There doesn't have to be parity. But there must be respect for our freedom to choose.
But there is. You can choose however you like; for, or against, God, you have the freedom to choose either option.
Right. But negative consequences that are a result of bad choices, like purposely running into a cop car, are understandable and they don't result in eternal torture. The crime, if you can even call it that, of rejecting Christianity or God, is so wildly over-the-top, that I don't even understand how Christians would desire to worship such a being.
Well, God doesn't see it your way, obviously. And it's His way that matters in His universe. He thinks your defiance of Him and your rejection of His mercy, grace and love extended to you in the sacrifice of His Son is deeply wretched, so much so that it's worthy of eternal separation from Him in hell.
Outside of maybe fear and wanting to avoid this eternal punishment themselves.
No, in becoming one of God's children, I have found purpose, meaning and joy, not onerous repression and bitter sacrifice. In fact, there is freedom - freedom to be what God always intended I should be. Apart from Him, each human creature God has made is like a hammer used to sew clothing, or a saxophone used to paddle a canoe. They aren't fit-for-purpose but acting contrary to their design and getting very poor results as a consequence. When, though, we come under our Creator's will and way, living according to the purpose for which He made us, we find fulfillment and liberty. This has been my experience.
But is it really love if it's compulsory?
It's not compulsory - as the billions of non-Christians in the world demonstrate. If a person wants to live their own way, God gives them the freedom to do so. But just as He has instituted the law of gravity, and entropy, and the laws governing motion, and so on, He has instituted the law of sin and death. If you contravene the law of gravity and leap from a high cliff without a safe means of descent, you'll pancake fatally on the ground below. If you drive your car at a high rate of speed into a massive, concrete bridge pier, you'll probably kill yourself. If you start a campfire on the living room floor of your house, you'll likely burn your house down. And so on. How is God unjust, how is He cruel, to have so ordained things such that you must choose either to not leap from the cliff and stay alive, or jump off of it and die? Who thinks God has been unfair in establishing the laws of motion such that driving your car at sixty miles an hour into a bridge pier will result in your injury or death? Objecting to such either-or states-of-affairs is to object to one of the most common conditions of life.
If a husband tells his wife that she must obey him or be physically punished, and that she also must love him with all her heart, is that really a loving relationship? I think not.
We will always come to faulty conclusions about God and our relationship to Him by extrapolating from our frame of reference to His. God isn't another human being; He certainly isn't our spouse. God occupies a singular place among all that is, He is in a category all by Himself and this means He possesses unique prerogatives, like establishing the physical nature of the universe He's made, determining what stars will go supernova and when, appointing the size and position of every Black Hole, dictating to us what is right and wrong morally, deciding the length of our lives, setting before us all the either-or choices that we must navigate every day, and so on.
Anyway, God doesn't just demand our love in a vacuum of reason for our love. He has loved us before we ever thought to love Him, sending His only Son to die on our behalf, providing rescue from the consequences of our sinful rebellion. It is in this context of love, mercy, and grace and in view of God's unique divine prerogatives that He commands our obedience. He is, then, nothing like a husband just arbitrarily demanding obedience and love from his wife with threats of punishment.
The difference is, if you decide to run the red light, no one is forcing you to do it, number one.
God doesn't force our obedience to His commands any more than He forces us to obey the stop light. In both cases, though, there are negative consequences for disobedience. This is just in the nature of human existence, however, not some unusual and cruel coercive setup by God.
Number two, the consequences in doing so, should you survive, don't involve the authorities torturing you for eternity.
Only God has the right to exact such punishment from us. He is the infinite Creator, possessing the unique right to set laws and punishments in the universe He has made and sustains moment-by-moment.
These choices that God is offering humanity, are choices that are being made under duress.
Well, if by "duress" you mean "carrying consequences," then, yes. But all our choices do. Even for God, His choices produce unavoidable consequences. But God does not force anyone to accept His will and way, though we are all in His universe, created and sustained by Him at every moment. No, we can go our own way, but, like any course we choose, there are corresponding consequences.
No one wants to be tortured forever. So even if they don't actually believe in the resurrection or whatever, they go along with it, in the hope that they'll somehow avoid the never ending punishment.
No one is tortured forever in hell. They are tormented, but this is not the same thing as being tortured. One can be tormented though entirely alone, the content of one's own thoughts driving one to despair, and delusion, and darkness. When I consider what the Bible actually says about hell, this is the primary torment of it.
God has every right to exact whatever punishment He deems appropriate from all those whom He has made and who depend entirely upon Him at every moment for their existence but who have raised their fist in defiance of Him, despising His law and declaring themselves their own god. There's only one God and He's it. We're in His universe. And He knows best.
When we pretend to equality to God, when we presume to judge Him and set ourselves over Him, when we ignore Him and His law and do as we please, we display incredible arrogance and self-importance and a profoundly shrunken and false view of God. We also set ourselves on a collision course with our Maker. No one wins this contest of wills against God. He's God, after all. We submit to the purposes for which He made us and live, or we follow our own will and way and die. God does not apologize for this choice He sets before us. Again, He can - and will - do as He pleases in the universe He made and sustains.
I addressed this above. It's no different than the abusive husband that hurts his wife, blames her for it, and then demands that she love him. It's the textbook definition of an abusive relationship.
Nope. See above.
And how did the authors of the bible know this? Did they go to hell and see it for themselves before writing it down?
Did Dante? I trust the Bible that bears the stamp of the divine upon it before and above the fanciful writings of Dante.
Thankfully there's no evidence for any of these claims.
Well, you can tell yourself this sort of silliness. But doing so doesn't make it true.
www.reasonablefaith.org
www.crossexamined.org
www.johnlennox.org
www.coldcasechristianity.com
www.str.org
No. I neither love it nor hate it, because I don't believe sin exists.
No, you love sin. It's evident in everything you write. But, apart from God, you cannot be any other way.
This is God being a cosmic dictator.
And this is a silly, atheistic Strawman of the God revealed in the Bible.
