People of all different religions love God.. so why do so many people end up in Hell?

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It’s easy to love God… How can a person not? He made this beautiful world, he gave us each other

(thanks a lot, God… :rolleyes:) 😃

so anyhow…

apparently loving God is not enough to get us into Heaven… Even atheists love God to some extent because they love (appreciate) what God has created (sex, etc) 😃

so… We have to also love God’s ways… his laws…

When someone asked Jesus how to obtain eternal life, He said Obey the Commandments…

This must be more difficult than most people think… apparently… since the saints tell us that many people end up in Hell…

Jesus basically said the same thing when he said that many will try to get into Heaven but won’t be “strong enough” (St Lk 13:24, St Mt 7:13-20)

My problem (one of them) is I let too much “gunk” clutter my heard/heart… :whacky::juggle::hmmm:

so what’s your problem? 😃
 
just as i suspected - you have no point… except to sound argumentative…

… and don’t even want to say what you are argumentative about…

anyhow

God is love and God is justice…

there is no opposition in His eyes to these two concepts…

there is only opposition in the eyes of humans… (some humans)
 
I appreciate your comments - many today see the love and justice of God as somehow contradictory. But even a civil judge, to be loving must also be just. For a judge to allow a convicted rapist to walk free would not be loving at all.

If love is the only issue, why can’t a loving satanist or atheist go to heaven?

God is loving, holy, and just.

Bless you!
 
thanks… well said… esp for an (apparently) non-Catholic… 😃

i have to admit that it is difficult for me to always believe in an eternal Hell… temporary Hell (otherwise known as purgatory) is not hard for me to believe in ONE BIT… but permanent Hell… hmmm… I believe it in my head… have no problem in my head beliving…

but in my heart… well, something seems kind of… ungodly about it… :eek:

the dogma of Hell is something you have to take on faith, i guess… but i have my moments…

When someone does evil to me, however… i have NO trouble believing that person will go to eternal perdition… 😃

i do know that God is pefectly just and that’s all i need to know, really… I guess its like…

if someone keeps telling a person not to bang his head against a brick wall… and he just keeps doing it… well, it’s no surprise to either of you when he gets a serious brain injury … that is permanent…
 
what is NOT hard for me to understand is how people who don’t love God do not go be with Him when they die… that’s logical . .

and separation from God means separation from all that is good… all that He created… :eek:
 
Souls go to Hell because they don’t want to be with God. They hate Him so much that they don’t want to be with Him for all eternity. At the moment of death they used their will in opposition to the will of God. God’s will is for us to be with Him in Heaven, but for the souls of the damned, they chose not to be with Him. They are the ones who put themselves into Hell, not God. They are the ones who separated themselves from God. They willed to be in Hell; it is not God’s will for them. If a person lived his life in sin but at the moment of death he/she accepted God’s grace and ask for forgiveness and that being said, chooses to be with God, then he/she will not go to Hell.

I think we should not forget how merciful God is. God’s justice always comes with mercy, and God’s mercy always comes with justice. One cannot exist without the other.

Also, love is the way to Heaven. If a person, at the moment of death, has a little love for God in his/her heart, that love will be enough to avoid Hell because that person, with a little love, will choose to be with the One he/she loves.

🙂
 
Purgatory does have a nice ring to it. I am surprised it is only a Catholic teaching. I would think most believers would be all for it.
 
A man dies and sits before God. The man now knows that there is an afterlife and there is a God. His whole life is laid before him and he can clearly see all the wrongs that he has done, the petty, selfish deeds, all the acts against his fellow man and the God that created him. He feels like dirt, he missed the purpose of life and now it is too late. He knows, can see with his very eyes there is a God, but he still doesn’t believe in His mercy and wills himself to a place without such a God because he deems himself unworthy.

I sure this is not Church teaching but I also don’t know where to put a thought like this: That man wills himself to Hell not because of specifically going against God but because he doesn’t believe in His mercy.

If we not believing in His mercy we not believing in Jesus Christ and no one gets to the Father except through Him.

Just a thought I had while reading the thread.
 
distracted said:
the saints tell us that many people end up in Hell
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An experiment:
  • Imagine a religion where there was no continuous threat of Hell, from the moment you were born.
  • How much power would the men and women who run the religion have over their people without that threat?
Now ask yourself, who told YOU that many people end up in Hell?
 
Since I’m not God how would I know how many people were in hell?Only God knows if there are many or few.Only God knows whose heart was true and whose was false.God is the ultimate arbiter-no one else
 
PatThompson said:
An experiment:
  • Imagine a religion where there was no continuous threat of Hell, from the moment you were born.
  • How much power would the men and women who run the religion have over their people without that threat?
Now ask yourself, who told YOU that many people end up in Hell?
Click to expand...
You Jews did, actually. Judaism teaches that certain grave sins do not permit souls to leave Gehenna. Jesus Christ fulfilled the understanding and knowledge of Gehenna, as prophesized in Scriptures: “The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, A spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD, and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD.”
 
distracted said:
.It’s easy to love God
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In my experience it is NOT easy to love God. If it was then everyone who was Christian would go to heaven. But even amongst the faithful there are those that fall away. This is because loving God also comes with obeying him. What is easy is to pay lip service to God, but to love him…well that is another story.
 
distracted
i have to admit that it is difficult for me to always believe in an eternal Hell… temporary Hell (otherwise known as purgatory) is not hard for me to believe in ONE BIT… but permanent Hell… hmmm… I believe it in my head… have no problem in my head beliving…

but in my heart… well, something seems kind of… ungodly about it… :eek:

Rory
Hi distracted. I came across an author today who suggested a view of Hell that I had never really considered in quite this way before:
Hell teaches us God when we are to gross to learn Him otherwise. It lights up the depths of sin’s malignity, that we may look down, and tremble, and grow wise. Its fires turn to water, and quench the fiery darts of the tempter. They rage around us, so that we dare not rise up from prayer. They follow us, like the many-tongued pursuing flame of a burning prairie and drive us swiftly on, and out of breath, along the path of God’s commandments. O Hell! thou desolate creation of eternal justice! who ever thought of finding a friend in thee? Yet we cannot doubt but that hell has sent into heaven more than half as many souls as it contains itself.
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—The Creator and the Creature, Fr. Frederick Faber, 1856, TAN Publishers reprint 1978, p. 268, 269

It may be that isolated from the rest of the book, these comments will seem less powerful. Fr. Faber has been finding God’s love for us everywhere. Of course, Hell might be the last place one should look for love. But even in that most terrible place, we can with the eyes of faith see God’s love for us in our weakness and woundedness. If it doesn’t help, I understand. Possibly Fr. Faber waxes poetic and perhaps overly optimistic at times…but on the other hand, I shudder to think how much love for God I might ever have learned, or how easy it could be to stumble mortally even now, if I had no acquaintance with the schoolmaster of holy fear.

God bless us and increase our faith…

Rory
 
A belief in an absolute certain punishment or in an absolute reward is the negation of free will which is the basis for our existence - there is no reward for our actions without the abiltiy to freely choose - if there had not been a tree that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from there would not have been any meaning to their refraining or not refraining from eating fruit. Every human being has the ability for great good. That choice also requires the ability to not to do good and for evil. However an absolute understood reward for an action - the belief that the action will automatically lead to the reward of heaven or the belief that the action will lead to the punishment of hell is to make such a choice meaningless - to prevent that person from freely choosing.
 
chosen_people said:
A belief in an absolute certain punishment or in an absolute reward is the negation of free will which is the basis for our existence - there is no reward for our actions without the abiltiy to freely choose - if there had not been a tree that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from there would not have been any meaning to their refraining or not refraining from eating fruit. Every human being has the ability for great good. That choice also requires the ability to not to do good and for evil. However an absolute understood reward for an action - the belief that the action will automatically lead to the reward of heaven or the belief that the action will lead to the punishment of hell is to make such a choice meaningless - to prevent that person from freely choosing.
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Your point is well taken chosen people, but I think you are not appreciating the “advantages” if you will, of sinful disobedience sufficiently. The Catholic Tradition certainly agrees with you that God will not permit that which would violate the free will of Adam and Eve or their offspring.

Certainly, as I referenced above with my quote from Fr. Faber, Hell can be perceived as a powerful incentive for present action because of future consequences. But in seeing these absolute future consequences as present incentives, one must also take into consideration present incentives for present actions. There seems to be no question that freedom of the will exists alongisde beliefs in eternal rewards and punishments. The commission of sins, especially mortal ones among believing Catholics show how the certain allure of instant gratification in this life serves as a balance to a faith in future punishment in the next life. This is why it seems to me that the Catholic Tradition in no way negates freedom of the will.

I would even suggest that over against the power of sin to give us instant gratification, a terribly motivating future is necessary in order that man’s will remain free to do good!

Rory
 
RoryMcKenzie56 said:
Your point is well taken chosen people, but I think you are not appreciating the “advantages” if you will, of sinful disobedience sufficiently. The Catholic Tradition certainly agrees with you that God will not permit that which would violate the free will of Adam and Eve or their offspring.

Certainly, as I referenced above with my quote from Fr. Faber, Hell can be perceived as a powerful incentive for present action because of future consequences. But in seeing these absolute future consequences as present incentives, one must also take into consideration present incentives for present actions. There seems to be no question that freedom of the will exists alongisde beliefs in eternal rewards and punishments. The commission of sins, especially mortal ones among believing Catholics show how the certain allure of instant gratification in this life serves as a balance to a faith in future punishment in the next life. This is why it seems to me that the Catholic Tradition in no way negates freedom of the will.

I would even suggest that over against the power of sin to give us instant gratification, a terribly motivating future is necessary in order that man’s will remain free to do good!

Rory
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It was a necessary mishmash as I was discussing Jewish concepts on a Catholic forum about Catholic concepts of heaven and hell.

In dealing with free will Judaism has labored with the problem of free will in a world when God can see all that is to come. The subject here is in regard to rewards and punishments for the exercise of that free will. Jews pondered the anomaly of bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. If your interested this site gives an overview: jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0017_0_16693.html
 
distracted said:
.

It’s easy to love God… How can a person not? He made this beautiful world, he gave us each other

(thanks a lot, God… :rolleyes:) 😃

so anyhow…

apparently loving God is not enough to get us into Heaven… Even atheists love God to some extent because they love (appreciate) what God has created (sex, etc) 😃

so… We have to also love God’s ways… his laws…

When someone asked Jesus how to obtain eternal life, He said Obey the Commandments…

This must be more difficult than most people think… apparently… since the saints tell us that many people end up in Hell…

Jesus basically said the same thing when he said that many will try to get into Heaven but won’t be “strong enough” (St Lk 13:24, St Mt 7:13-20)

My problem (one of them) is I let too much “gunk” clutter my heard/heart… :whacky::juggle::hmmm:

so what’s your problem? 😃
Click to expand...
You haven’t proven your premise that “so many” people end up in hell. Have you been there? How do you know this?

Edwin
 
chosen_people said:
A- the belief that the action will automatically lead to the reward of heaven or the belief that the action will lead to the punishment of hell is to make such a choice meaningless - to prevent that person from freely choosing.
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maybe… maybe not…

yes and no.

It is true that knowledge of ( belief in ) Heaven & Hell can keep a person on the right track (limit his “freedom” so called) … which makes it so important for us to share waht we know with others…

but God would not have visited and spoken w/ Moses… or sent the prophets or Jesus to us if it weren’t for the importance of us conforming ourselves to God’s laws… & the absolute necessity of doing so…

If your parent tells you not to touch the hot burner on the stove and you do it anyway & get burnt… it is not your freedom of lack thereof that is the problem… You had the freedom to obey or disobey… and it is NOT the parent’s fault what you chose to do… Jesus came to warn us of Hell… and he speaks of Hell more than Heaven…
 
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