God willing our existence

[rivera01]

I have heard on two separate occasions that God wills our existence, which means that if He were to forget about us for an instant we would cease to exist. We would not be in anyone’s thoughts or memory because it is as if we never existed, therefore, the fact that we exist in the material and spiritual world is fact that He wills it.

This got me thinking, the souls who rejected God freely due to their own selfishness and are in hell, are willed to exist in hell. Because God wills those souls who have rejected Him, does it “pain” Him, for lack of a better word, to will them knowing that they rejected Him?

 

[End_Timer]

i would say God is grieved at their loss thru rejection, along with the
loss of many Angels. Satan tries to ‘hurt’ God by leading people
into serious sins.

 

[Anrakyr]

I would rather be forgotten.

 

[ChocolateCake]

If your God was TRULY merciful there would be no hell.

 

[Anesti33]

God is impassible. We can’t “hurt God’s feelings” or make Him grieve. It is a feature of God’s unchanging nature that He has no emotions.

The blessed in Heaven do not pity the damned.

Is Hell Compatible with a Merciful God? | Catholic Answers Magazine

 

[ChocolateCake]

Obviously God’s “feelings” are hurt because he created hell to throw all the souls who reject him/don’t acknowledge in there! Apparently your God has an ego!

 

[Sarcelle]

You can think of it that way.

Or you could think of a dog who repeatedly wanders away from a loving home on its own choice in spite of the loving owner continually calling for it to go back home.

The world is a cold and unforgiving place and the dog doesn’t have its needs met yet it prefers to stay there.

The owner finally realizes the futility of calling the dog back home and lets the dog choose the world instead.

Do you blame the owner if the dog meets an unfortunate end as a result of its own choice?

 

[Gorgias]

the souls who rejected God freely due to their own selfishness and are in hell, are willed to exist in hell.

No. They are willed to exist, but not willed to exist in hell.

Because God wills those souls who have rejected Him, does it “pain” Him, for lack of a better word, to will them knowing that they rejected Him?

No. That’s a thought that’s called “patripassionism”, and it was rejected as a heresy way back when. It suggests that God has emotions, and therefore experiences suffering and grief. (He doesn’t.) The passages of Scripture which suggest He does, are anthropomorphisms – that is, they look at us at humans, and project our humanity on God.

i would say God is grieved at their loss thru rejection

Nope. Not grieved. God is immutable; He doesn’t change.

If your God was TRULY merciful there would be no hell.

So… there’s no room for ‘justice’?

Obviously God’s “feelings” are hurt because he created hell to throw all the souls who reject him/don’t acknowledge in there!

Are you sure about that? After all, are human juries or judges “hurt” because they administer justice against criminals? Nah… they’re just administering justice.

 

[Mmarco]

Because God wills those souls who have rejected Him, does it “pain” Him, for lack of a better word, to will them knowing that they rejected Him?

We cannot imagine nor concieve how God lives in His essence because He is absolutely beyond the capacities of our intelligence.
However, in Christ, God has made Himself more knowledgeable; so, if we want to know God, we must know Christ.

Mark 3: 5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.

Jesus Himself talks about His sadness to Saint Faustina, as reported in her diary:
Pag. 326 verse 580 There are souls who despise My graces as well as all the proofs of My love. They do not wish to hear My call, but proceed into the abyss of hell. The loss of these souls plunges Me into deadly sorrow. God though I am, I cannot help such a soul because it scorns Me; having a free will, it can spurn Me or love Me.

You can find the diary here: Diary | Mercy - Saint Faustina - Diary - Jesus, I trust in You - Congregation

I would like to quote Pope Benedict XVI:

“Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvelous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis —God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with . Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’s Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love”. (Benedict XVI, encyclical Spe Salvi , 39)