himself, and he may refuse. I would love to say everyone will be saved. But then I'd have to ask, "Will they be saved against their will, or with it?" If I say "against their will," I'm in the middle of a contradiction; how can self-surrender and love be involuntary? But if the answer is "With their will," it begs the question: "What if they will not give in?"

So, with all that has been said, and with all the disagreements, even from Christians, about hell, I can conclude with confidence with this statement: Those who turn away from God will be separated from the life of God. Though we can't be sure about the form or duration of that separation, this we can be sure of: it will be a horrible experience, and God will be fair about the form and duration of it. If you reject God, you take your chances.