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0Scarlett_nidiyilii
Guest
Okay, but why does that bother you?
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Tis_Bearself
Patron
Or, as I said, they have convinced themselves that what they’re doing isn’t a sin.
“That bad old corporation steals money from the poor and gives it to greedy rich stockholders and executives, so it’s okay for me to rob/ steal/ shoplift etc because I’m broke and it’s just making things more fair if I take money/ stuff. It won’t even be missed. I don’t think God would see that as wrong.”
"But we LOVE each other. How can sex be bad when it feels so right? (Never mind that we’re not married or that we happen to be married to other people.) A loving God who loves us would want us to be happy. He supports love. Love wins! "
“Eh, masturbation is a normal and healthy act, all the doctors say so, everybody does it and the Church makes too big of a deal out of it and used to say it would drive you insane, hahaha. The Church must be wrong. God wouldn’t have made our bodies work this way if he didn’t want us to do this. Besides, it keeps me from fornicating, which is a sin.”
Et cetera…rationalization is an amazing thing.
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Freddy
Guest
No chance to repent I guess.Freddy:
People often have a “Come to Jesus” moment when we realize how messed up our thinking has been and become acutely aware of Hell and how we may very well be headed there if we don’t shape up. It often happens in concert with us realizing that our earthly lives have gotten pretty messed up and empty also. For an addict it would be called “hitting bottom”. It’s a sort of hitting spiritual bottom.
Also, even those who don’t think they’re going to Hell for whatever they’re doing during the day often have some kind of “point beyond which” they think their own behavior would be so bad as to send them to Hell. I have had friends who are not living Catholic moral lives day to day tell me they would have killed themselves except they were afraid of going to Hell if they did that. Apparently this is common as someone else on another thread just posted his friend had said the same thing.
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Freddy
Guest
It doesn’t. But I find it exceptionally odd.Freddy:
Okay, but why does that bother you?
Tis_Bearself
Patron
That’s what they think. I do not launch into my “Well you might get a last minute chance to repent and God is merciful” speech, obviously, because if fear of hell is going to keep them from offing themself, I do not want to remove it. I want my friends to stay alive. Plus I have no way of knowing if they’d actually get a last minute chance or if God would be merciful in their specific case.
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Freddy
Guest
A point I made above. That everyone seems to think that they’ll have the chance to right wrongs. That you know that there’s an option to get-out-jail.Freddy:
That is completely different from not believing in Hell. It’s not that people do not think they will or could go to Hell. They think they have time to rectify their sinful situation before then not realising that, for example, they could get hit by a car and killed or have a heart attack immediately after committing the sin…
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Montrose
Guest
Everyone has until their dying breath to repent. However, repentance has to be sincere (no get out of jail card).
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0Scarlett_nidiyilii
Guest
TBF, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that fear of punishment has never deterred somebody from a bad course of action.
I can say that as a child, fear of punishment was a bigger factor in my choice making.
But as I got older, read more, saw more, experienced more, I preferred to be motivated by the highest good, or Agape Charity.
Because I see my religion as a relationship with God, I talk to Him, read His word and try to live accordingly.
At the same time, I know that bad behavior comes with bad consequences.
I can say that as a child, fear of punishment was a bigger factor in my choice making.
But as I got older, read more, saw more, experienced more, I preferred to be motivated by the highest good, or Agape Charity.
Because I see my religion as a relationship with God, I talk to Him, read His word and try to live accordingly.
At the same time, I know that bad behavior comes with bad consequences.
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runningdude
Guest
I recommend reading the story of Abraham pleading to save Sodom and Gomorrah:
www.biblegateway.com
God created the angels, despite knowing some would choose evil. God created man, knowing that some would choose evil.
Was it irresponsible of God to create life?
Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 18 - New International Version
The Three Visitors - The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to...
God created the angels, despite knowing some would choose evil. God created man, knowing that some would choose evil.
Was it irresponsible of God to create life?
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27lw
Guest
I think partly since life expectancies are so long, and sudden death due to illness / accident is so much more rare now, most people think they’ll have time to “get right with God” later…much later…
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redcatholic
Guest
That isn’t how it works but I think you know that.
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c4csp
Guest
Well say that you are married and in right context to have a child in first place. Let us say you are in mortal sin or clinging to something that is not in line with Church teaching, should you have a child because at present moment your own soul may be in jeopardy? Yes you should, because that child could be the means with which God provided to bring you out of that sinful life and to start living in accordance with His divine will.
Remember what Jesus said, “to whom much is given, much is required.” God is merciful and just. He doesn’t damn anyone to hell, we damn ourselves to hell.
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MNathaniel
Guest
Yes.
I’ve sinned while simultaneously truly believing in hell.
So… just, yes.
You’re really not going to persuade anyone who actually knows themselves to be both a believing Catholic, and a sinner, that it’s impossible to be both. Those of us who know ourselves (even as we may baffle ourselves) know that reality is often more baffling than the simplistic, mechanistic pictures atheists often like to paint.
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MNathaniel
Guest
Hi Freddy, apparently I’m the one person.
At least, I’ve been the one person.
On one particularly notable occasion I consciously decided to choose something over God. Can’t rationalize that to you, I just chose it. I decided I wanted something more than happiness. It wasn’t even that I thought the thing I was choosing would make me happier. The choice to sin is more mysterious than that.
God in His mercy preserved me from that situation by making the thing I chose, inaccessible to me. (At that time. It later became accessible to me, but only after He’d built me up more.)
I look back to that situation as a humbling reminder of my genuine fallibility and limitations. I can never raise my head and proudly say that there’s something innately about me, that I would never choose something else over God. There was a time when I would have. That I’m still alive and didn’t die in that state is a mercy from God to me.
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Theosis
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akck
Guest
No, you’re right.
If God is who I believe he is, then I do trust him. If God is precisely who is presented in Catholic doctrine with strict criteria for “grave sins” and broad damnable offenses, then you’re right, I do have issues trusting him.
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akck
Guest
I certainly can’t say that something God did was irresponsible. But I do often wonder why he would create life that he knew was going to wind up in hell.
That’s probably a good topic for a separate thread.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
With all due respect, why would you have a problem with God’s criteria for “grave sins”? It’s not like every sin on earth is grave, and grave sins as well as non-grave sins can be absolved in Confession. The fact that God has strict rules for people’s behavior (The vast majority of which seem pretty reasonable to me) that many of us end up breaking at some time or another due to our human weakness does not somehow make God less trustworthy. He is also not looking to send people to Hell willy nilly. If someone is making a genuine effort to live their life in a way pleasing to God then it seems like the problem would take care of itself.
What exactly do you think God should let people do with impunity that would make him somehow more trustworthy?
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akck
Guest
What is a sin that isn’t grave?
I’ll hear that “stealing a pack of gum” isn’t a grave sin, but the catechism says that it is, as it is breaking one of the Ten Commandments (see 1858). The catechism does say some sins can be more or less grave (“The gravity of sins is more or less great”), but they are still considered grave.
So honestly, how many sins can you name that don’t break one of the Ten Commandments and don’t break one of the precepts of the church, and don’t break the many things that the catechism separately points to as being “grave”?
If I told my kid that if they hit their sibling one time, they would be grounded for life, then I wouldn’t expect that they would trust me to be a just father.
What Catholicism says about God is a billion times stricter: deliberately masturbate one time with full knowledge and die before Confession, you will spend an eternity in torture (even though our biological inclinations are very strong, as you point out).
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Fauken
Guest
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P6C.HTM
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14564b.htm
Out of curiosity, have you ever asked a priest if stealing a gum pack is a mortal sin?
No, “Deliberately reject and destroy your relationship with God, and die unrepentant, and you’ll get exactly what you want in the end: an eternity without Him”.
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