Hey, I have a lot of questions but before I ask them it's important for you to understand how I think so that you can interactively correct my thinking when you find flaws so I'm going to start talking about things that may seem semi-irrelevent but to some extent they have a purpose.

How do you interpret "love god with all your heart soul and mind"? And "love your neighbor as yourself"?

I know it might be very simple to understand these statements but to apply them without much thought would be difficult in my opinion since our whole sinful condition revolves around being prone to not doing this. When I was talking about how people's minds work I was talking about this hedonistic aspect that is the base of human psychology.

You might not agree but I still want to pitch an oversimplified version of my theory of how people act without the holy spirit.

Humans have perception that can be analogous to computer data, eyes ears nerve endings chemical receptors etc all send electric or biochemical signals that can be represented by numbers, this perception includes pain and pleasure, the basic units of desire, which I like to call +good or -good. The mind associates these with it's beliefs of what cause the pain or pleasure, and it starts with some very basic belief bindings during infancy, like the taste of food (+good) being associated with being fed, being associated with getting attention, being associated with crying for attention. These bindings might not be correct or logical but a lot of them stick around. Because of this we have somewhat illogical bindings like a fear of the dark (-good bound to darkness).

The hedonistic idea that we all act in a way to maximize pleasure and minimize pain in my opinion is correct if augmented to instead state that we act to maximize the net number of this mind control factor "good". We make decisions that result in what we believe is the most good. When we bind good to another person we start to want to preserve that person. This fake "love" is what most humans have for eachother. The kind of love theives have for other thieves.

If we were perfect we would consider our good to be equally important as others good. I believe this is what it means to "love your neighbor as yourself" to weigh the good of those around you with your own and act in a way that nets the most good for everyone. Sometimes this means throwing people under a bus, for example if you can sacrifice yourself (or someone else in an instance that requires it) to save 20 other peoples lives it should be considered worth it, however the calculations can get more complicated then that. Considerations like age (how much more will 8 yr old timmy live then 80 year old grandpa joe?) how much good a certain person will bring, for example a doctor whom is currently involved in the active development of a cure for cancer would likely be more important to save than a suicidal drifter who already actively wants to die.

When I said that the bible talks about the fact that people don't want to go into the light because they don't believe but because of the darkness in their hearts I was talking about how that exposes another element of psychology, that net good is actually calculated as the sum of individual calculations of positive or negative good times probability. They have so much positive good bound in their sinful actions that this new belief of Jesus being god contradicts that it's not worth acting on the probability that Jesus is god.

Another extreme scenario worth noting because it works on the same principle is where someone is told they have inherited millions of dollars from a nigerian prince and get scammed for believing it. The probability is low, and they know it, but the EXTREME amount of good bound to this probability is so strong that it makes the risk worth it. So if a belief has a probability of 5% bound to it and +1,000 good bound to it and it is contradicting a belief that has an equal amount of occurances with a probability of 50% and -80 bound to it the person will act on the 5% belief because of it's high reward possibility even though the contradicting belief is more likely to be true.

These people whom did not want to go into the light because it would expose their evil deeds simply did not want to stop sinning, and Jesus's teachings contradicted their own warped beliefs.

I wanted to say all this because I feel it's important to understand and useful, even though most people have a natural understanding of it I really like the mathematical way of explaining it and I feel it might be helpful to see it from that perspective.

Anyways, onto a more important topic, since it's one that at least one of us doesn't understand.

I don't understand when we should be afraid of something. God is in full control of everything. Taken to the extreme why not recklessly proclaim Christ is god in the streets of saudi arabia? Christians do it in secret because they don't want to get shot, but if god will protect them why not do this? I could see the answer easily being "to maximize the effect you'll have in bringing people to Christ it is desirable not to get shot immediately." but then there are some really hard to judge cases that aren't as easily answered.

For example:
My good friend Joseph recently had an issue where he gambled on helping his brother by letting him live with himself and his family. His brother is an ex felon who actively deals/dealt drugs and participated in cartel activities among other things. He has stolen from Joseph in the past, tried to kill Joseph and Joseph's sister during their childhood with a knife, and just all kinds of bad things in general. Joseph is a high risk gambler when it comes to friends and family, he gives people way too many chances to stab him in the back. This led once again to him getting stabbed in the back, it also put his family at risk (and his family did suffer for it too.) Is what Joseph did the correct decision?

I guess the best question here is what pertinent assurance or promises does god give us that we should be aware of when taking action?

For example if he said "Anyone who proclaims I am the Christ will not be punished as a result"(of course he says the opposite IIRC) no one would fear yelling it in the streets of saudi arabia. So next time we talk if we're not caught up in another detail I'd like to know what promises can you think of (from most pertinent to least) that we should take into account when we act.

Oh and about abortion and hell since I brought them up in that text even though I ended up mostly talking about this instead-

Abortion is just another variation of killing, and you should kill based on circumstances. Would you not kill someone about to murder dozens of people? What about only one person? What about someone who just wants to slice off your wifes arm, would you not shoot him with a gun before it happens? What if he's just going to rape your wife? What if he's just going to beat her? What if he's just going to punch her once? At what point do we draw the line, obviously its far after murdering a dozen people, but it's also obviously somewhere before namecalling. The answer I believe is rooted in "love your neighbor as yourself" you consider their good, well being and quality of life and what impact what this person is doing will have on others, and what your remedial action will have on everyone including them and yourself. It's the same with abortion. Can you really say it's wrong to abort a fetus that has a 5% survival rate with a 90% probability of killing the mother? It would be stupid not to abort such a child in most instances.

As far as hell goes, I have no biblical basis for believing what I believe about god doing "something" about the people in hell. I only know god's loving character, he is a perfect and good god. I genuinely do not believe he will allow trillions of people to suffer eternally in exchange for the gift of life as a child of god for a select few. That is not a god practicing what he tells us to practice, to love everyone as he loves himself. It feels completely like a self contradiction. I understand that it's still possible for the interpretation of eternal suffering to be correct, but I feel like god wouldn't do that and I genuinely hope that it's incorrect.

so to summarize

1. Would you agree with my interpretation and application of love your neighbor as you love yourself?
2. What are the most pertinent promises god gives us that we should take into account when making decisions?
3. Thoughts on abortion
4. Thoughts on hell and "eternal punishment"