I have a hard time understanding how the almighty and all-loving God that I know in my heart could pass judgement on his children for making bad choices.
While it is true that God lives in each one of us, especially when we are in a state of grace, it would be a mistake to judge God by your own imagining of him. Not only is God immanent; he is transcendent, and beyond full comprehension by human beings. Even great Christian philosophers, such as
St. Thomas Aquinas, knew that they did not fully know God. St. Thomas, for example, once compared his
Summa Theologica to straw in comparison to a vision of God he’d been granted soon before his death.
Melissa5834:
He knows that we are all human and we are meant to make mistakes so that we can learn for him.
The accuracy of this statement depends on what you mean by “mistakes.” If you mean human error, like miscalculating math problems, that might well be true but human error is not sinful, which means human error doesn’t send anyone to hell. But if you are referring to sins as “mistakes,” then that underestimates and misdefines the nature of sin. Sin is a choice for self over God. If a human person sins, he is rejecting God. If he definitively rejects God at the moment of death by dying in a state of mortal sin, then and only then does he go to hell.
Melissa5834:
Why would he ever damn any of his children to hell?
As is made clear above, in a real sense God doesn’t damn anyone to hell. Because God gave us the gift of free will, he will allow us to freely reject him. He will not force us to live in communion with him. If we die rejecting God, he’ll allow us the freedom to choose the hell of self over the heaven of communion with God and the saints. To the extent that humans often do not know their own inner dispositions (cf.
Jer. 17:9), it might be said that God “ratifies” our choice at judgment by exposing it and clarifying it, but he does not make that choice for us.
Recommended reading:
Why is repentance after death “too late”?
