Z
- Status
H
hellopeople
Guest
God punishes us LESS than we deserve? God made us knowing that we would be imperfect and punishes us for it? That is like me punishing my child for pooping.St. Thomas Aquinas states that “cruelty denotes excess in exacting punishment”. Now it is not excessive for God in exacting punishment to punish someone as they deserve. Yet as I have explained above God punishes the human race less than it deserves. Therefore God is not cruel.
Z
Zatzat
Guest
Even worse, all the mistakes and sins that people commit, God knows ahead of time. Yet God still creates them, knowing that he’s going to punish them for eternity in hell. ( omniscience)
S
Soler
Guest
Indeed.
Anyone who has ever gone to hell, God knew that they would go there when creating them, yes. Why he created them anyway, I don’t know. This is one of the three things in the Catholic faith I struggle with (well mostly I don’t bother thinking about them—struggling is a pain). But I’ll just have to put up with that until I finally see the light or die first. I would think three difficulties isn’t bad, relatively speaking.
We remain resposible for our actions and have free will. If we fail in our duty, we must repent and act accordingly. If we do not, we bloody well deserve punishment.
Not really.
H
hellopeople
Guest
Yes…seems extremely compassionate. The only arguments for God being compassionate that I have seen are:Even worse, all the mistakes and sins that people commit, God knows ahead of time. Yet God still creates them, knowing that he’s going to punish them for eternity in hell. ( omniscience)
*We don’t deserve heaven, so he is being compassionate for letting some of us in.
We can’t comprehend God’s compassion and we can’t judge it as humans.
God does not send people to hell, people send themselves to hell.
*
None of these arguments are valid though IMO.
L
LilyM
Guest
To be accurate, it’s like you punishing a child who
a) knows that it should poop in the potty or toilet
b) knows perfectly well HOW to use a potty/toilet
c) has ample opportunity to use the potty/toilet to do its business, and no reason on earth NOT to do so (ie isn’t in the learning stage of potty training or anything) but
d) in spite of all this insists on crapping on the kitchen floor instead
As I’m sure you’ve been told before, and as the Catholic church teaches, God doesn’t expect the impossible of us and He does, within reason, meet us where we’re at.
If we genuinely make every effort to seek and do His will, and through no laziness or wilful blindness or other fault of our own, don’t learn it, or misinterpret or misunderstand it, He won’t hold it against us. As the Catholic Church holds, ‘invincible ignorance’ gives a person in the situation I’ve just described as much hope of being saved as anyone else.
Ignorance of earthly law might usually doesn’t excuse you from punishment, but ignorance (as I’ve said, provided no fault of your own is involved) of His law often does.
Z
Zatzat
Guest
You don’t punish a child for all of eternity, do you?
:nope:
T
TedDC
Guest
Agreed.
L
LilyM
Guest
Purgatory isn’t eternal either, for one thing. One leaves purgatory and goes to heaven.
Obviously the more serious the offence of the child the greater the punishment would be. Since I can only punish a child for offences against myself, and any offence it could commit against myself (I being a finite human being) would have only temporary or finite effects, it is inappropriate for ME to attempt to impose an eternal punishment, even if I had the ability to do so which I don’t.
An offence against God, however, IS an offence against an infinite (and eternal) being. Unrepented and intentional grave offences against Him certainly would have serious impacts, as an unrepented and intentional grave offence against myself would also have serious impacts. God being infinite and eternal, those impacts can indeed be, as He is, both infinite and eternal.
We know this, even as children who’ve reached the age of reason, because we know that God IS infinite and eternal, so can logically deduce that He can be infinitely and eternally affected by at least our serious sins if we don’t repent of them.
So for such injury against God an eternal punishment IS appropriate - coming from Him who is infinitely and eternally injured.
Z
Zatzat
Guest
I’d like to think that a perfect being wouldn’t have such a fragile ego.
He feels the need to punish people eternally for having crossed him?
L
LilyM
Guest
Uh, no. The person brings their punishment upon themselves by refusing to ask for His forgiveness while they have the opportunity.
If my sister does something horrible against me, such that we are completely estranged, all she need do at any time is say ‘sorry’ and I’ll happily resume my relationship with her.
If she, however, refuses, then as much as I may want to forgive her I certainly can’t force her to listen to me or accept my forgiveness. Even if I try to talk to her, she is capable of refusing to accept the call or to listen to me. That’s entirely her choice to continue the estrangement when I am trying to repair and resume the sisterly bond between us.
And if she dies, or I die, while we are in that state of estrangement, then there’s nothing either of us can do to repair it. It’s too late.
See, I didn’t punish my sister in any way in this example, on the contrary I did everything I could to reconcile. She instead herself brought on the permanent estrangement, the punishment, by not taking an early opportunity to repair relations between us.
Remember, after death is eternity - a state of existence which is outside of time. Eternity is a changeless state of existence, for change cannot happen outside of time. That is why time - ‘evening and morning’ (as marked by the coming of a period of light to contrast with the darkness and mark the passage of the first mornign and evening) is the first creation. All change has to happen in the context of time.
So once I die I am permanently fixed in whatever attitude I had towards God, whatever relationship I was or wasn’t in with Him, at the point at which I stepped outside of time and into eternity (the point of death). Just like my body will be permanently fixed at whatever age it will be when I die, and neither grow older nor younger.
There will be no time to change my mind after death - there will be no time full stop!
M
m134e5
Guest
It is not the teaching of the Church that purgatory is a place of pain- it is a theory, and a respected one, but a painful purgatory is not doctrine (but purgatory, whatever it happens to be, is a doctrine). I imagine purgatory is intense frustration- you know where you are going to go, that getting there is inevitable, but because of your sins that still must be purified from you (and which you must detach yourself from purely out of love for God), you aren’t ready to go there yet. It is like going to a party in the rain, but you can’t go in without taking your coat and shoes off- but you like your coat and shoes and really don’t want to part with them because you know this party is forever and you must leave the coat and shoes behind- forever. I don’t think it is a place of fire like the fires of hell. This is a different kind of fire.
S
Smber2c
Guest
This is far from a true dicotomy. The presence of a hell and purgatory do not in anyway disprove God’s compassion.
As I said before pain =/= evil. I just finished reading “Speaker for the Dead”, if any Card fans happen to be in the room - the act of speaking the complete truth of the deceased person’s life was incredibly painful for survivors but also liberating and stregnthening.
Saying that you’ll burn yourself and skip going to confession misses the point completely. That’s just random pain, there is no purpose to it.
The pain of purgatory is transformative. It is the pain of knowing evil in us, battling it, and removing it.
Part of many people’s failure to understand the suffering of purgatory and hell is that they fail to understand God’s total commitment to free will. God won’t take that away. He doesn’t want machines. He made free eternal souls. It is a gift He gave that He’ll never take away. So, if we are free and we are eternal - once earthly life ends, we either join Him in perfection (Heaven), go get the last scrubbing up b/c perfection (Purgatory), or reject perfection (Hell) - but these are our choices, that’s where the free will part comes in.
We decide, we choose, we determine. The potential pain is just a natural result of the nature that God gave us and what we’ve done with it.
Blaming God for the pain of hell is like blaming Exxon for pain if we sit in a tub of their gas and light it up. Great pain is the result of misuse of their product - they didn’t intend for gas to be used that way, God doesn’t intend for us to go to hell either, but we have to follow His directions or we will.
Pains of hell and purgatory are the result of misuse of free will combined with the gift of an enternal soul.
V
Vile_Servant
Guest
In Jesus’ own words;
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
S
Smber2c
Guest
If you truely want to understand how people punish themselves and choose hell for themselves - read C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”. There are probably 8 to 10 great examples through this very short book of people choosing to go to hell. God (via an Angle/Saint) says, “I love you. I want you in heaven. For that to be the case you need to ______.” The blank are such things as: let go of your pride, be humble, love your fellow men more than you love your paintings, give up your lusting, stop hating the man that killed your wife, etc… Things that people really do struggle with.
In each case, God’s advocate asks the person to just try. They offer them help where they can. They encourage and guide, but they never force the person - Free Will stays intact. There is struggle. Pain. Successes and Failures. But after reading the book, a reader can’t say that God didn’t try. And they can’t say the person didn’t make the decision. A truely great Christian allagory.
F
FiberZilla
Guest
The Bible says that we cannot pay God back for your sins in a million lifetimes. Our salvation is strictly the work of God, not us. he gets the glory, not us! The very idea of us paying for our own sins renders Christ’s death on the cross worthless. Our good works are the evidence of our salvation, not the cause. Your good behavior is worthless in God’s eyes when it comes to entering heaven. God does not justify people for their good deeds and behavior. God justifies the ungodly! You don’t clean up your act to get saved. Salvation comes first when one realizes their broken condition and begs for God’s mercy and help. Good behavior is therefore the fruit of our salvation, not the cause.
*“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
“However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” (Romans 4:5)
“I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” (Galatians 2:21)*
You don’t work for a gift. Thinking we can work our way into heaven or pay him back by burning in purgatory makes God a debtor to us and is a rejection of the cross of Christ. God owes us nothing!
V
Vincent
Guest
Pope Benedict would answer this beautifully,
[T]he fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior.
The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment.
Before his gaze all falsehood melts away.
This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves . . . .
His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”.
But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God . . . .
**[W]e cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world.
The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time . . . .
**
At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves.
The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.
This sounds like great news.The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment.
Before his gaze all falsehood melts away.
This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves . . . .
His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”.
But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God . . . .
**[W]e cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world.
The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time . . . .
**
At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves.
The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.
L
LilyM
Guest
Let me draw an analogy - I am a child with very little money. I break my mother’s priceless vase. Destroy it beyond repair. Can I pay her back its full value? Of course not. Am I for that reason let off scot free and owing her nothing at all? Equally, of course not.
So what is the result? As far as I, with my limited resources, am able, I am obliged to make restitution, even if it is only partial restitution. That’s the only just course of action. So I will give her what money I can, or do chores to work off whatever I can of the value, or make my restitution in some other way.
It may be that a generous friend of mine, who feels sorry for me, agrees to make up the balance of what I owe so that I actually can replace her vase with another equally valuable. Again, that doesn’t let me off scot free and with nothing required of me either.
So it is with sin. No, we can’t completely pay back God for our sins. And it IS only Christ’s redeeming passion that bridges that gap between what we owe God and what we can pay Him. But justice nonetheless requires that we make what restitution we can - hence His parable of the servant where He makes clear that we will not be let out of jail until WE pay the last penny - not the last penny of what God is owed, but the last penny of the amount that we are able, and thus required, to repay.
F
FiberZilla
Guest
Where is any of this in scripture? Nowhere! Where is the cross of Christ? Nowhere! God does not torture his children with fire to show his love. God sent his son Jesus to die in our place.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Now that is love.
F
FiberZilla
Guest
Are you saying that Christ did not pay it all?
“Come now, let us reason together,”
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds."Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.” Hebrews 10:16-17
The “penny” verse has absolutely nothing to do with purging of sin. That is about settling civil matters and lawsuits with an adversary before going taking it to the court system.
"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5:25-26)
God is not our adversary. That is a terrible distortion of scripture.
- Status