Posted on 09/26/2010 2:35:35 PM PDT by NYer
If God is Love, why is there Hell? And why is it eternal? In a word there is Hell because of respect. God has made us free and respects that freedom. Our freedom is absolutely necessary if we are to love. Now suppose a young man wanted a young lady to love him. Suppose again he found a magic potion with which to lace her drink. So she drinks and suddenly, presto., she “loves” him! Is it love? No, it’s chemicals. Love, to be love, has to be free. The yes of love is only meaningful if we were free to say no. God invites us to love him. Love has to be free. There has to be a hell. Ther has to be a real alternative, a real choice. God will not force us to love him or to come to heaven with him.
But wait a minute, doesn’t everyone want to go to heaven? Yes, but it often a heaven as they define it, not the real heaven. Many people’s understanding of heaven is a very egocentric thing where they will be happy on their terms, where what pleases merely them will be available in abundance. But the real heaven is the Kingdom of God in all its fullness. Truth be told, while everyone wants to go to a heaven as they define it, NOT everyone wants to live in the Kingdom of God in all its fullness. Consider some of the following examples:
Now my point is this: If heaven isn’t just of our own design but things like these are features of the real heaven, the real Kingdom of God, then doesn’t it seem clear that there actually are many who don’t want to go to heaven? You see everyone wants to go to heaven (the heaven of their own design), but NOT everyone wants to live in the Kingdom, which is what heaven really is. Now God will not force any one to live where they do not want to live. He will not force anyone to love Him or what he loves. We are free to choose his kingdom or not.
Perhaps a brief story will illustrate my point. I once knew a woman in one of my parishes who in many way was very devout. She went to daily Mass and prayed the rosary most days. But there was one thing about her that was very troubling, she couldn’t stand African Americans. She often told me, “I can’t stand Black People! They’re moving into this neighborhood and ruining everything! I wish they’d go away.” I remember scolding her a number of times for this sort of talk. But one day I thought I’d make it plain. I said, “You know you don’t really want to go to heaven.” She said, “Of course I do Father. God and the Blessed Mother are there. I want to go.” “No you won’t be happy there,” I said. “Why? Want are you talking about Father?” “Well you see there are Black people in heaven and you’ve said you can’t stand to be around them. So I’m afraid you wouldn’t be happy there. And God won’t make you live some place where you are not happy. So I don’t think you want to go to heaven.” I think she go the message because I noticed she started to improve.
But that’s just it, isn’t it? God will not force us to live in the Kingdom if we really don’t want or like what that kingdom is. We can’t just invent our own heaven. Heaven is a real place and has contours and realities of its own that we can’t just brush aside. Either we accept heaven as it is or we ipso facto choose to live apart from it and God. So Hell has to be. It is not a pleasant place but I suppose the saddest thing about the souls in that are there is that they wouldn’t be happy in heaven anyway. A pretty sad and tragic plight, not to be happy anywhere. But understand this too. God has not utterly rejected even the souls in Hell. Somehow he still provides for their basic needs. They continue to exist and thus God continues to sustain them with what ever is required to provide for that existence. He does not anihilate them or snuff them out. He respects their wishes to live apart from the kingdom and its values. He loves them but respects their choice.
But why is Hell eternal? Here I think we encounter a mystery about ourselves. God seems to be teaching us that there comes a day when our decisions are fixed forever. For now we always have the possibility of changing our mind so the idea of a permanent decision seems strange to us. But I think that those of us who are a bit older can testify that as we get older we get a little more set in our ways and it’s harder to change. Perhaps this is a little foretaste of a time when our decisions will be forever fixed and we will never change. The Fathers of the Church used an image of pottery to teach on this. Think of wet clay on a potters wheel. As long as the clay is moist and still on the wheel it can be shaped and reshaped. But once it is put in the kiln, in the fire, its shape is fixed forever. And so it is with us that when we appear before God who is a Holy Fire, our fundamental shape will be forever fixed, our decisions final. For now this is mysterious to us and we only sense it vaguely but since heaven and hell are eternal, it seems this forever fixed state is in our future.
So here is the best I can do on a difficult topic. But Hell has to be. It’s about God’s respect for us. It’s about our freedom and summons to love. It’s about the real heaven. It’s about what we really want in the end. The following video is Fr. Robert Barron’s take on the matter.
While there is abundant evidence for God in the universe, there is no evidence whatsoever for Satan or Hell or any other such devilish things until the human mind begins to abstract - and make-up - information from its environment.
What would constitute evidence of hell in your mind?
Thank you! Will read it tomorrow.
Even if some views of hell differ from my tradition, the main points are - God exists, you break His rules, you’re responsible, and He gives every soul the great gift of free will. The human life is a short precious chance to use that free will in the only way we can please Him and be truly happy ourselves. If we do not, suffering is inevitable, both here and after the death of the body.
I have no idea how God works it just to know that he does.
For everyone:
Guess which word is in the Bible more than heaven?
Realize that you are searching for
under the earth
netherworld
Gehenna
Sheol
etc.
as well as
hell
when you do this search.
Are you surprised?
But God is a just God as well as a loving God.
Brimstone means sulphur, which was used to purify in that period. There is mention of God’s fire likened unto a fire which refines metal, burning impurities, and of souls surviving, but only as one who has been through fire. The duration is not forever, it is “aeonian”, which has been translated as “eternal”, “an indefinite amount of time”, “an age”, and even “world”. Not having a Semitic understanding, it is difficult for us to fully understand clearly the meanings in the original contexts. Rest assured that fear is only the beginning of understanding God, but perfect love casts out all fear.
For God to give us fallible human beings the ability to “choose” a never-ending future being spiritually burned alive, would make Him like a parent of a newborn baby who puts a loaded pistol in the crib with the baby. He just isn’t going to do it, contrary to what mistranslated and misunderstood “scripture” has been twisted to mean. The hand of man taints everything it touches, including Bible translations and “teachings”. The Pharisees thought they understood scripture too.
I was merely summarizing what a portrayal of God as “I love you unconditionally, but if you don’t choose to love me I’ll burn you in hell forever” makes him out to be: a schizophrenic two headed monster. This false belief is the source of a lot of mental illness, and makes a horrific crime like murdering your children before they reach the “age of accountability” (another non-scriptural tradition of man), a perfectly logical and reasonable action.
If that is true, everyone should go to hell. And they will if they don’t use the “out” that God provided: His Son on the Cross.
No, but reincarnation solves that problem. And it doesn't even have to invoke "living again." Do you "live again" when you wake up in the morning? In a way yes, in a way no. Likewise, some people could use a heavy does of Divine torture, because that's the only communication they choose to heed. As long as the punishment fits the crime (meaning however many thousands or more years of hell necessary), where's the moral objection?
People make their own hell,creating another one would be redundant.
No I don’t believe God is going to create another hell because people are wracked with guilt or act like human beings towards one another.
Cypher isn’t going to run it either because he has greater and bigger plans.And no you can’t run it either because it doesn’t exist.
And how does whqt he say specificially differ from the scripture?
NYer fixed it for you
Let me start at the beginning: I am pretty sure there was a creator in the beginning, anything after that is speculation. The universe cannot mathematically exist and is far too complicated to be a random chance creation without some outside force acting upon it. It seems fairly obvious if you do basic homework that all this was made, by someone or something.
Anything after that statement is conjecture, that’s faith. Anything the major religions say after that is just their word against yours with no evidence leaning one way or another. I zero in on Christianity, because that is my upbringing, I can’t speak for anything else.
Basically what you and the author of this article are asking me to do is accept blackmail. Basically, clean his room to his near impossible to meet standards or he is going to let someone else blow my brains out, not out of anger, but because I chose not to clean his room and that is the consequences of not picking up his socks. What benefit is it for me to perform such meaningless chores, just for the sake a promise to be allowed to clean his room, cook his meals, worship him just the way he likes for all eternity? A promise backed up by no facts whatsoever, just the word of people dead thousands of years?
Who in their right mind would be happy being not even a wife, more like a maid, hired help? We get room and board and we’re supposed to be grateful for this because the alternative is a painful death at the hands of the vicious biker gang waiting outside? It’s not that much of a choice you and your ilk seem to be offering here. Eternal slavery or horrific death. Some people are happy just scrubbing floors and toilets, but most would not be satisfied with mindless servitude to a seemingly absent landlord that does nothing to maintain the property, but nonetheless demands full rent paid on time or face eviction. meanwhile the plumbing is backed up, the wiring is shoddy and the heat does not function properly with the promise that someday, after your dead you can live in a perfect house, where you can cook and clean for him in a mansion instead of a shack.
I do not believe in the notion of a god that knows me intimately, and wants me to be happy, because I see not a shred of evidence, in fact I see more and more quite the opposite; and I reject the idea that any god that were such a being would lay down a “worship me or die” ultimatum on anyone. It strikes me as insecure at the least, very non divine of a supreme being. Calling that free will is like demanding I choose a bullet or jumping off a building and calling that free will. It’s preposterous on it’s face because neither choice in my opinion is acceptable.
It strikes me like the behavior of a bully, I do not respond to threats from bullies, even wrapped in good intentions and white cloth.
I go to church looking for god, he aint there I feel nothing tug on my heart or move me in any meaningful way. I keep giving him a message to call me at my home. He has yet to return my calls. I am thinking about 2 or 3 thousand years of people doing the same thing with no results, that perhaps one could conclude that the number has been disconnected, or moved without leaving a forwarding address. But, we’re continually told, with a straight face that god is there and listening and is the only thing that keeps the devil at bey, and if we do not buy into this completely, we die a horrific death; without any proof whatsoever. After a few hundred generations, credibility wears thin.
I don’t need much in a god, but showing up on CNN every few hundred years or so telling us to turn down the stereo would be nice. Sending your little sister do it for him has no credibility with me. She could well be making the whole thing up for her own gain. Why should I take her word for it?
Well, two brief things:
Is your freedom compromised by gravity? “Don’t jump off this balcony or die.” It seems to me that if God were to say, “Whatever you do will make no difference,” there would be no meaning to freedom.
The other is: what if God has no other option? (That is a glib and imprecise way of restating the whole monotheism part of my previous post.) You can choose to drink OR be thirsty. In the normal course, you cannot choose to quench your thirst and not drink, or to drink and remain thirsty.
Is it an intolerable infringement on liberty to say that to refuse all potables IS to refuse the quenching of thirst?
I propose: Ultimately, without God there is no life. It’s not an arbitrary rule. He IS life. Rejection of Him is identical with rejection of life.
As for your prayers for revelation not being granted, why, He sent ME to you! - ;-)
Maybe later I will be able to respond to your other points.
Freedom is the ability and the will to always choose the good. the ability to walk in the image of perfection.
Rather you seem more interested in license, the ability to do what ever you choose how ever you choose with out fear of reprisal or consequence.
Let me ask you is a train the most free when it is running down the tracks or when it has jumped the tracks?
Satan as modern invision is a modern invention; horns, tail, pitchfork, etc.
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