On the goodness of an infinitely good sacrifice

Christians believe sacrificial love is a good thing. Indeed, sacrificial love is apparently so good that it justifies the horrors we see on earth. Without evils, there would be no opportunity for sacrificial love (along with many other virtues). So, evils are necessary to enable sacrificial love.

 

I think this is stupid, and here's why.

 

Imagine God is sadist. He loves playing with creatures like they are toys. One day he comes to you and says, I will send you to hell for eternity. You will wish for death every day and will be unable to die. In return, all other humans will go to heaven, where they will be high on life forever. They will have no idea of your sacrifice, because you shouldn't sacrifice yourself for the sake of your own glory, but for the sake of the people for whom you are being sacrificed.

 

Or, you can choose to do the selfish thing. You will go to purgatory forever, and everyone else will go to hell forever. But, you have to live with yourself, knowing what you have done. However, purgatory is not hell, so if you wish, you can choose to die.

 

If you sacrifice yourself, then you perform an infinitely good sacrifice. Sacrificial love does not get any better than this. (We could imagine you sacrificing yourself for the sake of an infinite number of persons, but set that aside.)

 

Question: Is the goodness of such infinite sacrificial love worth being in hell forever?

 

It's hard to see how it could be. If you choose to save yourself, then you are infinitely selfish. But what's so bad about being infinitely selfish? It's not like you are being tortured forever. If you choose to be sacrificed, you get to enjoy having a clean conscience. But if your reward for having a clean conscience is suffering so bad that you wish for death but can never die, then it's hard to see how having a clean conscience is worth it.

 

Compared to a worst possible fate, any other bad fate is by definition better. So the bad fate of being an evil person or a selfish person, as bad as it is, by definition cannot be as bad as suffering a worst possible fate.

If God's aim is to get you to understand just how deep his love is for you, and that's why he is incarnating to sacrifice himself on your behalf, there is a much, much, much better way for God to show his love: by talking to you, by saving you from your unfortunate circumstances, by healing you and your loves ones, by interacting with you instead of being hidden, by giving you a life worth living. The whole earth thing is just a giant waste of time. Even worse, we conclude that there cannot be a loving God because of our understanding of love (and God does nothing to change this understanding) and because of the evils of earth (and God does nothing to prevent or cure these evils).

 

The only thing that matters is conscious experience – the real experiences real people really have. Magical goods are worthless. If your axiology leads to the justification of eternal conscious torment, then your axiology is clearly mistaken.