[metmom]

Why would man hinder himself from grace? If one is face with a choice between heaven and hell, unfetter by everything around him so that he is capable of making a rational decision between going the heaven or going to hell, then why would they choose hell? Personally, I don't know of anyone who sat down and "rationally" decided one way or the other.

If people were staring hell in the face as it were, I doubt anyone would choose it. But people have been convinced or have convinced themselves that not only is hell not real, but for the most part, that the supernatural isn't real. Or at least God. Many still believe in magic and forces, etc.

People have been deceived about what they're really rejecting and accepting, and choosing.

That's why they resist grace, because they don't really realize the full consequences of their decision.

Rationalizing has nothing to do with it anyway.

[betty boop]

If people were staring hell in the face as it were, I doubt anyone would choose it. But people have been convinced or have convinced themselves that not only is hell not real, but for the most part, that the supernatural isn't real. Or at least God.... That's why they resist grace, because they don't really realize the full consequences of their decision.

A couple of thoughts on points raised, dear brother HarleyD, and dear sister metmom:

(1) Hell is very, very real. And we humans make it for ourselves, both in this world and especially in the next.

(2) Folks might want to reject all and everything pertaining to the "supernatural" (as they define it, a slippery slope right there...).

(3) BUT — you can do that all day long until you're blue in the face, but you will never be able to "prove" that the "natural" does not have a "supernatural" origin.

(4) And if you look to the history of the human race, to the perennial wisdom about the human condition and human relations to the natural and social orders of human experience, captured over seven millennia by now, by my count — and everybody is still asking the same questions after all this time!!! — one surmises that the universal human record, at least in the cultural West, attests to a supernatural cause of the natural, visible world.

(5) This cultural understanding is no longer taught in the "progressive" public schools. Leave that for another time, if ever. Suffice it to say "Public Education" has totally succeeded at making the public stupid, ignorant of their own living past, their traditions and — may I daresay? — their living Constitution? All the same....

(5) The only way God can't "get through to you" is if "you don't let Him."

I gather this is the essential point of human free will: One must choose — to either "let" Him, or "refuse" Him.

'Cause we can't get there — to truth, to eternal life — absent personal witness of the Glory of God (which we were made for, in His image, in the beginning.

Yet we ourselves, by our own merits or resources, cannot ever "bridge the chasm" between mortality and immortality without the full, humble acknowledgement of our total, personal dependence on the Sacrifice of Christ, without welcoming the Holy Spirit of God to abide with us, to light the path set before us....

Living in the law and righteousness of God was the "once for all" divine opportunity that Adam failed to live up to.... That failure indelibly marks our soul with a stain that cannot ever be removed by our own efforts; such cannot happen other than by a confession of faith to our Savior, Lord Jesus Christ — to "take His yoke upon us, and learn from Him."

Who also just happens to the the divine Word of the beginning, the Logos, Son of God, Alpha to Omega.

I stand in witness thereto.

And now I will put a sock in it....

God bless you, dear metmom and anyone else who is reading these lines!

Dear metmom, sister in Christ — thank you ever so much for your splendid, evocative essay/post!

[HarleyD]

If people were staring hell in the face as it were, I doubt anyone would choose it....People have been deceived about what they're really rejecting and accepting, and choosing.

BINGO!!! EXACTLY!!!

Oba_1:3 The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, "Who will bring me down to the ground?"

Deception is pride in our hearts. It isn't an external force but an internal one. We can't say, "The devil made me do it." It is our condition-our choice. And even after God opens our eyes and ears, we are constantly warned not to be deceived. It lurks within us.

Rationalizing has nothing to do with it

If people have been deceived, then we cannot rationalize between heaven and hell, we cannot make a clear decision. We cannot rationally choose simply because of ourselves.