Just forgive everyone!

I seem to recall a statement by Dick Dawkins (of The God Delusion fame) asking why didn't God just forgive everyone.

I expect he doesn't believe God exists, and is suggesting a flaw in Christian theology by his question.

It seems to me that Dawkins, like most people, including Christians, alas, have no clue about God's 'mission' in creation, who God is and what it means to sin, that is to be wholly turned against God and his gift of life.

Dawkins' question-challenge betrays a view of God being separate from his own nature, and that our need to be forgiven arises from our innocuous breaches of some third-party laws. Like asking a policeperson to overlook a parking breach in a local shopping centre carpark when yours is the only car there.

But not so. Our sin is that we have rejected God and in our own nature, do not want to be forgiven. We like being cut off from God and don't want to surrender life in the hell-hole of being enslaved by sin.

God doesn't just forgive us because we don't want to be forgive; and God has made us with our own self-determining ability to chose our relationships, so wouldn't seek to overturn that component in us of his image. In fact, having given the gift to us of his 'image-ness', he possibly cannot over turn it.

It's like a man asking a woman to marry him, but wants no part of her life. Doesn't even want to be intimate with  her, but just wants to live without her while calling her his wife: a relationship that denies itself and is without meaning in any sense.

There would be no point to God just forgiving us when the real forgiveness he extends works itself out in our regeneration and new life in his family...for ever.