God is sovereign over it. God created the Lake of Fire, God sentences people and angels to it. It is His decision and He is responsible for it. You want to dismiss God's role and sovereignty in these things to make God seem kinder and gentler, I get it.
But it's not accurate.
It seems cruel from our vantage point here, but God is right to do it.
I'm not interested in dismissing God's "role" as Sovereign and Judge.
I do think, however, that ascribing to God what we only experience in this world as sadism and psychopathy is deeply disturbing. Which is why I don't think your reading of Scripture and interpretation of God's character is, in fact, biblical or consistent with the Christian Confession.
There are three perspectives on Hell that I reject:
1) I reject the idea that the wicked are obliterated or annihilated in Hell.
2) I reject the idea that everyone
will, in the end, be saved.
3) I reject the idea that God tortures people in endless torment forever in Hell.
It is, of course, possible to find isolated passages of Scripture which many use to defend each of these three views. But I'd argue to do so requires taking some passages at the expense of others. In other words, cherry-picking Scripture.
The subject of Hell is difficult. And it's why there has never been a definitive dogmatic position in the Christian Church. Dogmatically the most the Church, historically has said, is that there is indeed Judgment, and the wicked shall experience Hell. Different denominations and traditions may offer more input than that in different ways. For example the Lutheran Confessions reject a view held among some Anabaptist sects of the 16th century that there is a certain and definitive end to Hell. Which is why, generally speaking, Lutherans, especially Confessional Lutherans, reject the dogmatic position of Universalism.
The Lutheran Confessions, also, however, are clear in their rejection of two other doctrines:
1) We reject the idea that God chooses some to be damned, thereby rejecting what is commonly called "Double Predestination"; and explicitly teaching that predestination and election are about comfort for the faithful--that God having chosen us in Christ is about His goodness, grace, and kindness toward us sinners.
2) We reject the idea that salvation is a work of human liberatarian free will, wherein each person can through the exercising of their own strength, ability, or power arrive to a place of faith, turning to God, and thereby convert him or herself. This, we argue, is impossible; for human beings under the total slavery of sin are unable to come to God, to believe upon Christ, or to do any eternal good. It is, therefore, by Grace alone, on Christ's account alone, that through the very Gospel itself the Holy Spirit works faith into the hearts of the faithless, and out of God's gracious choice to save us, having predestined us and elected us in Christ, that we are thereby saved--out of God's own loving-kindness toward us sinners who are entirely lost and dead in our sins.
These two ideas, together, is what leads to what Lutherans to refer to the Crux Theologorum, or "Theologian's Cross", which can be summed up in the question, "Why some, but not others?". If God has chosen us in Christ, and if God desires that all be saved, and if God does not will that anyone to be damned (and, therefore, chooses
none to be damned), and it is by God's own power and grace that He converts us through the Gospel by the Holy Spirit giving us faith. Then why some and not others? Why are some, in the end, not saved?
Is it because God has in His sovereignly passed over them and chosen them for damnation? Answer: No. God desires that all be saved. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that whoever trusts in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For Christ died for all, having died the death of all men, tasting death for all. For Christ has justified all, by His obedience. Etc.
Is it because some choose to believe and others choose not to believe? Answer: No. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none who seeks God, none who understand, it is impossible to confess Jesus Christ as Lord without the Holy Spirit. We did not choose Him, He chose us.
So, then, why some and not others?
And the answer to this, the only answer we can give, is because ultimately and finally, fully and completely, there are those who choose Hell. God is not a sadist who tortures people for eternity for having happened to won some cosmic lottery. Rather, there simply are those who bitterly, truly, and completely want themselves and want nothing to do with God--and Hell is the name we give to that total rejection.
-CryptoLutheran
