Something that bothers and confuses me; if you don't worship (I say worship rather than ''believe'' because I think it's perfectly possible to believe in a god without worshipping him/her simply because they are a powerful god/being) God, then no matter how good a person you are, you're going to Hell to be tormented and burned in fire for all eternity. For Christians that believe in the word of God/bible with absolute certainty and you believe the above about to Hell regardless of how good a person you are if you don't worship God, then how do you feel about friends/work colleagues etc. who don't worship God. If you believe it all as a fact you know is true, therefore you know that your non-Christian friiend/work friend etc is doomed to Hell. How do you process those thoughts, how do you ''square'' that with yourself?
My mother thinks that my going to Hell when I die (as she believes it, as I'm a non-Christian) is on me, it's entirely my fault. Not Gods fault for condeming me, but my own fault. To me, I can not understand this thinking. I really struggle with the concept of a God that is all knowing, all powerful, omnipotent, perfect judgement and perfect love who is apparently all forgiving that has essentially sentenced me to an eternity being tortured for not worshipping him. I just don't get it. Why doesn't he forgive me for not worshipping him? If he is all knowing and made me, why did he make me with such doubts in him? Why did he make me an atheist? He made me knowing full well that I wouldn't worship him, then sentences me to burn forever. Why would a loving God that made me do this? I genuinely don't get it.
I couldn't imagine going to meet friends, seeing them and knowing that some of them are going to this awful place because they didn't take this ''leap of faith'' as it were by worshipping a God that there is no evidence for (or against, we can't prove he exists and we can't prove he doesn't exist). Sure there's the bible but that's not proof of God. We can't prove that it's Gods words. It's a book that has been translated and retranslated and copied and copied and probably barely resembles whatever the original text was.
What about people not born in Christian communities? What about people who aren't Christians but do have their own God/s? Do they go to Hell for picking the wrong answer? Why would an all loving, all forgiving God even tolerate the exsistence of hell let alone send people there?
My mother accuses me of seeing the world in black & white which I think is bizzare. i think it is her as a (hardcore) Christian that is close minded, she can't see beyond God. I have a pretty open mind, whereas she only sees God. God loves me she says, well if he loves me that much why can't he love me for who I am? Why does he plan to send me to hell?
I'm sure some Christians will say ''he'll forgive you if you repent of your sins and accept him and he'll save you from hell''. Essentially they're saying if I apologise for not worshipping him and immediatly start worshipping him then he'll forgive me otherwise tough luck you're going to Hell. Why is it so important that I worship him and love him above all things? Why is his love and protection from Hell conditional on my worshipping him?
Then of course there's all that stuff in the bible about slavery being ok and stoning missbehaving children, the treatment of women etc etc.
Then of course there's the Noah flood story where God kills a horrifying amount of living things for mans sins.
I simply don't believe in God (or any other other god, not just the Christian God) but even if it could be proved to me that God existed I wouldn't worship him. For all the above reasons I just couldn't worship such a God with a clear conscience.
