Compartmentalization due to hell

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If the only reason you care about the commandments is that you don’t want to go to Hell, then you have a problem with faith that no amount of thinking and reasoning is going to get you out of. Not to mention a problem with loving your neighbor, since the Commandments primarily set forth a code of ethics that normal people wouldn’t want to violate due to empathy and caring about others, the planet, and even their own health. I know atheists who basically agree with keeping all the commandments except the “love God” and “don’t take God’s name in vain” because they don’t believe God exists so those two make no sense. They’d probably “keep the Sabbath” in their own way by reasoning that workers deserve a day of rest and family time and that was the point of the Sabbath commandment.

Pray that the Holy Spirit will come to you and help you to approach these matters in a more constructive and loving way.

We don’t get anywhere spiritually unless and until the fear of Hell becomes a pretty small blip in the picture of why we are serving God and practicing Catholicism at all.
 
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I guess my first question is; how is your prayer life?

Early on after my conversion, I too had a fixation on the pains of hell and the desire to avoid going there. But as my prayer life grew and I grew closer to Christ, I feared less of hell as a torture chamber and more of the despair associated with being cut off from God. And now I’m at the point where I just fear offending God out of love. Because I love God so much that I can’t bear the thought of Him saying to me “I never knew thee” and being cut off from that Good.

I guess what I’m getting at is to focus on nuturing that relationship with Christ, grow close to His Sacred Heart and engulf yourself in that Divine Charity for man. Only then can you escape the fear of bodily pains of hell and the rebellious thoughts against God’s Justice which come with it.
 
I feel as though I’ve taken a more “medieval,” Thomistic position on Hell and retributive justice being consistent with the Divine Goodness, but I don’t feel it’s led me to believe that his commandments must be followed out of fear instead of love.

God is our Father, but he’s not our biological father. He’s not a human. The analogy to human parenthood only goes so far, and if taken beyond that, yes, people will have trouble with the “free will” argument.
 
Well, you can go by that if you want. I’m only being honest here and we should remember that the Church teaches that fear of hell, while imperfect, is still contrition. I didn’t make the rules.
 
I pray the rosary daily with great effort to truly meditate. Prayer is a Christian duty. It, however, does not change the reality of the situation which is what I’m trying to get at: the threat of hell is a strong thread.
 
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Indeed. If I’m honest, I find it hard to love someone who threatens me with hellfire; I can fear and respect that One though.
 
EasternCelt said:
Indeed. If I’m honest, I find it hard to love someone who threatens me with hellfire; I can fear and respect that One though.
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Then I recommend growing to love and respect Him for what He did to save you from eternal hellfire. Christ had you and your sins in particular in mind when He agonized in Gethsemane, when He took the blows in the scourging, and as He died in agony on the cross.
 
You can fear hell all you want, but it’s not much of a life, let alone spiritual life, to go around fearing Hell all day. I did it for a few weeks some time after I reverted and it wasn’t very pleasant. Fortunately, there are all kinds of Scriptures, books, saints’ examples and other helps to show us that Hell is quite avoidable and therefore we don’t have to worry about it all day and can progress on with other spiritual things, such as loving God. We do have to be on guard against temptation, but Hell is not some monster that jumps out of the bathtub and grabs us by the neck. If we practice good daily spiritual habits we can have great hope or even confidence that we don’t need to worry about Hell.

Building a prayer life and relationship with God, as the other guy said, is a much more worthwhile activity and would also get your mind off these “rules” you’re talking about and more on to a living, dynamic growth experience. This isn’t a chess game, it’s more like a good friendship or love affair.
 
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If you had read my response to him, you would know that I pray the rosary every day. And whether we like it or not, this is a rules-based existence. If you sin gravely, then the rule is that you go to confession to avoid hell, etc.

Hell is the prison sentence for sin (though it makes our prisons look like paradise in comparison). I would love nothing more than to love God, but it is not that simple hence the whole point of the thread questioning how to compartmentalize the threat of hell in order to advance spiritually.
 
EasternCelt said:
Indeed. If I’m honest, I find it hard to love someone who threatens me with hellfire; I can fear and respect that One though.
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And I feel that’s the issue, seeing God as a “someone” in an anthropomorphic way, as if he’s just another person threatening you.
 
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What other language are we to use? God assumes anthropomorphic titles such as “father” and “son” and that, ultimately, God became man.
 
EasternCelt said:
It is willed into existence for the sole purpose of punishment.
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Hell seems to me to a place for immortal persons who have nowhere else they wish to go. That is as reasonable a purpose as you have put forth. If they refuse to bask in the glorious rays of God’s light, and God lets them walk away, then they go to some place or state of not basking. Either that means no nice rays and so various amounts of unhappiness and desolation, or it means there are still nice rays, but to that person they burn because they refuse to bask, rejecting them.

Having no desire to follow the commandments other than out of fear could be helpful to address. Your average atheist finds murder to be cringeworthy. Hell doesn’t comes into it. Teachings about the bare minimum to qualify for confession are kind of frustratingly unhelpful for the daily life of how to approach feeling close to God. Perhaps praying and focusing on the things you are grateful for might feel helpful? If nothing comes to mind, try thinking about Jesus and having died for us. That is a standard recommendation I’ve read.

Give yourself time. You don’t need to figure it out tonight. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
 
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Interestingly, the last bit of your first paragraph is what we were taught in the Orthodox Church (OCA): Hell is the response of the wicked to the Love of God and that the “fires of hell are the love of God” as St. Isaac of Nineveh said,
 
It actually IS “that simple”. You’re the one making it hard on yourself.

I’ll pray that you figure out a way to tear down all these compartments and walls your mind is building because I just don’t see the use of them or why you’d even think that way.

God bless
 
EasternCelt said:
Then explain, given that, why anyone is in danger of Hell?
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Because it’s spiritual death, and people still have that choice to turn away from life which is only found in Christ. I think the issue here is fixating on hell as simply a torture chamber somewhere, when it really is a second death. It’s like watching a loved one continue to make poor decisions that will lead to their untimely demise, and any effort you make to help is rejected, and then one day their decisions catch up to them and they die. That person is no longer in your life, they are gone forever. That is what hell is like from the perspective of God.
 
EasternCelt said:
And whether we like it or not, this is a rules-based existence.
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It only has to be experienced this way if that is what we want. All the commandments are about love: love of God, love of self, and love of neighbor. If you make that your focus and your goal, you’ll find you don’t think about the rules much. The rules become an automatic part of who you are.
 
Pope Benedict describes the same thing in his encyclical on Christian hope… hell as the fires of God’s love as experience by those who reject him.
 
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