A question posed by my sister

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Silyosha

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Not sure if this is the right forum, but here goes.
Her question was: Why would a loving God “send people to hell” for all enternity because of only a lifetime of sin?
I know this is answered without much difficulty but I can’t figure out how to word it. Thanks for your help.
 
Unfortunately, it has been my experience that when someone has those types of questions, there is really no way to word it. People with those questions already have their minds made up because they want to justify their turning away from God’s ways.

I would tell her that when we sin through weakness, God is understanding so he gave us the sacrament of confession to help us get to heaven. When we sin because we just want to defy God, he sends us to hell because as much as He loves us, if we don’t love Him he is not going to make us spend eternity Him.

That is the best I can come up with

Thanks

C
 
He gives us an infinite amount of mercy, and all we have to do is accept his forgiveness for him to accept us back into his heart, and if we are to stubborn or proud or hateful to ask for his forgiveness, then we are saying we do not need his forgiveness, and how can he forgive us if we don’t want his forgiveness (what with free will and all).

Plus

How can one lifetime of human sinful nature deserve heaven, its a gift, and we should take it 😃
 
I’ve read this question posed here a lot. And the answers have always been good. God doesn’t “send people to Hell”, God wants all his children to be with him in Heaven. WE make the choice to sin, and in doing so turn ourselves away from God. When we sin we are rejecting God, and the consequence of rejecting God is Hell. So in a nutshell, God doesn’t send us to Hell, we send ourselves to Hell by committing sin (and not repenting).
 
Silyosha said:
Why would a loving God “send people to hell” for all enternity because of only a lifetime of sin?
Click to expand...
First of all, God does not “send” people to hell. Hell is not a physical place but more like a state of being. It is the state of being completely seperated from God and it is entered into by a free act of the will of an individual. God gave us free will to be able to decide to have an intimate loving relationship with Him. Love is not forced. In other words, you cannot force someone to love you. Even if you were to force someone to act in such a way that it looked in every way like they loved you it would not be love. Pre-programmed mechanical beings cannot intimately love. Therefore free will is necessary to love and the accompanying opposite result of deciding to have nothing to do with God is what is known as being in hell.

Another clarification needs to be made for the term “eternity” as well. Eternity as it is being used is not a temporal catagory. It is our way of expressing existence outside of the temporal world that we now experience. It does not necessarily mean an infinite amount of time because it is outside of time. This being the case it is difficult for us to describe and understand it because all that we know is “time”.

I hope this helps and I will keep your sister in my prayers.
 
Thank you everyone for your replies. They have helped a lot. I definately agree that God does not “send” people to hell, we “send” ourselves there, but apparently that’s not enough for my sister.
 
Silyosha said:
Not sure if this is the right forum, but here goes.
Her question was: Why would a loving God “send people to hell” for all enternity because of only a lifetime of sin?
I know this is answered without much difficulty but I can’t figure out how to word it. Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...
We as humans make the choice to sin, on account of our free will. If we ask God for his forgiveness and if we go to purgatory for our sins, the only reason someone should go to hell is because they are unwilling to ask God’s forgiveness.
 
The answer is NO!

**i believe we will all be give one last chance to accept Jesus & to repent of our sins at our death, no matter how evil we are in this life!
**
Only if we are prideful & arrogant & reject God at the final moment will we reluctantly throw ourselves into the fires of Hell, as Seinfeld said “Out of Spite?”

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!

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