Petition calls for banning the Bible in response to GTA ban.

A recent Cnet article entitled "Grand Theft Auto fans push for ban on the Bible", details Kmart and Target stores in Australia banning Grand Theft Auto V, in part due to an online petition that calls for the withdraw of GTA:V because of it's violence towards women. This petition has gathered 48,000 plus supporters as of this writing. A counter-petition was then created to ban the Holy Bible, which the petition claims "encourages readers to commit sexual violence and kill women". As of this writing this counter-petition has garnered 52,000 plus supporters. This petition states in part:

It's a book that encourages readers to murder women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'god' points – and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking.

This is The Holy Bible. This book means that after various sex acts, readers are given options to kill women by stoning her unconscious, Setting them on fire, cutting off their hands, and killing their children!

One of many fan passages on In The Holy Bible depicts woman being set alight for having sex "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." (Leviticus 21:9).

Obviously the counter-petition was created by fans of GTA who were not happy about the petition and subsequent ban, so in a sardonic way they they compare the treatment of women in the Bible with violence in GTA. I'm going to assume this was done tongue-in-cheek otherwise they would not be playing a game that allows them to do the very things they accuse the Bible of doing. And I'll get to those accusations in a moment, but first I ask why did they feel the need to support GTA by attacking the Bible? What does one have to do with the other? And if there going to be fair why don't they attack the Koran for the very same things? Wait, I know the answer to that already. On to the accusations...

Often we look at history from a 21st century perspective. We try to judge ancient societies through the lens of modern day ethics, but we forget it took us thousands of years to get where we are at now. Change didn't happen over night. The ancient world was a vastly different world where violence was the norm, life was cheap, and women were treated as second class citizens. Incidentally it is Christianity that is a credited for setting the current bar for morality, including raising the social status of women.

The main gripe is toward the treatment of women under Levtical Law, so there needs to be some understanding of the Levitcal Law and it's purpose. These were Laws that the Jews during that time adhered too. They were meant for the Jews and the Jews alone, and yes some of them were harsh but they themselves chose to live under them on many occasions (Exo 24:7). They had civil laws that were based on morality and carried corporal punishments if they were not followed. In that regard they are not much different from laws we have today, for example murder carries the death penalty or life in prison. It is no different from the laws of any society that are intended to keep society in order. Most of the commentary I've seen regarding Leviticus 21:9 indicate they were not likely burned alive with fire but burned after death, tho it's a possibility "burnt by fire" could imply some sort of branding. In any case Christians have never followed the Levtical Laws and Orthodox Jews aren't stoning or burning people nowadays either, so it's really a poor argument.

The charge that people use the Bible an excuse for violence against women is just ludicrous. I can't think of one instance of that ever happening. Those women murdered in the adult industry were not likely murdered because of the Bible as is implied. They were likely killed because the adult industry is a seedy world to begin with. He claims "It is fuelling the epidemic of violence experienced by so many girls and women in Australia - and globally.", yet offers no examples... because there is none. People aren't carrying out acts of violence in the name of the Bible, but there is another religious book that people do use to carry out acts of violence, which no mention is made of.

On a final note, the Cnet articles makes a statement that is widely believed but wrong:

The GTA V's supporters might choose to add of their anti-Bible stance that more people have been killed in the name of religion than in any other name.

Actually governments have killed more people than religion ever has.  It's estimated 160 million were killed from wars and despotism in the 20th century alone. According to Philip and Axlerod's three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, of the 1,763 wars that have been waged over human history only 123 (6.98%) have been religious in nature.

The decline of morality then and now, and the importance of Christianity

Given the many parallels between ancient Rome and the United States, the one that resonates the most with me is the decline of morality of both. In his book "How Christianity Changed the World" by Alvin J. Schmidt, he documents the morals, or lack thereof, of the pagan world prior to Christianity. His focus is primarily on the Greeks and Romans, though these pagan "values" were virtually universal in every culture on earth. It's also a glimpse of where we are headed as Christianity continues to erode in the West. See if you can spot how close we are to those parallels today.

The British historian Edward Gibbon says in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that the breakdown in sexual morality began after the Punic Wars ended in 146 B.C. People engaged in all sorts of sexual methods, many of them obscene. Sex was openly displayed, there was no such thing as modesty or privacy. This was also true of the Greeks, whose athletes routinely competed in the nude. As one historian has noted, "There was nothing in which they (the Romans) did not indulge or which they thought a disgrace."

This decline was evident in the breakdown of the family. Roman honor and respect for marriage had virtually become extinct. Roman marriages had greatly deteriorated and had become a loose and voluntary compact in which religious and civil rites were no longer essential. Adultery and promiscuity were rampant. A married man could sleep with unmarried women and prostitutes and it was not considered adultery. Women of high-ranking families would ask for their names to be entered among the public prostitutes so they would not be punished for adultery.

Life was cheap in the ancient world, as witnessed by the bloody gladiatorial games. Suicide was  embellished and romanticized and widely practiced on all levels of society. The young were especially vulnerable. Abortion was the norm and accepted by all. Some of the great Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Celsus supported Abortion. Plato argued that it was the prerogative of the city-state to have a woman submit to an abortion so that the state would not become too populous. Aristole concluded that there was a "limit fixed to the procreation of offspring". There was even a guild of abortionists called "The Sagae" who was Rome's version of Planned Parenthood. It's members sold aborted bodies to the manufactures of beauty creams.

Infanticide was also universal among the Greeks and Romans, usually soon after birth. Infants were killed for various reasons. Those who were deformed or physically frail were especially prone to be killed. Roman law dictated that "A dreadfully deformed child shall be killed." Infant girls were also prone to infanticide as males were more prized, as was true in many cultures. So common was infanticide that large families were rare and Polybius blamed the population decline of Ancient Greece to it.

Along with abortion and infanticide, abandoning infants and children was also common. Greek and Roman literature espoused no feelings of guilt about abandoning children, if anything it was romanticized. Clement of Alexandria condemned the Romans for saving and protecting young birds and other creatures while lacking moral compunctions about abandoning their own children. This is becoming true today as the welfare of animals is placed above the welfare of humans.

Roman literature also has numerous references, similiar to Greek writings, showing homosexuality was widespread and common. The term "Lesbian" is actually derived from the Greek Island Lesbos because of Sappho's poetry about woman love. Interestingly enough Greek homosexuality was primarily pederasty or pedophilia. According to Roman poet Martial, young boys were not only sodomized by adult men but also by women. Many archaeological artifacts of Roman relief plates depict man-boy couples. This was not confined to the Roman public, but many Roman Emperors surrounded themselves with young boys including Tiberius, Nero, Galba, Titus, Hadrian, Commodus, Elagabalus, and Carus. Men in ancient societies, whether in Babylon, Assyria, Greece, or Rome, commonly married child brides, often as young as eleven or twelve years of age. It stands to reason that if Christian values and influence continue to deteriorate, the resistance to pederasty will also weaken and decline. It is a little known fact that the North American Man/Boy Love Association used to be affiliated with the LGBT until they distanced themselves from them.

Women have always held second-class status in the ancient world prior to Christianity and in places today were Christianity doesn't have much of a presence. The average Athenian woman had the social status of a slave. Women were seen as property who could not speak unless spoken to and married women were required to wear a veil in public. The Roman Law Patria Potestas gave the man supreme control over his family. He had "full authority to chastise his wife and, in some cases, even to kill her, in the same way as he might chastise or kill his child." This is especially true if they committed adultery. He could even decide who is children would marry.

What I find most interesting is the affect Christianity had on the world in terms of morality. It set the standard for morality bar none. The world hadn't seen anything like it prior. Christian morals and ethics have become so intrinsic in culture that is has become universally accepted even by atheists. Those who argue they don't have to believe in God to be moral people have no idea how much of their morality is actually derived from Christian ethics. As Paul L. Maier puts it, "Any "noble pagan" today recoils, for example, from the thought of killing babies, but "noble pagans" of antiquity prior to Christianity did not so recoil." To illustrate this point a story is told, during World War II on a remote island in the Pacific, an American solider met a native who could read, and the native was carrying a Bible. Upon seeing the Bible, the solider said, "We educated people no longer put much faith in that book." The native, from a tribe of former cannibals replied, "Well, it's good that we do, or you would be eaten by my people today."

Understanding Levitical law

  There is some confusion on how Levitical or Mosiac law relates to Christians. They are often used to accuse Christians of cherry picking the Bible, however such accusations are made out of ignorance. There are 613 Levitical laws that fell into one of three categories: civil, ceremonial, and moral. Civil related to the affairs of government. Ceremonial related to the affairs of the priest, sacrificial laws, dietary laws, cleansing, etc. Moral laws related to sexual sins, stealing, murder, the ten commandments, and so on.

The civil and ceremonial laws were specifically intended for Israel at that time, under the Old Covenant. Some may wonder here why God cared about what His people ate or why sanitation was important. However, these laws did have practical applications. The ceremonial laws taught proper hygiene. In fact, during the middle ages as the black plague was sweeping across Europe, Jews were often less affected specially because their religious faith promoted better hygiene and sanitation. As for the dietary laws, most of what God forbade them to eat was actually unhealthy. The Israelites at this time, of course, had no concept of nutrition. However, God did and it is perfectly reasonable that he would want His chosen people to remain healthy.

Christians have never the Levitical laws, especially the the civil and ceremonial laws. However, we do still observe the moral laws, which is universally binding and still applicable today. If something was morally wrong in the Old Testament, it is still morally wrong in the New Testament. The difference is now we live in an age of grace, and breaking those laws don't come with an automatic death sentence as they did in the Old Testament. However, the wages of sin are still death, that is eternal separation from God.
 
The Levitcal laws were ultimately meant to teach right from wrong. It's been said the laws were given to show the Isralite people that they needed a Messiah, because it was impossible to keep all the laws perfectly. As such, every year an animal sacrifice was needed to atone for the sins of the nation. Jesus being sinless and blameless became the perfect sacrifice and the Levitcal laws became unnecessary.

Understanding Psalm 137:9

Psa 137:8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.
Psa 137:9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

Does Psalm 137:9 support infanticide? Not hardly, context is everything. First a little back story. Psalm 137 takes place during the Jewish exile in Babylon (modern day Iraq). The Babylonians had come against Judah and besieged Jerusalem for eighteen months. The account is detailed in the Book of Lamentations. The siege was so serve that the people were starving to death. Children and infants were dying in the streets (lam 2:11-12, 19, 4:4), and mothers were boiling their babies for food (Lam 2:20, 4:10). The city eventually fell and the Jews were taken captive to Babylon.

Psalm 137 opens with the Jews lamenting what had happened in Jerusalem. They remembered what the Babylonians did to them and their children and wanted vengeance. They also remembered what the prophet Isaiah had prophesied nearly two centuries earlier about the fate of Babylon:

Isa 13:16 Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives violated.
Isa 13:17  See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold.
Isa 13:18 Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants, nor will they look with compassion on children.
Isa 13:19 Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians,will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Jews were rejoicing that the Babylonians would be repaid for what was done to them and their children, but retribution wouldn't come from the Jews but from the Medes. This is exactly what happened. Babylon was captured in one night by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus the Great. Several years later there was a rebellion that was put down by King Darius and the rebels impaled in the city. In 482 B.C. Babylon rebelled again and was destroyed by King Xerxes, fulfilling the words of Isaiah. So Psalm 137:9 is a nod to Isaiah 13:16-19. It doesn't condone infanticide, merely iterates what would happen to the Babylonians by the Medes and Persians.

When was the Book of Daniel written?

Liberal scholars date the Book of Daniel to around 170 BC, because it seems to detail the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BC) so well. However evidence would suggest a later date.

*The Book of Daniel is mentioned in the Septuagint which was written between 300-200 BC.

*Jesus validates the Book of Daniel by calling Daniel a prophet (Mat 25:15; Mar 13:14).

*The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus writes of the Book of Daniel being shown to Alexander the Great around 332 BC.  (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XI, 337 [viii, 5])

 *Contemporary literature such as Sirach and 1 Maccabees essentially declare that prophecy has ceased. If Daniel was written at such a late date it would have been rejected as being inspired and not included in canon.

*Fragments of the Book of Daniel, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, would place Daniel within 50 years of it's supposed origins.Specifically 4QDanc which is dated to the late second century BC. Professor Gerhard Hasel writes, "For those supporting the historical-critical date of the book of Daniel new issues are being raised. Since there is a manuscript of Daniel that supposedly dates within 50 years of the autograph, is there enough time for the supposed traditio-historical and redaction-critical developments allegedly needed for the growth of the book? Supporters of the Maccabean dating hypothesis of Daniel will be hard put to explain all of this in their reconstructions. To express it differently, do the early dates of the fragments from Cave 4 leave enough room for the developments, editorial and redactional as well as others, that are so often proposed (e.g., Koch 1986:20–24)? The verdict seems to be negative, and an earlier date for Daniel than the second century is unavoidable." (Bible and Spade 1992.)

*Daniel accurately predicts that the Messiah would be cut off (Jesus crucifixion) and the city and sanctuary (Second Temple) would be destroyed, which happened in 70 AD (Dan 9:24- 27), demonstrating the prophecies are not after the facts.

*The prophet Ezekiel who lived from 622 BC to 570 BC mentions Daniel by name several times.  (Eze 14:14, Eze 14:20, Eze 28:3)

*Sir Robert Anderson used the prophecies from the Book of Daniel's Seventy Weeks and known historical dates to accurately calculate when Jesus Christ was crucified, validating the accuracy of the Book of Daniel. Such precision could not have been known if it had been written any time prior the crucifixion of Christ.

The folly of Bill Maher

This past week Bill Maher in his never ending quest to garner attention by offending every person of faith made the following statement:

"What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie."
"Hey, God, you know you're kind of a dick when you're in a movie with Russell Crowe and you're the one with anger issues."
"You know conservatives are always going on about how Americans are losing their values and their morality, well maybe it's because you worship a guy who drowns babies."
"If we were a dog and God owned us, the cops would come and take us away."

It's not the first time Bill Maher has made statements like this. These same tired arguments are routinely regurgitated in his diatribes. What strikes me as ironic is Bill Maher doesn't believe in God or the bible yet be believes in the parts of the bible which he believes makes it look bad.  You can't have it both ways Bill. Either you believe in all of it or you believe in none of it. And if you don't believe it then what does it bother you so much of those who do believe in it?

As if to up his own ante in hypocrisy Maher accuses God of being a genocidal tyrant. This is the same Bill Maher who in his own words said “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving – that’s what I’m for... It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”. Maher supports abortion which has killed 50 million babies since Roe v. Wade. If the six million Jews that were killed in during the holocaust was a genocide, what does that make 50 million babies? And somehow Bill Maher has the audacity to make a moral judgement against a God he doesn't even believe in.

I asked previously why it bothers them so much if people believe in God when they don't believe in it themselves? Why should it matter right? I believe what it comes down to is ideologies. Religion can be defined as a worldview and an ideology which either revolves around a deity or around an individual. Everyone has one, even Bill Maher. Christianity is the religion (or worldview) that runs counter to Bill Maher and his ilk's god-less religion and this is something progressives can't stand. They can't stand opposing ideologies. To them it is intolerable and they must demonize and marginalize Christianity every chance they get.

In defense of God's action's he is the supreme being which has made everything that exists. He is sovereign and there is no authority higher than His, that gives him every right to judge and to judge justly. For man to make a moral judgement against God is like a nail telling the hammer what to do. But when God judges it is never done without the chance for repentance first. The people of Ninevah was given a chance of repentance and were sparred judgement. The people in Noah's day were given 120 years to repent, from the time God issued the decree to Noah to build the ark until the flood. But they did not. One may wonder how babies could be allowed to die in the flood, but the babies would grow up and become just like their parents. Each generation waxing worse and worse. When does it end? The cycle of violence had to be broken in some way. But those that died under the age of accountability would have gone to paradise while those that died in their transgressions would have gone to torment. I would add that there may have been circumstances in God decision to flood the earth that encompassed more than just man's wickedness. In particular the identity of the sons of God and the Nephilim that would further add context to the flood. I won't go into that right now, but suffice to say people speak on things that they do not fully understand.

Concerning Noah's flood. Bill Maher mocks the idea that Noah lived over 900 years. We must differentiate the world we live in today from the world Noah lived in. It was a different world prior to the flood that allowed them to live longer life spans. Many believe there existed a water vapor canopy around the earth prior to the flood. The water canopy would shield against harmful solar radiation and prevent toxic ozone gas from filtering down, both of which contribute to the aging process. A water vapor canopy would basically be like living in a giant hyperberic chamber. The increased oxygen would vastly increase stamina and possibly increase brain cells which would mean higher IQ's. Also we have seen with hyperberic chambers that wounds heal a lot faster. Other benefits of a canopy would be tropical temperatures from pole to pole all year round and plants and animals would grow larger, which explains the size of the dinosaurs. Also Dr. Jacob D. Liedmann, a neurosurgeon, belives the human body is capable of living about 1,000 years if certain glands were to continue functioning.
There were many befits to the pre-flood world that would have allowed for a greater life span.

Bill Maher claims Noah and his family loaded over 3 million animals onto the ark in one day. In no way does it say they loaded all the animals on the ark in one day, and where does he get 3 million from? The bible doesn't say two of every single animal on earth, only two or seven of each "kind". And there were certain animals that didn't need to go on the ark, such as fish, water snakes, whales, insects, and other marine life. Also every creature on earth had a single pair of ancestors. There might be 300 dog varieties today, for example, but they all have a common ancestor. That would narrow it down to 3,700 kinds of mammals, 8,600 kinds of birds, 6,300 kinds of reptiles, and 2,500 kinds of amphibians. It is estimated the ark could hold around 100,000 animals with room left over. There may have been as few animals as 2,400 or as much as 50,000. We also don't know how young the animals were or if God put them all in hibernation as there doesn't seem to be any procreation on the ark. Two went in and two went out.

 It is noted that the account of the flood is universal story that appears in the oral history or written words of nearly every society on earth. How is this possible without a common source? It should also be noted that recorded history does not go back that far, which insinuates there was a restart a couple thousand years ago. Even after 2,000 years things start to get sketchy. There are no contemporary sources of Alexander the Great, for example, who lived 356-323 BC. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Who killed Goliath, David or Elhanan?

Who killed Goliath, David or Elhanan?

1. David did (1 Samuel 17:50) - "Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and he struck the Philistine and killed him; but there was no sword in David’s hand."

2. Elhanan did (2 Sam. 21:19)- "And there was war with the Philistines again at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam."

Objection: While 2 Sam 21:19 says Elhanan killed the brother of Goliath. The words "the brother of" do not appear in the Hebrew Text.

Answer: The mostly likely clarification lies in 1 Ch 20:5:

"Again there was war with the Philistines, and Elhanan the son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam." (1Ch 20:5)

The apparent contradiction between 1 Ch 20:5 and 2 Sam 21:19 is likely a transcription error. According to Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties on page 179, it says,

1. The sign of the direct object, which in Chronicles comes just before "Lahmi," was '-t; the copyist mistook it for b-t or b-y-t ("Beth") and thus got Bet hal-Lahmi ("the Bethlehemite") out of it.

2. He misread the word for "brother" ('-h) as the sign of the direct object ('-t) right before g-l-y-t ("Goliath"). Thus he made "Goliath" the object of "killed" (wayyak), instead of the "brother" of Goliath (as the Chronicles passage does).

3. The copyist misplaced the word for "weavers" ('-r-g-ym) so as to put it right after "Elhanan" as his patronymic (ben Y-'-r-y'-r--g-ym, or ben ya 'arey 'ore -gim -- "the son of the forests of weavers" -- a most unlikely name for anyone's father!). In Chronicles the 'ore grim ("weavers") comes right after menor ("a beam of ") -- thus making perfectly good sense.

Objection: If David found favor in Saul’s sight, how could Saul not know whom he had just sent out to fight with Goliath? Saul would have known who he was because David was already a favorite in the royal court.

And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly; and he became his armourbearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me; for he hath found favour in my sight. (1 Sam. 16:21-22.)

Whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell. And the king said, Inquire thou whose son the stripling is. (1 Sam. 17:55.)

Answer:

a. Saul does not ask who David is, but who David's father is.

b. He does, after all, promise that David's father's household will be exempt from paying taxes (see 17:25).

c. Jesse was an old man during the days of Saul, it is unlikely that they had any personal contact. (17:12)

d. Why would we assume that Saul remembers who David's father is?

e. Previous contact had been through messengers and servants.

Objection: After David killed Goliath, the text says that he brought the head to Jerusalem, but during Saul’s reign Jerusalem was in the hands of the Jebusites. It didn’t come into Israelite hands, according to the bible, until after David became king. This suggests that in the original story David was already king when Goliath died.

Answer: This is most likely a flash forward since a few verses later he is said to have taken the head to Saul:

And David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put his armor in his tent. (1Sa 17:54)

Then, as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul with the head of the Philistine in his hand. (1Sa 17:57)

Conclusion:For Elhanan to have killed Goliath it would have to discount the entire story of David and Goliath. When a single verse is weighed against an entire chapter the conclusion should be clear,  David killed Goliath. Incidentally David picked up five smooth stones from the brook, Goliath plus the four giants mentioned in first Chronicles make five. One stone for each giant.

Part of the confusion arises because many verses in 1 Samuel 17-19 appears contradictory and out of chronological order. The Masoretic Text (MT) appears to be juxtaposition of two separate accounts of the event. Both accounts cover the same event but with differing details. As a result, when the two versions were joined, the combined text displayed a certain amount of redundancy and inconsistency. Much of the inconsistencies can be resolved by reading the Septuagint (LXX) account which is over 1,000 years older than the MT and 44% smaller.

How can a loving God send anyone to Hell?

Hell appears 31 times in the Old Testament and, without exception, is translated from the Hebrew word Sheol. The same word is translated as "pit" three different times. Sheol is sometimes translated as "the grave" which would infer that hell and the grave are the same, but this is a mistranslation. The proper word for "grave" is "Gibrah", which means grave,burying place, and sepulchre. Hell in the New Testament is the Greek word "Hades". Sheol and Hades are the same thing. Hell is basically a jail the lost souls go to until they are judged and sent to prison in "The Lake of Fire" or "gehenna". There are other compartments as well (Tartarus, The Abyss, The Bottomless pit) but we will not concern ourselves with these at the moment.

The question arises how can a loving God send someone to such a terrible place? Well for starters man was not initially intended to go to hell, this was a place prepared for Satan and his fallen angels (Mat 25:41). God tells us it is not His will that anyone should perish (2Pe 3:9). If it's not His will than whose will is it? Man is afforded every opportunity to accept the free pardon offered when Jesus shed his blood in remission of our sins. God made salvation so simple and easy that one has to literately step over the bloody crucified body of Christ to get to hell. If eternal separation is what men desires then God does not violate their free will and gives them what they want. A place that is eternally separated from God. But in rejecting God they reject everything that is God. God is love, so hell is absent of love, there is only fear and loneliness and misery. God is light, so hell is in darkness. God is mercy, in hell there is no mercy. You see hell is not terrible because God made it terrible, it's terrible because God is not there.

And what of the Lake of Fire? I like Dr. Hugh Ross explanation that demonstrates God compassion even in hell:

These words may sound strange, but in light of God's character and the character of those sentenced to hell, those who inhabit the lake of fire occupy the best possible realm for them. God expresses His love and compassion for hell's inhabitants by afflicting them with sufficient torment to prevent the place from being as bad as its inhabitants have the capacity to make it.
We can only begin to imagine what evil could be expressed by those from whom the restraining influence of God the Spirit has departed. The unleashing of individuals' full potential for cruelty and all manner of evil could make hell vastly more horrible than God designed it to be. The worst thing about hell might be the company its inhabitants must keep. But God will keep in check the horrors these individuals could inflict on one another by immobilizing them, distracting them sufficiently with some kind of pain or discomfort.
The measure of pain and discomfort necessary to restrain each individual in hell will be different. Revelation speaks of differing levels or degrees of torment for those who are sent to hell, torment that is commensurate with each individual's earthly expressions of sin and rebellion. The measure of wickedness a person practiced on earth is the measure of that individual's potential to make life more miserable than it already must be for others in hell. One interpretation suggests that God calibrates each person's torment to exactly the level necessary for restraint of his or her potential for evil.

He goes on to use this story as an illustration:

A good friend of mine once stumbled into a real-life lesson on the consistency of Gods love and His restraint of evildoers in hell. Through the simple error of misreading a map, he was arrested for selling film on the wrong side of the street in the vicinity of Pasadena's Rose Bowl.
Under normal circumstances he would have been driven to the courthouse, cautioned by a judge, and released. But because so many revelers had been arrested the night before, the court system was jammed. All the Pasadena's jail cells were full, as were those in the neighboring communities. My friend, who had never even been sent to the principals office during his school years, was sent to Los Angeles County Jail not just for a few hours but for a whole day and night.
He was placed in a cell with eight other men. While the Los Angeles police do their best to separate violent felons from the rest of the inmate population, their efforts are limited. My friend glanced around to meet eight pairs of eyes staring at this obvious first-timer, each more fearsome than any he had encountered in his life. Including his travels to foreign lands. Eight men watched, waiting for hint to fall asleep. He spent that day and night awake and praying, his back glued to the cell wall.
No physical harm came to him during those agonizing hours, but he does remember wishing that an officer would come to handcuff and leg cuff the others so that he could get a moment's rest. Those cuffs would have brought some torment, of course, but certainly no more than the torment my friend endured. From his perspective, the loving loving thing the police could have done was to restrain his cell mates with cuffs.

You see the flames of the lake of fire can be seen as an act of mercy, the horrors they could inflict on one another would be far worse. I believe however the the degree of punishment will be appropriate to the individual. Just as Christians receive varying degree's of reward based on their works in this life (2Co 5:10, 1Co 3:14,15), like wise the sinners will see their degree of punishment. A person like Hitler, for example, would receive a more severe punishment than the average Joe who never accepted Christ.  Oftentimes we let emotionalism cloud the realities of hell. We look at it from a human perspective, and not God's perspective. Yes God is love, but He's also a judge.