Jeff, You said "God will allow them to suffer the publicly known and readily understandable consequences of their own freely made life choices." This is ambiguous at best. If you're talking about smokers getting emphezyma(sp?) then that is both publicly known and readily understandable. It also applies to Christians and non-christians alike, and is therefore not applicable to our discussion. If, however, you're talking about eternal punishment (which I sincerely hope you are, as it was the crux of my position), that is most definitely not publicly known and is only understandable in theory (to me at least). Let me clarify. It is not publicly known because you cannot prove it. You take it on faith. And the point about it only being understandable in theory was the gist of my last post. I needn't reiterate that, but I do have to say that I'm not entirely sure you got what I was saying. At the very least you didn't really address it. My take on your debtor analogy would go something like this: You owe an absurd amount of money to someone, let's say 20 million dollars. Out of the goodness of my heart I go to your lender and offer to pay him off...with monopoly money. Please understand that I'm not making light of Jesus. What I'm saying is that if the penalty for my sin is eternal punishment, then if Jesus paid it He'd have to be eternally punished. But no Christian I've ever spoken to actually believes that. Either unbelievers are not eternally punished, or Jesus Christ did not get the job done. You can't have it both ways.
Re: If we reject God's forgiveness we die physically and spiritually?
You said
"God will allow them to suffer the publicly known and readily understandable consequences of their own freely made life choices."
This is ambiguous at best. If you're talking about smokers getting emphezyma(sp?) then that is both publicly known and readily understandable. It also applies to Christians and non-christians alike, and is therefore not applicable to our discussion. If, however, you're talking about eternal punishment (which I sincerely hope you are, as it was the crux of my position), that is most definitely not publicly known and is only understandable in theory (to me at least). Let me clarify. It is not publicly known because you cannot prove it. You take it on faith. And the point about it only being understandable in theory was the gist of my last post. I needn't reiterate that, but I do have to say that I'm not entirely sure you got what I was saying. At the very least you didn't really address it. My take on your debtor analogy would go something like this: You owe an absurd amount of money to someone, let's say 20 million dollars. Out of the goodness of my heart I go to your lender and offer to pay him off...with monopoly money. Please understand that I'm not making light of Jesus. What I'm saying is that if the penalty for my sin is eternal punishment, then if Jesus paid it He'd have to be eternally punished. But no Christian I've ever spoken to actually believes that. Either unbelievers are not eternally punished, or Jesus Christ did not get the job done. You can't have it both ways.
Darryl