The Problem of Hell

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johnny

*If it was taught in the bible that our short physical life and existence was all there was, and there was no hell or heaven, I would consider God to be more loving than if there was both a heaven and Hell. *

If that were the case, what would be your motive to love good and hate evil? Why not just love evil and hate good?
 
Charlemagne:

Job was tested based on Satan stating this very fact - does someone only love God for what he can and will do for them. Job lost everything, and was living in a sort of “hell” on earth, not knowing when things would change. That is the universal issue being played out now.

If we love God ONLY for what he can do for us, we will not pass Satan’s test. If we love God for his qualities and for what he has already done for us, that is the sort of love God wants us to have. That is freewill based love. The reward is secondary.
 
VeritasSeeker said:
Hey, I am writing a paper on the the problem of hell and wold like to hear your opinions/ answers on this “problem”, (anihilationism): We are finite beings and therefore can only sin a finite amount. So our temporal sins can only warrant a temporal punishment. Therefore, If God is all just, then hell cannot be eternal. This annihilationist view is held by Seventh day Adventists and Jehovah Witnesses. It must be admitted that this is, at least at first glance, a powerful argument. God could damn people for aeons and aeons and then annihilate them instead of damning them for eternity.
  • Thanks in advance!
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Hi VeritasSeeker! I am a Greek Orthodox Christian and I must admit I also tackle this question how a Good and Merciful God will allow his children to suffer eternally. For God to allow this means He has limitations to what He can do. Personally I believe God can save anyone anywhere at any time. But He needs our prayers, sacrifices and penances and our willingness to do so. The question then is why does God wish not to save His people on His own but chooses to wait for prayers and then He will only act on them. Doesn’t He have an interest on everyone. Why does He want to wait for others to pray and even wait for others to pray for others. Who knows, may be in the end God has something for the souls in hell anyway. May be He choose to teach this Hell doctrine to prevent everyone from sinning like crazy. Had He not taught about Hell may be we will all be in the worst state but by teaching it He prevents some of us rejecting Him so that we can do good deeds. So these may eventually receive a higher heaven but in the end because He is so Merciful He will even let the damned that are in Hell a change for the better and they will have a lower taste of heaven so that eventually He allows everyone this particular Grace. We do not know really what He will do for the damned at the End. He may have choosen not to reveal that He will eventually save them because if this was the case that He will save everyone then those who responded to His case to become Saints will not have deemed it necessary to do so because in the End He is going to save them anyway. For some reason God has not given us all the reasons and details. Who knows may be in the End all will be saved. Or may be it is true and God cannot save the damn after they enter Hell. Only when the End comes will we know this. Who knows you will either witness the greatest suprise of all or you will know that the truth of Hell cannot be changed and therefore the reality that those in Hell can never be saved. Personally I hope God is greater than what He told us and in the End He may suprise us and let all the damned into a special Grace of heaven. We have to wait and see and in the mean while pray for those who may be in a state of hell so that they may receive God’s Saving Grace before they die. It will be nice if I am what I was proposing was right and God will eventually save everyone. But if I am wrong boy we need to pray not only for ouselves but for others who desperately need God’s Saving Grace! God Bless!
 
But to conclude this philosophical question one must include the doctrine of the 2nd coming. If for instant God will eventually save everyone then the 2nd coming will be deemed unnecessary because why will He come to end the planet when He plans to save everyone anyway. The 2nd coming teaches me that God will show His Justice and on that Day He will be very severe. It will be a terrible day a day of wrath because the Son of God is forced by the wickedness of man to come to save what few are on earth to be saved otherwise if He does not come then these also will be lost. The 2nd coming tells me that hell is irreversable and cannot be changed. Why will God end a planet if everyone are going to be save anyway. No sadly the teaching that brings me down to earth is this 2nd coming. The reality is God will come with His severe Justice and this teaches me we are not to fool around with our lives but to live fullest in the Love and Mercy of God. We are to love God eternally and today is the day that I will choose to do so because if we do not love God now especially when we are young we might not love Him later. God Bless!
 
johnny

Job was tested based on Satan stating this very fact - does someone only love God for what he can and will do for them. Job lost everything, and was living in a sort of “hell” on earth, not knowing when things would change. That is the universal issue being played out now.

Job got everything back and then some. What does that tell you? That God rewards us for loving him. So what should God do if we hate Him or deny His existence? Should He reward us? Or should He give us what we apparently want … nothing to do with Him? In other words, Hell.

If we love God ONLY for what he can do for us, we will not pass Satan’s test.

I’m a little puzzled by this line of thinking. We always love God for what He can do for us, just as we love our earthly mothers and fathers for what they can do for us: first of all give us life; then nurture and sustain us into adulthood. Any parent who aborted his child will hardly get the love of his/her child. Any parent who cruelly treated his/her child, would hardly deserve that child’s love. We do love God for what He can do for us. That is not selfish. We love God because He would die for us. That also is not selfish. That is gratitude.👍
 
Charlemagne_II said:
johnny

Job was tested based on Satan stating this very fact - does someone only love God for what he can and will do for them. Job lost everything, and was living in a sort of “hell” on earth, not knowing when things would change. That is the universal issue being played out now.

Job got everything back and then some. What does that tell you? That God rewards us for loving him. So what should God do if we hate Him or deny His existence? Should He reward us? Or should He give us what we apparently want … nothing to do with Him? In other words, Hell.

If we love God ONLY for what he can do for us, we will not pass Satan’s test.

I’m a little puzzled by this line of thinking. We always love God for what He can do for us, just as we love our earthly mothers and fathers for what they can do for us: first of all give us life; then nurture and sustain us into adulthood. Any parent who aborted his child will
hardly get the love of his/her child. Any parent who cruelly treated his/her child, would hardly deserve that child’s love. We do love God for what He can do for us. That is not

selfish. We love God because He would die for us. That also is not selfish. That is

gratitude.👍
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C.S. Lewis would agree with you. See his “Four Loves.”👍
 
Mortal Sin is an eternal Sin and deserves only eternal punishment. Why? Because mortal sin is a turning from your Creator. It is rejecting Love. Love for & from God and love for & from mankind. Love is eternal and complete rejection of that Love requires eternal loss. Hell is a result of free will. You have the ability to accept or reject the Love of God and Man. If you accept it then you can spend the rest of eternity with God. If you reject it then you do not want an eternity with God and Hell is for you.

This society want to reject the concept of Hell because it has rejected God and has gone the route of Satan. Satan is the god of this world and this world freely accepts him as their master. So it only makes sense that those who follow Satan follow him to hell eternally.

If you do not want to go to hell, which you shouldn’t then we must accept what mankind is called to do and that is love God and love man.
 
So why can’t God just allow content sinners to live a content life, forever? Why force a sinner to pick between Heaven or Hell? Why the black-and-white?

Example: A married couple using birth control, unrepentantly. They have a childless marriage, due to financial constraints. Still, they love each other. Both of them are happy. Then, one day, their car crashes and both die. Both, apparently, will choose Hell, where they will be unhappy forever.

Why that change, from content sinning to agony? Infinitely loving does not seem compatible with infinitely merciful.
 
ERose said:
Mortal Sin is an eternal Sin and deserves only eternal punishment. Why? Because mortal sin is a turning from your Creator. It is rejecting Love. Love for & from God and love for & from mankind. Love is eternal and complete rejection of that Love requires eternal loss. Hell is a result of free will. You have the ability to accept or reject the Love of God and Man. If you accept it then you can spend the rest of eternity with God. If you reject it then you do not want an eternity with God and Hell is for you.

This society want to reject the concept of Hell because it has rejected God and has gone the route of Satan. Satan is the god of this world and this world freely accepts him as their master. So it only makes sense that those who follow Satan follow him to hell eternally.

If you do not want to go to hell, which you shouldn’t then we must accept what mankind is called to do and that is love God and love man.
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This is the reason why Jesus came 2000 years ago. At that time the world was also subjected to Satan’s lies and deceits. We get a glimpsed of that from Jesus when He told the Pharisees " you are of your father the devil and you listen to him and to his lies ". Jesus knew that the devil will attack Him because this was the will of God to reveal or to expose the evil the devil has accomplished in the world. In the truest sense the act of Jesus been crucified was to expose the evil one. The devil does not usually attack someone in this manner but rather subject that person into his lies and deceits. I have an expression I teach at my Orthodox Church which I use and it is this " the only power the devil has is the power you give him ". Now Jesus gave permission for the evil spirits to tempt mankind and since then it became so bad that Jesus had to come to remedy it. The remedy will be the cost of His own Life. We see that in the words Jesus said when He refer to a man’s goods been hold by a strong man so that a stronger man may come to bind that strong man so that his goods will no longer be held by the first strong man. The strong man is the devil and the stronger one is Jesus. When Jesus came He hid His Divinity so that even the devil did not know. The devil knew he was the messiah but it did not dawn on him that this was God in human flesh. The devil thought the messiah will be only a mere man someone like King David but greater. So while Jesus began His Ministry with alot of miracles and continued for 3 years the devil attacked Him. By attacking a person as good as Jesus the devil revealed himself or precisely exposed himself. This exposure although necessary was to show us how evil operates in the world. This type of evil is not always detected. Now I am not referring to the crucifixation but before it. Evil as the devil prescribes always disguises itself as good. That is what happened to the world before Jesus camed. Now that He has arrived the evil will not disguise itself as good but outwardly shows itself and exposes itself as it truely is. This is why God allowed His Son to be crucified. Now the people will hopefully recognize evil as it is and to follow the One who can help you overcome it. While the devil attacked Jesus not knowing that this is the Son of God he has now given the Lord Jesus the victory God needs to defeat the evil one and his plans to bring humanity away from God. God defeated the devil’s plans and now the people can have the resources they need to defeat him as while. God did this to show His Love for us and to show how to defeat evil and to conquer it. In the story of Job we see this as well. Job is a type or foreshadow of the Lord Jesus Christ. His willingness to suffer earns the praise of the Almighty who if you read the book commends Job and justifies him. There is condemnation to his friends who had unjustly condemn him ( do you see the same resemblance to the Lord Jesus ) yet through Job’s prayers are forgiven for their sin and are brought back to God. Suffering if properly understood has the potential to open up the gates of heaven and to receive the highest praise from God. For all of you who suffer remember that you are resembling Christ crucified and you are very loved by God so much that He actually withholds punishments to those around you who may have been lost if you were not suffering. Your suffering is precious so precious that the God will see you in the highest heaven. Resembling your Crucified Lord you give God more possibilities to save mankind and He the Lord will always be grateful to you for it. St.John Chrysostom wrote that if you receive the gift of healing through a miracle then you owe God. However if you suffer for Him then He the Lord owes you. God Bless!
 
aperture

So why can’t God just allow content sinners to live a content life, forever? Why force a sinner to pick between Heaven or Hell? Why the black-and-white?

You are not really talking about allowing. God has already done that. God allowed Adam and Eve to be content. They chose not to be content. They chose to sin.

What you really seem to want is a world in which there are no choices between good and evil, and no consequences for either. Just an eternal state of blithering contentment. God is not malicious. God wants us to reach for something more rewarding than contentment. If we want something considerably less, that is our choice, not His.

In that sense, at least, God is the ultimate liberal. With Him, we always get our way. 😉
 
momor said:
Do you think the rage and hatred you felt from the demon is an active force in itself or is it more like an absence of love or a vacuum/void - something so cold it is felt like fire? Kind of like the cold sucking void of space vs the radiating heat of the sun. It’s hard for me to imagine that God created hatred but I can imagine an absence of His love causing untold desolation. The experience of God’s love is often decribed as a burning as well.
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Your comments remind me of Dante’s Inferno. At the center of hell they find Lucifer frozen into a lake of ice and chewing on Judas. Other parts of Dante’s hell are quite fiery. Perhaps we need multiple metaphors to describe all of the suffering of this godforsaken place. I wouldn’t call the form of hatred we call rage an absence. It is more like pouring something destructive into the void left behind by love’s departure (whether permanent or temporary). You also pointed out that we can use the same adjective to describe two opposed realities, such as burning love and burning hatred. It seems the metaphor derives its meaning from the noun in such cases.
 
Charlemagne:

Job did not know or expect that God would give him back everything, so his motive for staying true to God was not based on any hope of reward.

Unlike our natural parents, God has qualities that certainly transcend human nature. This allows us to love him more than even our own parents, yet we have never directly met God “face to face”. In fact, that love is very difficult to explain fully, since it would seem we should love our parents more (assuming they raised us nicely) as they directly gave us more, and their existence needs no faith. My point is that the special love we feel towards God is not based merely what he give us.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
aperture

So why can’t God just allow content sinners to live a content life, forever? Why force a sinner to pick between Heaven or Hell? Why the black-and-white?

You are not really talking about allowing. God has already done that. God allowed Adam and Eve to be content. They chose not to be content. They chose to sin.

What you really seem to want is a world in which there are no choices between good and evil, and no consequences for either. Just an eternal state of blithering contentment. God is not malicious. God wants us to reach for something more rewarding than contentment. If we want something considerably less, that is our choice, not His.

In that sense, at least, God is the ultimate liberal. With Him, we always get our way. 😉
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My point is not that a life of sin is better than a life with God. My point is that there are people living “sinful” lives (as in the example of the couple that I provided) who, if the Catholic Church is correct, end up being tortured for eternity once they die.

Now, you say that God is very merciful, but has no choice but to allow people to choose Hell if they don’t want to be with Him. That seems like a false dichotomy to me, given that people on earth are apparently separating themselves from God through various mortal sins and aren’t unhappy, yet don’t have such an option in the afterlife.
 
aperture said:
My point is not that a life of sin is better than a life with God. My point is that there are people living “sinful” lives (as in the example of the couple that I provided) who, if the Catholic Church is correct, end up being tortured for eternity once they die.

Now, you say that God is very merciful, but has no choice but to allow people to choose Hell if they don’t want to be with Him. That seems like a false dichotomy to me, given that people on earth are apparently separating themselves from God through various mortal sins and aren’t unhappy, yet don’t have such an option in the afterlife.
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Your position seems pretty intuitive. But isn’t your question basically, why does God not accept, respect, confirm mediocrity? IOW: what’s wrong with mediocrity/lukewarmness? Why should God spew from his mouth those who want to - and who choose to want to - do what they feel like rather than seeking to do *God’s *will? IOW: Why shouldn’t those who choose to ignore the doctor’s advice that they are sick unto death be cured and escape death anyway?
 
aperture said:
My point is not that a life of sin is better than a life with God. My point is that there are people living “sinful” lives (as in the example of the couple that I provided) who, if the Catholic Church is correct, end up being tortured for eternity once they die.

Now, you say that God is very merciful, but has no choice but to allow people to choose Hell if they don’t want to be with Him. That seems like a false dichotomy to me, given that people on earth are apparently separating themselves from God through various mortal sins and aren’t unhappy, yet don’t have such an option in the afterlife.
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Any existence without God is hell. God does not want mindless servants he wants us to be his children, thus he gave us free will to choose the life we want to live. Somewhere in this life you must make a choice about your eternity. Do you want to live for all of eternity with God or not? It is simple as that.

Concerning hell being a torment or punishment, it cannot help to be, because in hell sin will be rampant and more so. All sin leads to pain and suffering and without forgiveness or redemption, sin devolves in even greater sin and greater pain and suffering. This for all eternity, think about it. In hell there is not true happiness or contentment because true happiness or contentment is only found with God. All hell has to offer is saddness and dispair.
 
johnny

My point is that the special love we feel towards God is not based merely what he give us.

Agreed, but what He gives us is not to be repudiated as an important reason to love Him. And what He can withhold from us, if we so choose that He should withhold it, is a reason for us to examine our motives. We do not get a free pass for not believing in God. We do not get to say, on the day of our individual judgment, “If I had only known!” God has given us every reason to know, and to hope, that something waits for us after death other than dirt and the worms.
 
Betterave said:
Your position seems pretty intuitive. But isn’t your question basically, why does God not accept, respect, confirm mediocrity? IOW: what’s wrong with mediocrity/lukewarmness? Why should God spew from his mouth those who want to - and who choose to want to - do what they feel like rather than seeking to do *God’s *will? IOW: Why shouldn’t those who choose to ignore the doctor’s advice that they are sick unto death be cured and escape death anyway?
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The re-phrasings (IOW…) are actually pretty similar to what I’m thinking about. If you intended them as a way of highlighting how illogical you find my position, well, I think the questions you’ve written are actually worth talking about.
 
aperture said:
The re-phrasings (IOW…) are actually pretty similar to what I’m thinking about. If you intended them as a way of highlighting how illogical you find my position, well, I think the questions you’ve written are actually worth talking about.
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I’m glad my IOW’s weren’t way off the mark. I was not intending to dismiss your position as illogical, although the last one does smack of absurdity, don’t you think? I do hope that reflecting on the IOW’s is likely to be helpful in coming to answers to your concerns. Do you have any answers to the questions that you’d like to submit for discussion?
 
Betterave said:
I’m glad my IOW’s weren’t way off the mark. I was not intending to dismiss your position as illogical, although the last one does smack of absurdity, don’t you think? I do hope that reflecting on the IOW’s is likely to be helpful in coming to answers to your concerns. Do you have any answers to the questions that you’d like to submit for discussion?
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Actually, revisiting your post, I’m a little more hesitant about the re-phrasings. Particularly this one:
Why should God spew from his mouth those who want to - and who choose to want to - do what they feel like rather than seeking to do God’s will?
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Is “spew” referring to creation, or what?

Anyway, it’s kind of pointless for me to try answers, here, since I only asked the questions because I didn’t have answers :). I’m really just trying to reconcile inconsistencies I see in the concept of Catholicism’s God, so that’s why I’m here.
 
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