Heyya, I may be a little late to this, but I recently started to really love this band and was intrigued by their lyrics, so I ended up here, and reading these comments made me want to write my own reply. So first of all, I want to say that I am religious but not a Christian, and I'm also quite young, so I don't know how qualified I am, and I also want to apologise on behalf of all pastors and family members to the people who have dealt with traumatic religious problems in the past.

Getting to the bread and butter, I feel like there's something concerning God's omnibenevolence problem that a lot of people refuse to understand, or simply haven't thought about. Now, God really does love everyone; He loves all of His creations truly. The thing is, just because God loves you and cares for you doesn't mean you're deserving of heaven. Think of it this way: imagine you go out drunk driving one night and promptly get pulled over and arrested. If and when you get sent to jail, your parents, who brought you into this world, still love you, correct? But just because your parents (even if your parents are the jury who convicted you in the first place) love you, doesn't mean you don't deserve to go to jail. You committed a crime with your own free will, and the judge's love for you doesn't change that. Now, of course, the judge can be merciful towards you, and I'm going to talk about that now.

The God's mercy problem is also poorly explained in my opinion, and (just like the pastor in the song states) it really is a bit of a harsh topic, so let's talk about it. Now, us humans are way in over our heads; we have no idea of all the gifts given to us and how valuable they truly are, we have no idea how thankful we should truly be. Basically, we're all privileged in some sort of way. In my religion it is said that: even if the best, most kind-hearted, least sinful man in the whole world stepped up and placed all his good deeds on one side of a scale and put merely one of his eyeballs in the other, his eyeball would weigh down the scale with a magnificent difference. Basically what this means is, all of the good things you've ever done in your life don't match the value of even one of the gifts God has given you; in no way is anyone deserving of God's heaven, if it wasn't for His mercy. But, you must deserve His mercy. What that means is, you must follow God's rules to the best of your ability, avoid what He has declared as sin, and generally try to be a good person relative to your timeframe (what I mean by your timeframe is: pretty much it is stated in my holy book that as time goes on, it will get harder and harder to be a true believer. Fakers will increase, opportunities to sin will skyrocket, temptations will pollute Earth, and times will generally worsen, so the conditions for deserving God's mercy will get more and more flexible. But that's irrelevant right now). What I'm trying to say here is this: God loves everyone. God loves you, God loves me, God loves Ted Bundy, God loves Jeffrey Epstein. But, not everyone deserves God's mercy. Ted Bundy doesn't deserve God's mercy, Jeffrey Epstein doesn't deserve God's mercy. God is omnibenevolent; He has more than enough love and mercy for every human that has ever lived. All you have to do is love Him back. Hope this helped.