How does one "choose" to go to hell?

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uglygal

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A question for Catholics / Christians:

I have heard that God does not send us to hell but we “choose” to go to hell. If that’s the case, then how does someone “choose” to go to hell? What is this “choice”, what constitutes this “choice”, when is that “choice” made? Is it a direct “choice” or is it inferred. Is this “choice” synonymous with choosing to not be Christian or is it a specific “choice” like “i want to go to hell thankyou”

Thanks
 
uglygal said:
A question for Catholics / Christians:

I have heard that God does not send us to hell but we “choose” to go to hell. If that’s the case, then how does someone “choose” to go to hell? What is this “choice”, what constitutes this “choice”, when is that “choice” made? Is it a direct “choice” or is it inferred. Is this “choice” synonymous with choosing to not be Christian or is it a specific “choice” like “i want to go to hell thankyou”

Thanks
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Well, I don’t think it like someone gets up in the morning and says to him/herself, "let’s see, should I choose to go to work, choose to go to the grocery store, … no wait, “I think I’ll choose to go to Hell … yea, that’s the ticket …”

I think what is being said is that people choose to live in direct opposition to the word and commandments of God. They choose to sin in such a way that they are saying to God, I know Your Law, and I want to do the opposite. I understand the consequences and I still fully choose to murder, libel, steal, lust and enter into adulterous relationships, etc. etc. It’s simply choosing one, some, or all of the seven deadly sins as a chosen and willfully disobedient lifestyle. God in His infinite Justice, grants the sinner his ultimate wish. I think that’s what “choice” means in this vein.
 
uglygal said:
A question for Catholics / Christians:

I have heard that God does not send us to hell but we “choose” to go to hell. If that’s the case, then how does someone “choose” to go to hell? What is this “choice”, what constitutes this “choice”, when is that “choice” made? Is it a direct “choice” or is it inferred. Is this “choice” synonymous with choosing to not be Christian or is it a specific “choice” like “i want to go to hell thankyou”

Thanks
Click to expand...
Well, I don’t think it like someone gets up in the morning and says to him/herself, "let’s see, should I choose to go to work, choose to go to the grocery store, … no wait, “I think I’ll choose to go to Hell … yea, that’s the ticket …”

I think what is being said is that people choose to live in direct opposition to the word and commandments of God. They choose to sin in such a way that they are saying to God, I know Your Law, and I want to do the opposite. I understand the consequences and I still fully choose to murder, libel, steal, lust and enter into adulterous relationships, etc. etc. It’s simply choosing one, some, or all of the seven deadly sins as a chosen and willfully disobedient lifestyle. God in His infinite Justice, grants the sinner his ultimate wish. I think that’s what “choice” means in this vein.
 
I think that the choice is to make something else in our life more important than God. That is, to say that I know God has said this is wrong, but I am going to do it anyway.
 
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis has some good insights on this. Some examples are:
  • One character wouldn’t go to heaven because of all the riff-raff God let in there, including the person who had murdered her on Earth. She thought she was better than the others who had made it into heaven, and was upset that her superior nature wasn’t recognized and appreciated.
  • One character was the opposite, and was too ashamed of their sins to go to a place where everyone knew about them.
  • One character didn’t think he would like heaven because there was no academic freedom of inquiry into religious questions, because God was dictating what the right answers were. He didn’t even realize that he was in hell.
  • One character was too addicted to some sexual or other carnal sin to give it up, even if it meant that he could not go to heaven. He finally ended up choosing heaven, and finding out that God’s version of sexuality was actually better than the sin he had indulged in.
 
Hell is an eternal separation from God. One chooses an eternal separation from God by rejecting Him. God loves us all so much, that He allows us to make that choice, because conversely, God wants our love for Him to be freely chosen. If we didn’t have that choice, we would be like slaves, not free.
 
I have a Brother in Law that has chosen to be an Atheist. He says that Jesus Christ is someone buried in some pit somewhere. He does not believe in God and will tell you unequivocally, if you ask, that those who do believe in God are somehow mentally deficient.

But I also believe that, with God, all things are possible, so I continue to believe that my brother in law is simply misguided. I will continue to pray for him, and should he precede me in death, I will continue to pray for his immortal soul. I continue to believe that most “atheists” are simply uninformed and misguided. As such we should pray for them, not criticize them.
 
You choose to go to hell when you say God I will not serve you, thats what Lucifer did

If St Faustina is to be believed, perhaps the Divine Mercy will come to his aid at the hr of his death
 
An analogy i just came up with is:
You’re hiking in rattlesnake country with two hundred people. Everyone was issued an antidote in a syringe by the benevolent hike leader. He gives you instructions to keep it handy, use it quickly, never dilute it or mix it with anything, and never use it wrongly thereby wasting it – and to use it when the time comes.
Some people follow these instructions perfectly. At the end they answer roll call loud and clear. You know they are alive and the team writes their names on a returning hiker list. This is the process of canonization.
Others are careful but no one sees them at roll call and they are inaudible. However, they might still be there. In fact they probably are, having done just what they were supposed to do. They’re somewhere in the crowd and will turn up soon.
Other people don’t turn up at roll call. They may or may not have followed the rules.
You just have to hope they made it.
Then there are those who didn’t follow the rules. Some opted to keep something else handier than the antidote and may or may not have been able to find it when the time came. Some were so sure they needed no antidote they didn’t bring any. But the leader might have rescued them aggressively at the last moment. Some wrote their own instructions although they did accept the antidote. And so forth. The closer they came to doing just what they were supposed to do and believing what the leader said, the more likely they are to survive. In addition, even if the leader rescues them with a forceful shot of antidote while they lie dying of snakebite, they can always choose to dodge the shot out of pride and even out of an irrational fear of the antidote; it’s their own choice. The motives for doing it wrong or not even believing the leader’s explanations and instructions are varied and the means of getting the antidote anyway are many. But if you survive the bite it’s because of the antidote and if you don’t it’s because you chose something else over survival.
 
Good luck to your Brother-in-law MelanieAnne. I will also say a prayer for him.

My understanding of choosing HELL IS NOT like the following :

We die and stand before God and to one side we see beautiful people dressed in white with wings and smiling faces and look to the other side and see flames and people in agony being prodded with pitchforks and God asks “Where do you want to go” ?

My understanding of choosing HELL IS like the following :

Some of us like drinking to excess, or chasing multiple sex partners, or intimidating other people or blocking out all views other than our own or being extremely defensive and refusing to be vulnerable and open to other people. (In a word - Sin).

We are like this even though we know it is no good for us. Even though we know it is destroying us and people around us. We choose this because it’s easier, because it has become part of us or because we are scared to be another way.

We choose the destruction.

I don’t think you have to go to hell to see this decision. Unfortunately many of us choose it here on earth.

Hopefully, with help from people who care for us, we will find the strength to choose the other way.
 
Christian theologians and philosophers, like those of Judaism and Islam, believed that God is a personal, omnipotent, omniescent, infinite and good Being. Because God is personal, he is like a person, although God’s nature and essence (what God is) are transcendent and not comprehensible in this lifetime.

As God is personal, the scriptures of Christianity (the fundamental source of Christian teaching and belief) hold that God has a relationship to human beings. To be ‘right’ in this relationship, humans must obey God’s will and laws in the proper manner.

There is evident evil and suffering in the world, and there are a few possible explanations for this. One is that evil shows that God does not exist, or is finite or unable or unwilling to stop evil from occuring. Another is that God gave humans free will and allows them to exercise free will, but is not directly responsible for the evil and suffering that results from misuse of free will. Another is that humans have no free will and our fate is determined by God’s power or by some sort of necessity.

Christian theologians and other monotheistic theologians and philosophers generally choose the ‘free will’ defence to explain the outcome of evil choices of human will, including negative consequences. In Christian theology, the worst outcome of a act of will which chooses the wrong object or goal is final and eternal separation from God, and consignment to hell as a consequence. Depending on the Christian denomination and the teaching involved, the sort of sins or actions which lead to this outcome vary, but the outcome is the same.

In Catholic Christianity, ‘mortal sin’ which is not repented of before death is what leads to hell. Final impenitence, which is the final state of the damned person, is the consequence, but the outcome is not due to divine necessity but due to personal choice.

In some strands of Christian belief, such as that of Calvin and Jansenist theology, and also in some of Augustine’s theology, God separates humanity into groups (the composition of these groups is determined by inscrutable divine will) whose fate is determined by God from eternity; the doctrine of predestination. God ‘predestines’ some souls to be saved, and others to be damned. This occupied the attention of Christian theologians since St Paul, and the basic question is how to reconcile God’s absolute foreknowledge of future contingent events (which follows from his omniescence ) with the free will defence placing responsibility for evil and its consequences on humans rather than God. To some degree then, there is a question on whether free will can be reconciled with divine foreknowledge, and predestination is one solution.

The doctrine of predestination remains strong in some Christian theological circles, but the teaching seems to have been moderated a bit in recent decades.
 
One chooses to go to hell by rejecting the free salvaitton God offers in Jesus Christ.

One way a person can reject Jesus Christ is by posting things entitled, “Why I reject Jesus.”

But in this life it’s NEVER too late to return to him.

Come back
 
bpbasilphx said:
One chooses to go to hell by rejecting the free salvaitton God offers in Jesus Christ.

One way a person can reject Jesus Christ is by posting things entitled, “Why I reject Jesus.”

But in this life it’s NEVER too late to return to him.

Come back
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one step forward to find a reason to take a thousand steps back
 
one step forward to find a reason to take a thousand steps back

More like taking one step forward to keep from sliding into hell.
 
PS–

I read your first thread entitled “Why I reject Jesus,” and I was shocked to see such words on a supposedly Chritian blog. I will not go into detail here, except for one thing:

As I might have said earlier, you gave the impression that you somehow thought if you said EXACTLY the right words in EXACTLY the right prayer in EXACTLY the right way, and EXACTLY kneeling properly, God was supposed to do what you wanted.

Prayer does not work like this.

And I will also repeat that we are on the horns of a dilemma:
  1. Either you were poorly laught
  2. Or you have a poor understanding of exactly WHAT it is that Christianity teaches.
But don’t worry. God loves you so much that if you voluntarily reject His free gift in Jesus Christ, He will not force Himself on you for all eternity, and will allow you to go your own way.

Nevertheless, His love will still pursue you like a river of fire, but it will not bing you joy.

As C. S. Lewis said, there are only two types of people: some who say to God “Thy will be done,” and the others to whom God finally says, “All right. THY will be done.”
 
uglygal said:
so you believe I have chosen to go to hell and am going to hell
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No one here knows your interior disposition, your objective knowledge, your subjective experiences, and least of all do any of us know your eternal destination.
 
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