 I think I'd rather be in hell with the gays than be in heaven with the people who are judgmental. And I know that's harsh. I know that's intense. And if I say it to a Christian, they're like, oh my God, are you serious? You'd rather be with that than with God? Yeah, I would because at the end of the day, I don't believe in a God that is like that. Do you know how to respond to some of the most common objections against Christianity? Now, you're probably not going to run into Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, but you are going to have conversations with your unbelieving friends, family members, and strangers on the street. So in today's video, I'm going to be responding to Danny Simreli. You might know her from being a part of the band Simreli, a popular YouTube channel. You see, at one point, Danny claimed to be Catholic, but in recent years, it seems she's fallen into some kind of agnosticism. Now she's voicing her questions online. My intention here is not to try to dunk on Danny, but rather genuinely answer these questions in a way that I believe the Bible lays out. Do you think God is loving if he sends people to hell? Again, this is my opinion. Don't know if it's the fact, it's just my thoughts, okay? I believe that there is an afterlife of some kind. I don't know if it's what people think it is or what it is in the movies. I don't really know if there's heaven and hell because my issue is I don't fully believe in the Bible. So I'm not going to go based off what the Bible says because there's so much in the Bible that is either incorrect or has been changed, altered, or people just gloss over it like it doesn't matter. My question to Danny and people that say this about the Bible is how do you know that? I think too often we're too quick to grant somebody's presuppositions without actually digging into why they believe what they believe. People say that the Bible has mistakes in it and that it's been mistranslated, but seriously show me in the Bible where these things are. Where has it been changed? What did it used to say? Where are these supposed mistakes? Isaac, what you don't understand is that the church manipulated and twisted and changed the Bible in order to control the population. Okay, interesting point, but Robert Plummer has some helpful insight on this. The canon is not an authorized collection of writings in that the church conferred its authority or approval upon a list of books. Rather, the canon is a collection of authoritative writings that have inherent authority as works uniquely inspired by God. It wasn't as if a bunch of people got together and decided that the books within the Bible had authority. They were already authoritative sources and testimonies of God's work. People just gloss over it like it doesn't matter and my issue with the Bible and people referring back to that to find truth is that people will refer to certain verses and be like, oh, the Bible says this so it must be true because the Bible is 100% true, but then they're completely disregarding a bunch of other verses in the Bible and I'll pull them up to them and be like, what about this? What about the fact that the Bible says that you shouldn't wear pants or that you shouldn't eat shellfish or all this crazy stuff that the Bible says? And people will be like, oh, no, that's outdated. That's obviously not what God wanted for us nowadays. So you can decide or sorry, I'm holding a pencil. Some people can decide what's outdated and what's not, but other people can't. I can't look at the Bible and use my best judgment and say, I think that this is outdated, stuff about gay people or whatever or marriage, but then you can look at some verse and be like, no, that's outdated. I know it is, but this one is, that's my issue with the Bible and with a lot of really intense Christians. I know that not all Christians think that, but sometimes they act like it, so it kind of sucks. Believe it or not, I actually agree with Danny in this area. If we're going to understand the Bible as the Word of God, it's important that we not gloss over verses just because we find them confusing or they're hard to address. Too often I see Christians just like Danny said who say, oh, it's not relevant for us today or we don't do that stuff anymore, really give no further explanation on why that's the case. It gives people the idea that we just kind of pick and choose what's relevant for us today and what's not, but it's important that we keep in mind though that all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So God is trying to teach us through his scriptures, but the question is, what is he trying to teach us? Let's get specific about a scripture here. Leviticus 19, 19, you shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear garments, garment clothes made of two kinds of material. Fabrics, you're not allowed mixed fabrics. Why are you allowed to wear that shirt right now? I'm sure that's a mixed fabric. You're a hypocrite Christian. How can you do this to us? You're a fraud. And it's like, okay, well actually look at the context of this verse. On the surface, God's command here seemed kind of arbitrary, but what is he trying to teach the Israelites through this command? And also, why don't we hold to this today as Christians? Is this a case of Christians picking and choosing, like Danny says? Well, let's get a little bit of an overview here. Biblical scholars understand that there's three kinds of laws in the Old Testament. There's moral, there's ceremonial, and there's civil. We're going to talk about the moral laws in a second because those are extremely relevant to us, but it's important that we recognize that this is not a moral law. So if it's not a moral law, what's going on here? Well, I've heard two explanations and perspectives on this. So let's dive in. The first explanation is that the Israelites are surrounding by neighboring tribes and God wanted the Israelites to be set apart from those pagan cultures, right? They worship different gods. Israel is set apart for God. That's a huge theme in the Old Testament. So this was one of the things that he wanted them to do or not do in order to set themselves apart. You're not like all the other nations. You're different. So the second understanding is that the high priest was the only one who was allowed to wear garments of mixed fabric, so wool and dyed linen, to show that they were set apart for God. So there was a distinction here. So either way, you kind of see it, whether it was the pagan nations were doing intermixing of clothing or it was the priest and so the regular kind of people, they couldn't do it because it was set apartness. And maybe both those things were true. I'm not exactly sure. Either way, it was this idea of being set apart for God. And that was a whole thing for the Israelites. A lot of the laws in the Old Testament is like, hey, I want you to be different from the other nations around. They weren't necessarily moral laws. They were more civil or ceremonial laws. When you're looking at the Torah or the books of law in the Bible, make it your mission to try to identify where God's talking about moral laws or civil laws or ceremonial laws. Because you think about it, God's moral law doesn't change because he doesn't change. Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. You can see an example of Jesus expounding on this law when he said, you have heard it said of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, if you look at a woman with lust, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart. Jesus is referencing moral law that the Jewish people are familiar with. Part of the 10 commandments, right? You shall not commit adultery. Jesus said, oh, no, that's not relevant for us today. You know, we're in a different culture. No, God's morality doesn't change because it's based on his character that doesn't change. To get back to the original question, I don't know what the basis should be for like talking about hell and heaven or whatever, because if I'm not going to go off the Bible, I don't know what the hell I'm going to go off of. And that is the issue with religion as a whole. My issue is that people are humans, right? Nobody's God. Nobody has a better authority to judge anything because we're all people, right? And so everything is just like people's opinions that they've kind of twisted and interpreted and whatever. And you kind of just have to believe whatever you want to believe. I want to challenge Danny on this. Are you sure nobody knows better? We're just all out here with our opinions and there's no actual foundation for what we can know of truth or right or wrong. Just kind of, you know, whatever you think that's cool with you, this kind of moral relativism. And I've heard people say this before, but you think a little bit deeper. Think of the cultures throughout the centuries or even World War Two Germany, right? They were doing terrible atrocities within their borders and most people would say, yeah, that was wrong. But at the time, that's what that specific group of people believed was right. So now according to people that buy into a moral relativism or subjective morality, you just have two different opinions battling against each other and nobody's really right. Nobody's really wrong. Like who knows? But very, very few people would say that those who commit terrible atrocities throughout the centuries are were valid in their thinking. They know it was wrong. The reason is because our conscience testifies to us what is right and wrong. I will put my law within them and they will write it on their hearts and I will be their guide and they shall be my people. So we're not just out here fending for ourselves. There is a right and wrong. It's not just up to subjective opinion, but that's for morality. Where do we get truth? Even when somebody asks that question, we need to dig a little bit deeper within their presuppositions. This is going to be hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot. So truth isn't material. It's not something that you can grab. It's not something you can taste. It's not something you can really test for. The idea of something being right or wrong really is foundationed on the idea that there is some sort of objective standard of truth or falsehood. But in a secular atheistic worldview where we're just stardust bumping into stardust, in that worldview, there is no objective standard for truth or falsehood or even language around that because we're just evolved animals. We're just chemical reactions. I love Douglas Wilson's input on this. He talks about having a debate between two pop cans, two chemical reactions. He opens them both and says who's winning? It doesn't make any sense, but those are two chemical reactions occurring. That's all humans are according to an atheistic secular worldview. We're just chemical reactions. There is no real truth in that worldview. Okay, but most people aren't consistent. They recognize that there is some foundation of truth, whether that be found in God or something else. They know that something is right and something is wrong and they want to seek that, which is great. Okay, so back to the question. How do we know the Bible is true? The first thing is that the Bible is self authenticating. You look at it. Hundreds of prophecies written hundreds of years before they actually took place, but they are fulfilled. How amazing is that? That's crazy, right? Eyewitness accounts that actually were there, wrote down what they saw. We're not just talking about hearsay or we're not just talking about a guy like Mormonism, Joseph Smith, you know, he had the vision and then he wrote down all this stuff and we're just supposed to believe him. No, like the Bible's eyewitness accounts of things that actually happened, you know, put down on paper and passed down through the generations. These were 40 plus authors over thousands of years inspired by God to write a cohesive overarching narrative of God's redemptive plan for the world and they reference each other and they affirm each other. That's just a few reasons I believe that the Bible is authoritative when saying what is true. The word of God is not God speaking to us. It's a book that a bunch of humans wrote a really long time ago that people have manipulated and interpreted and translated into different things. So you just, I don't understand how people can take that as fact. My issue, and haven't even talked about hell yet, but my issue is that people will read the Bible so intensely, just like blindly, and they'll gloss over these weird verses and like weird ass stories and disregard those things, but then regard other things as the highest truth. And like, this is the most beautiful, amazing, perfect book ever. And I'm not saying it's entirely wrong because again, these are just my opinions and I'm just like figuring this out for myself. But I like can't just willingly like, yeah, this sounds right to the Bible when I don't understand half of it. And also the parts that I do understand a lot of it. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, okay, so we already touched on the reliability of the scriptures and why we believe it. But I can totally understand her point about coming across these insane stories and not really sure what to make of it. I think it's important to realize that everything in the Bible isn't prescriptive, meaning it's telling us what we should do. A lot of it is descriptive and recounting history. It's not like we should kill a bunch of Philistines with the donkey jaw. Like that's not what it's asking us to do. We need to see it as descriptive of what happened. But ultimately, even those stories are designed to lead us back to the fulfillment of the Old Testament, who is Jesus. She says she doesn't understand the Bible, and I've heard this before too. It's like, you try to open the Bible and you don't understand it. It's like, where do I even begin? For her, I definitely recommend the Matthew Henry commentary. It's free online. I want to recommend that to everybody that's interested in getting a little bit deeper in the word and understand what's going on. But there's something deeper at play here. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. The Bible looks like foolishness to the unbeliever. It doesn't make sense when they see miracles in the Bible. They question, this just doesn't make any sense. And the Bible speaks to this too. The person without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolishness and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. Now, I admit the supernatural works in the Bible do seem unbelievable, especially to somebody that only believes in the natural world. In a materialistic worldview, miracles make no sense. If you only believe what you can taste, touch, see, grasp, test, you will forever reject the claims of the Bible. But similar to what we talked about a little bit earlier, you're also forced to reject non-material things like truth, logic, and love. Those are things you can't grasp in your hands. Those things aren't in the natural material world. You can't taste, touch, test for those things. This testifies to us that there is something beyond the natural world, God. He is outside of time and space, and it would make sense that he would have the ability to perform supernatural works. Like healings, the virgin birth, the talking donkey, you know, creating the world in six days. This is no trouble for the God of the universe. So here's the thing, the miracles in the Bible do seem unbelievable, but if you believe that we evolved out of primordial ooze over billions of years and evolved from animals to where we are today, you're not really against believing unbelievable stories. The way that I kind of base my beliefs in God is based on Jesus, and so I don't see how a God, if he is reflective of that or what I think about God, I don't see how he could send people to hell specifically for not believing in him because that just doesn't make sense. Like if you genuinely love someone and A, this is the biggest one, they didn't grow up with you. So like if someone grew up in a different country under a different religion, it's not their fault in the slightest that they don't believe in God or that they're not a Christian. God's gonna send them to hell for that, makes no sense. Second of all, if someone was hurt by religion or Christianity, if someone used their brain that God created and the thoughts that they came up with by their own free will to say, I don't really know if I believe in this. And so then God sends them to hell, that doesn't make sense to me at all. Next part, if somebody sins a lot in their life, whatever a sin is described as, then they're going to hell. It's like, I don't really understand what the basis for hell is supposed to be. Interestingly enough, I actually encountered this exact same question at the YMCA eight years ago. I used to play floor hockey there and after the game, I would head into the locker room and catch up on some sports center. I noticed this elderly fellow that read the paper there every morning. It took me a couple of weeks and a lot of trepidation, but I finally worked up the courage to try to share the gospel with him. And as we were kind of going through what the Bible says about our sin and judgment and death and hell, it got to that point where he just couldn't understand the fact that God would send people to hell. He couldn't wrap his mind around them. But here's the answer. On numerous occasions, the Bible describes Jesus as a judge and the one who executes judgment. But it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. We recognize that a good judge should execute justice. And this doesn't mean just letting people go off the hook for free. He doesn't take bribes. He doesn't let a murderer go just because he walked a couple old ladies across the street. That wouldn't be good. That wouldn't be just. We recognize that for a human judge, but now let's apply that to God. If God is a good judge, he has to punish sin. He can't simply let us go because we're trying to fix up our lives or be better people. We have to pay for that sin, for that crime. I get what you're saying, but what doesn't make sense is hell is not proportional to the sin that we commit. It's like I might steal something from a store like a candy bar or something or tell a white lie once every once in a while. But does that really mean that I deserve to go to hell for all eternity? It just seems extreme. Okay, well, fair point. Let me address it here. Tony Miano, one of my favorite street evangelists, shared this great analogy that gives us insight into why this is the case. Imagine I would lie to my younger brother. Nothing would really happen. Probably nobody would even find out about it. He might be frustrated at me, but he can't do anything to me. You know, no big deal. If I were to lie to my parents, especially when I was a younger teenager, I might get in trouble. I might get grounded. I might get my phone taken away or something like that. If I were to lie to a police officer, that would be a big deal. I would be in trouble for that. If I were to lie to a judge, I would be committing perjury and could be put in jail. The crime I committed was a lie each time, but what changed was who I committed the crime or the lie against. The problem is most of us, we don't see that because we always compare ourselves to the guy next to us, our neighbor. Oh, I'm better than Craig down the street. He's not good. He cheated on his wife. I'm such a nice guy compared to him. It's like, why do we keep comparing ourselves to other people? That's not who we should be comparing ourselves to. When we compare ourselves to God, we fall infinitely short each and every time. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Sin leads to death, but through Christ redemption, we can find eternal life. Jesus bore the wrath that we deserved when he died on the cross and he defeated sin and death when he rose again on the third day that we could find forgiveness, redemption and new life in him, eternal life. I don't really know if it's a real place. I don't know if it's a real thing. I hope it's not. And I've always kind of stood by the fact that if hell is what it says in the Bible and if God sends all the gays and all the trans people and all the sinners and everybody to hell, but then he brings all the perfect people who never sin and who believe in the Bible and uphold it in the way that a lot of, not a lot, not all, a lot of Christians do, then I would rather go to hell than go to heaven. Like I don't really want to be up in heaven with all the people who are like, I love you. I just don't agree with your lifestyle to all the gay people. I think I'd rather be in hell with the gays than be in heaven with the people who are judgmental. And I know that's harsh. I know that's intense. And if I say that to Christians, they're like, Oh my God, are you sure you'd rather be with that than with God? Yeah, I would because at the end of the day, I don't believe in a God that is like that. And I don't believe in a God that would send a little Buddhist kid to hell for being Buddhist. That makes literally no sense. There are two huge misconceptions here. The first one we already talked about, it's not good people that go to heaven because no one is good. No one does what is right. No one seeks for God. We are all sinful and depraved and we need Jesus in order to be saved in order to go to heaven. So it's not just all like hoity-toity, you know, prideful people in heaven. No, the Bible actually says in James that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The second problem with this and misconception about identity really is that she identifies people, she defines people by their sexual desires. But I don't believe your sexual desires need to be who you are. So do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the immoral nor the idolaters knew the adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality. And it goes on to say will inherit the kingdom of God. So they will not inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. The Bible doesn't just call out one sin, it calls out all sin. And Jesus calls us to repentance and faith in him, where he gives us a new identity that's not defined by who we once were or our fleshly desires or the things that the Bible defines as sinful desires, but rather we find a new identity in being a child of God and following him. Danny, if you're watching this video, I just want to say thank you for sharing your thoughts and your questions. Thank you for feeling vulnerable enough on YouTube to share these things because I think it's important that we vocalize where we're at in our walk or our faith or what we believe about Christianity, these spiritual things. People are hungry for these conversations and I'm just excited to be a part of it. It's my mission to share biblical truth in love to help you follow Jesus daily. If you want to subscribe to my channel, I put out new videos every single week and thank you to everyone on Patreon that makes what I do possible. It is because of your guys support that I can continue to make this content. So thank you so much. It is my life's passion. It is my mission. So thank you guys. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.