(Genuine question) Is teaching children about hell abuse?

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  1. Listening to those who have lost what they believe in is a case study in sorrow, not a guide for the positive.
  2. To be atheist, you may very well end up believing in everything except God. Q: How can one be open minded while shutting out an entire field of endeavor? Belief may be in everything to left and right, but nothing above or below. There is no anchor and beliefs are all over the map. If you are a seeking, how can you find, since the culture is ever-shifting? You will never find unless you lower your standards and shrink your world. You may have no ultimate authority outside of the self.
  3. For those who believe that heaven and hell are realities, then teaching the prudence to choose wisely is the only responsible thing to do.
  4. Strange how many who do not believe in God acknowledge the devil. Ask a drug addict, for example.
  5. Is it not abuse to fail to teach eternity to a human who is guaranteed to enter it?
 
po18guy said:
Is it not abuse to fail to teach eternity to a human who is guaranteed to enter it?
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I would say it becomes abuse when it is taught as truth. Nobody really knows what happens when we die. Nothing wrong with saying “As a Catholic, I believe …”, but in my experience, that part is usually left off. It is taught as fact, which is intellectually dishonest and takes advantage of a child’s lack of ability to discern truth for him/herself on this topic. That can really become abusive behavior, especially if it is often mentioned with the intent of keeping the child “in line” (as it often is in Catholic families).
 
MNathaniel said:
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JMMJ:
I would say it becomes abuse when it is taught as truth. Nobody really knows what happens when we die. Nothing wrong with saying “As a Catholic, I believe …”, but in my experience, that part is usually left off. It is taught as fact, which is intellectually dishonest and takes advantage of a child’s lack of ability to discern truth for him/herself on this topic. That can really become abusive behavior, especially if it is often mentioned with the intent of keeping the child “in line” (as it often is in Catholic families).
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I was raised in a non-religious family that refused to teach me anything was “true”, because they wanted me to decide for myself what was true, once I was older…
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‘I don’t understand this’.
‘Well, this is what I believe and this is why I believe it’.
‘So that’s the truth of the matter?’
‘In my opinion, yes. What’s your opinion?’
 
MNathaniel said:
Being told that everything is unknown or unknowable
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I am an advocate for telling the truth. If something is unknowable, then that is the truth. I was always truthful with my kids and it worked out well for them. They would tell you so.

Learning to be comfortable with saying “I don’t know, but I think…” Is part of growing up to be a healthy adult.
 
JMMJ said:
Learning to be comfortable with saying “I don’t know, but I think…” Is part of growing up to be a healthy adult.
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Cheers mate. My parents didn’t do the “I think” part of that equation. They recurrently returned all questions to me with repeated queries about what I thought, because they didn’t want to bias me with their thoughts.

For years.

Glad to hear you didn’t do that to your kids.
 
Oh no. I would never advocate for that. An exchange of thoughts on any given matter is what makes discussions on “unknowable” topics worthwhile, IMO.
 
Pope Francis had the opportunity to explain hell to children in 2015.

The most extensive papal explanation of hell came in response to a 2015 question from a female scout who asked, “If God forgives everyone, why does hell exist?” Francis acknowledged that this was a “good and difficult question.”

The Pope spoke of a very proud angel who was envious of God, reports Catholic News Service.

“He wanted God’s place,” said Francis. “And God wanted to forgive him, but he said, ‘I don’t need your forgiveness. I am good enough!’”

“This is hell,” explained the Pope. “It is telling God, ‘You take care of yourself because I’ll take care of myself.’ They don’t send you to hell, you go there because you choose to be there. Hell is wanting to be distant from God because I do not want God’s love. This is hell.”

 
NO.
I would argue that it would be abuse to NOT teach them.
 
The last four things! God’s revealed truth. This reality has been largely absent from Church teaching since the 60s. Truth is crucial - but the wise parent applies the virtue of Prudence in teaching this and answering questions.

Regarding that ultimate truth: we each are guaranteed three of the four - that is where choosing wisely comes in, and that is what we teach, age-appropriately, to our children.
 
I had parents who taught me about God’s wrath and judgement from 6 years old. Best thing they ever did.

If they didn’t, they shouldn’t have taught me about not putting myself in danger, or not talking to strangers.
 
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Well, whether one is a Catholic or not, Truth exists. Right? And it has to be absolute Truth because there can’t be truth that is one thing for one person and completely different for another person, because something cannot simultaneously be X and not-X.

Now Truth exists. We can know Truth, or not know Truth.

Since Truth is an absolute, we cannot fully know it except as the absolute; IOW, we take it ‘on faith’ but we have right reason and use that to confirm what we know and can measure empirically.

Empirically we have evidence of Truth that is given by God Himself through Scripture, Tradition, and the Magesterium and guarded by the Church, led by the Holy Spirit.

That’s why Christians, and especially Catholics, can know the Truth of God, of the Four Last Things which are Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, and can know both our purpose for life on earth and in eternity and that this is through knowing, loving, and serving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourself.

So we aren’t slaves to a purely material world, rootless and purposeless, living without any true and eternal knowledge, without any kind of guidance or help.

Now if no human being had even lived, died, and returned to tell us that heaven and hell truly existed, that God truly existed, and that we were absolutely and totally free to accept his gift of eternity in heaven, you could make your argument that ‘nobody knows what happens.’

But we DO have a Man who lived, died, rose again, and who gave us the knowledge, the Truth, of what lies ahead and why and how to gain eternal life in Heaven.

So don’t say, “nobody knows’. We know. We have a Witness.
 
Regarding the thread title: Conversely, how is it a charity to teach children that their lives are finite and will end in nothingness; that the length of their lives is little more than a mysterious, unpredictable lottery?

That strikes me as abuse.
 
stpurl said:
Truth exists. Right? And it has to be absolute Truth because there can’t be truth that is one thing for one person and completely different for another person, because something cannot simultaneously be X and not-X.
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Not true in physics. The truth about what time it is - is not absolute. The rate at which time passes depends on your speed and acceleration at a given moment. The theory of relativity says that time is not absolute, but relative in the sense that it depends on your frame of reference.
 
Do you only believe what your personal senses tell you and judge that ‘knowledge?”

So you don’t know that people walked on the moon. You weren’t there. You just ‘believe’.

You don’t know about any place you have never been yourself. You weren’t there. You just ‘believe.’

Uh-huh.
 
I don’t claim to know anything just because someone (or an organization) told me so, if that is what you are implying. I factor evidence in with what I am told. Sometimes I take what someone tells me and then factor in my personal experience for validation. For example:. Go to xwz restaurant. It is the best. So I go and then decide for myself how good it is.

Nobody knows what happens when we die.
 
AlNg said:
The truth about what time it is - is not absolute. The rate at which time passes depends on your speed and acceleration at a given moment. The theory of relativity says that time is not absolute, but relative in the sense that it depends on your frame of reference.
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The truth about time is absolute. It’s just that it’s also possible to have different subjective perspectives about time, based on different frames of reference.

But every subjective perception is nonetheless had about an absolute, objective thing.

When the blind men feel different parts of the elephant, the fact that – in their blindness – they feel different parts (leg, tail, trunk) doesn’t mean that the elephant itself doesn’t objectively exist and have an ‘absolute’ reality about it. It’s just that the blind men have limitations in perceiving the singular, objective, absolute elephant as it is.

Regardless of subjective perceptions from inside of time, it is objectively true that it is theoretically possible to one day analyze all the interacting, moving parts of the universe, all at once: seeing both their relationships, including the rate at which they pass each other in different directions, etc; including gravity wells and so on.

Time objectively exists. The only subjective thing is related to a given individual’s way of perceiving or articulating something about time.
 
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Do you know anybody who died and came back to life? NDE excluded, of course.
 
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