This question the OP posed is what spawned my long fading exodus. My logic could not come to terms with a Father dispensing judgement on children. As a child, I too remember seeing those vivid Armageddon illustrations. I remember having many end-of-the-world nightmares, waking up in total fear. It took me a few years to deprogram. I started thinking for myself and it helped me to have a child and know what lengths you will go through for your children as a parent. So as Hermes said, as above so below, and that helped me realize what we have been taught could not be true, and I rationalized if it was, I was not interested in living in that world. So, it was a moot point for me.
From the bible we are to believe that these intelligent beings, the Gods, who created us in their image, that instilled our parental, and maternal nurturing, and loving persona, that has ensured the survival of our offspring for millennia, would act any less for his human family. Could I really believe in my heart that God wants to lose any of his children, and that he would not go to great lengths to redeem them? Or was I to continue to believe that the Hebrew god, who murdered innocent children is the same creator? He put to death all the Egyptian first-born sons, turned on Moses his faithful instrument, and would have put him to death for refusing to circumcise his son, or the Hebrew god who ordered Saul and the Israelites to slaughter the Amalekites. “…in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you.” Were these not his children too? But we are going to just dismiss this, and make an excuse that he is god and can do anything he chooses with his creation, or perhaps we reason that these children would grow up as their parents, as enemies of the Lord and therefor god in all his wisdom was justified in taking their lives? I am sorry, I cannot concede either as a rational explanation for a being that is so intelligent to have created the cosmos and all that is in it. This Hebrew god sounds more like a lesser god, a power hungry vengeful, and jealous god, and less of divine origin, or one capable of infallible righteousness and love. Further, how can we argue that we have free will and that our lives are not pre-destined if we are condemned before we have a chance to live out our lives? If we are incapable of change, then why are we going through this agony to begin with?
Gustave Deor, The Deluge
We are reminded of our compassion when we look at the work of Gustave Deor, The Deluge. Seeing the tiger clinging to this vestige of life on the last peaks of land holding its cub on high. The children hoisted by their parents to save their lives; whose agonizing last thoughts of despair matched the black of the starless night sky. The artist’s image captures an emotion of hopelessness, despair, and awakens our compassion for these lost souls. The souls that we would just relegate to collateral damage. If these actions seem incongruent with our reasoning as god’s children, created in their image, then I argue that there must be another explanation.
The notion of worship or obedience through fear of death, hell or whatever torture we want to invent, or reward of heaven or everlasting life is flawed as well. Every good parent knows this.
But at the end of the day, why does any of this matter? Because I want to know that humanity has hope, above man’s own fallible means. I want to know that the intelligent beings that created this universe, our earth, and all the living creatures on it, would not let violence, death, suffering, pain, and all the combined worlds’ atrocities to continue without a plan.