"Why believe in someone who is going to send us to Hell?"

[LoyalViews]

That is the question my friend is constantly asking me. He refuses to believe in God because he thinks it’s stupid to believe in “someone who will send you to pain and misery forever and ever in Hell, when you die”.

How can I explain that it is God who loves us each individually, a love so deep and divine that we can not even begin to understand, and it’s only because He loves us so as His own creation, that he would reward the good and punish the sinful and disobedient.

I ask him about Heaven. He doesn’t grasp the fact that God does NOT want us in Hell, but rather to be with Him forever in Heaven, and that it is by our own fault that we deserve Hell by not following the teachings of His Church, and by dying in a state of mortal sin.

That only leads to another question. “Why must we live by 10 set rules [which he doesn’t realise are only 10 common-sense, key-to-a-good-society rules, let ALONE the divine commandments given to us by GOD himself] which He supposedly gave to us?”

My friend is so hardened, and has little compassion or hope that something good will happen.

I know that I can not convert my friend, and that it’s only the Holy Spirit who can cause a conversion of Heart, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be used as an instrument. Which is why I’m asking you for help to not only refute my friend’s arguments, but also better explain them so that he will have a better understanding.

Thank you in advance, and God Bless :byzsoc:

 

[Lost_Sheep]

That is the question my friend is constantly asking me. He refuses to believe in God because he thinks it’s stupid to believe in “someone who will send you to pain and misery forever and ever in Hell, when you die”.

Interesting conundrum. On one hand, he says he does not believe in God Then he says God sends people to Hell. If he truly does not believe there is a God, then going to Hell becomes a moot point because there would be no God to send us there.

I’ll bet he actually believes in God or at least that He exists, but somehow thinks that by not following Him he is somehow not bound by God’s law and therefore he is safe from Hell.

 

[LoyalViews]

Interesting conundrum. On one hand, he says he does not believe in God Then he says God sends people to Hell. If he truly does not believe there is a God, then going to Hell becomes a moot point because there would be no God to send us there.

I’ll bet he actually believes in God or at least that He exists, but somehow thinks that by not following Him he is somehow not bound by God’s law and therefore he is safe from Hell.

You’re right, that could be the case.

 

[JRKH]

That is the question my friend is constantly asking me. He refuses to believe in God because he thinks it’s stupid to believe in “someone who will send you to pain and misery forever and ever in Hell, when you die”.

Your friend is tormented and lost and seems to somewhat border no despair, for he is not thinking logically.
We believe hell is certainly a possibility at death but neither is it a certainty. I would simply explain that I do not believe in the god that he describes. Rather I believe in one God who promises joy and happiness with Him in the next life.

How can I explain that it is God who loves us each individually, a love so deep and divine that we can not even begin to understand, and it’s only because He loves us so as His own creation, that he would reward the good and punish the sinful and disobedient.

I ask him about Heaven. He doesn’t grasp the fact that God does NOT want us in Hell, but rather to be with Him forever in Heaven, and that it is by our own fault that we deserve Hell by not following the teachings of His Church, and by dying in a state of mortal sin.

I think that one question that might help is this…Why choose to reject the promise of eternal life and happiness in heaven, because you find the threat of punishment in hell to be troubling?

That only leads to another question. “Why must we live by 10 set rules [which he doesn’t realize are only 10 common-sense, key-to-a-good-society rules, let ALONE the divine commandments given to us by GOD himself] which He supposedly gave to us?”

In this I would direct him to Mt 22:36-40 and the two great commands upon which all else is based. These are commands of Love and are the underpinnings of the ten commandments. An examination of the ten commandments will show that they are but an expansion, and expression of these two commands, and their core requirement of Love.

My friend is so hardened, and has little compassion or hope that something good will happen.

This is why I would take the approach of Love. Show Love toward him. Promote the teachings of Christ on Love and how the other things that might seem arbitrary to him are actually all tied back to the law of Love…and that indeed, Love is the very essence of God (1 John 4:7-8).
Perhaps he will come to understand that his own misery stems, not from God not loving him, but from his rejection of God. If he does come to see this, he will then be able to understand the true essence of hell and why we can say that God sends no one to hell - rather they send themselves.

I know that I can not convert my friend, and that it’s only the Holy Spirit who can cause a conversion of Heart, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be used as an instrument. Which is why I’m asking you for help to not only refute my friend’s arguments, but also better explain them so that he will have a better understanding.

Love Love Love…It is your greatest argument. It has no counter of equal strength.
Seek out Love in the NT Scriptures.
The great commandments - How the world will know we are His disciples - the greatest of the virtues - The very essence of God…and more…

Thank you in advance, and God Bless :byzsoc:

You are welcome. Hope this helps a little…

Peace
James

 

[FaithInTheLord]

Explain to Him that every major world religion (Christian or not) knows that we are exiled children of Adam and Eve; accountable for original sin (IDK if they actually call it that).

The one true God (The Father - The Son (Born a God-Man in Nazareth) - and the Holy Spirit ) is trying to save us from Hell. All he has to do is accept the help.

2,000 years ago the battle between Satan (who is real and is indirectly tormenting your friend with ideas planted in society) and all things good was won when The Father’s plan was finally revealed and Christ was born. From the day Christ was born - Satan knew his defeat. He knew that stopping the prophecy was impossible.

Tell him that all prophecy comes true. We are blessed enough to see the history of prophecy being true - I know I for one take that for granted.

It was written “Seek and you will find”. If your friend seeks the Kingdom - God has promised that he will find it.
If he thinks everyone is going to Hell it is because he has not read enough of the scripture to understand that it can not be read piece by piece.

It is possible that he is worried about past sins and doesn’t want to accept that he will be held accountable… If that is the case it is a tough thing to deal with. Good luck - thanks for fishing!

Have you considered a green scapular? I just picked one up. I am pretty sure of my “target” as well. Pray for intercession from our Mother.

 

[PennyinCanada]

He keeps bringing it up? Wants to argue with you?

He’s digging in his heals the more you try to find a way to ‘play’ him. I think I would smile and say “Heaven’s not for everyone.”.

Take the focus off hell and onto heaven. Is there a sports parallel you can make? “Not everyone wants free tickets to the Superbowl, or to be an all-star player”. What does he admire? Make a parallel to the saints who are the all-stars in heaven. The idea of athletes working hard but playing in the pros might make an argument that makes sense to him. Athletes have to have the same focus on their goals as Christians do on the prize of Heaven.

 

[Vouthon]

God sends no one to “hell” because it is not a place within space or time. It is an eternal state of mind and being which is freely chosen by an individual. Your friend needs to expunge from his mind the popular, folklore, middle-age, fairty tale picture of hell as this literal place of “punishment and agony” to which a wrathful God sends someone if they “misbehave”. That is poor, poor theology. With hell, one has to less think of where one will go for all eternity, as what one will be for all eternity. That choice is made in the here and now.

How can God be blamed for letting a person choose what they want to “be” for all eternity?

The God of wrath and punishment does not exist. That God must go, that idea, that human god must die. The reality of God is far above all human thinking and is ultimately unknowable to human intellect, inaccessible except for those who pass through the doorway of love and thereby pierce the cloud of unknowing between man and God with that dart of love.

He must also get out of his head the idea of “eternity” as “unending time”. Eternity is not time. Eternity is timelessness.

God is present everywhere, even in hell, only that in heaven the spiritual eyes of the Just are perfectly clear such that they can see God face to face as in a mirror and perceive the Eternal Light, whereas the damned are so blinded by hatred and sin that their spiritual eyes cannot perceive God at all and will never see him for all eternity, even though he is there absolutely with every fibre of his love, keeping them in existence - for if God were not there, the damned would cease to exist.

This is why Angelus Silesius said that if the sun hurt’s your eyes, the fault is not in the light but in your eyes which are damaged. God is the Sun and the eyes are a metaphor for our soul. The light is there at all times but a blind man cannot see it.

"…The vengeful God
of wrath and punishment
is a mere fairytale.
It simply is the Me
that makes me fail.

God stands far above the anger,
rage and indignation
ascribed to Him by primitive imagination

All heaven’s glory is within
and so is hell’s fierce burning.
You must yourself decide
in which direction
you are turning

Unless you find paradise
at your own center,
there is not
the smallest chance
that you may enter

No evil wills our God. Planned he the sinner’s end
And our unhappiness, he were not God, my friend.

If broken from its sun, a ray’s no longer bright;
Thou neither, leaving God, thy necessary light

God dwelleth in a light toward which there is no path;
He must become that light who need of vision hath.

If looking at the sun should rob you of your sight,
That would be fault of eyes, and not of the great light…"

- Angelus Silesius (1624 - 1677), Polish-German Catholic mystic & poet

“…In order to attain perfect union, we must divest ourselves of God…The common belief about God, that He is a great Taskmaster, whose function is to reward or punish, is cast out by perfect love; and in this sense the spiritual man does divest himself of God as conceived of by most people. The intellectual where is the essential unnameable nothingness. So we must call it, because we can discover no mode of being, under which to conceive it…it seems to us to be no-thing…You must give up human understanding if you want to reach the goal, because the truth is known by not knowing…This is the highest goal and the ‘where’ beyond boundaries. In this the spirituality of all spirits ends. Here to lose oneself forever is eternal happiness…Here in this region beyond thought the human spirit actively soars…In this wild mountain region of the ‘where’ beyond God there is an abyss full of play and feeling for all pure spirits…It is hidden for everything that is not God, except for those with whom he wants to share Himself…Eternity is life that is beyond time but includes within itself all time but without a before or after. And whoever is taken into the Eternal Nothing possesses all in all and has no ‘before or after’. Indeed a person taken within today would not have been there for a shorter period from the point of view of eternity than someone who had been taken within a thousand years ago…Now these people who are taken within, because of their boundless immanent oneness with God, see themselves as always and eternally existing…be steadfast and never rest content until you have obtained the Now of Eternity as your present possession in this life…”

***- Blessed Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest ***

 

[LaSainte]

Tell him that not believing that fire is hot isn’t going to prevent him from getting burned if he sticks his hand in.

 

[Vouthon]

God sends no one to “hell” because it is not a place within space or time. It is an eternal state of mind and being which is freely chosen by an individual. Your friend needs to expunge from his mind the popular, folklore, middle-age, fairy tale picture of hell as this literal place of “punishment and agony” to which a wrathful God sends someone if they “misbehave”. That is poor, poor theology. With hell, one has to less think of where one will go for all eternity, as what one will be for all eternity. That choice is made in the here and now.

How can God be blamed for letting a person choose what they want to “be” for all eternity?

The God of wrath and punishment does not exist. That God must go, that idea, that human god must die. The reality of God is far above all human thinking and is ultimately unknowable to human intellect, inaccessible except for those who pass through the doorway of love and thereby pierce the cloud of unknowing between man and God with that dart of love.

He must also get out of his head the idea of “eternity” as “unending time”. Eternity is not time. Eternity is timelessness.

God is present everywhere, even in hell, only that in heaven the spiritual eyes of the Just are perfectly clear such that they can see God face to face as in a mirror and perceive the Eternal Light, whereas the damned are so blinded by hatred and sin that their spiritual eyes cannot perceive God at all and will never see him for all eternity, even though he is there absolutely with every fibre of his love, keeping them in existence - for if God were not there, the damned would cease to exist. Indeed heaven and hell are not “ontologically” different “places” both experiences of the presence of God, which only differs depending on the quality of our soul.

This is why Angelus Silesius said that if the sun hurt’s your eyes, the fault is not in the light but in your eyes which are damaged. God is the Sun and the eyes are a metaphor for our soul. The light is there at all times but a blind man cannot see it. That is hell, the inability to see the Beatific Vision, our heart’s true and deepest desire.

"…The vengeful God
of wrath and punishment
is a mere fairytale.
It simply is the Me
that makes me fail.

God stands far above the anger,
rage and indignation
ascribed to Him by primitive imagination

All heaven’s glory is within
and so is hell’s fierce burning.
You must yourself decide
in which direction
you are turning

What is the meaning of Eternal? It is timelessness.
Time without end is that which makes a hell infernal

Unless you find paradise
at your own center,
there is not
the smallest chance
that you may enter

No evil wills our God. Planned he the sinner’s end
And our unhappiness, he were not God, my friend.

If broken from its sun, a ray’s no longer bright;
Thou neither, leaving God, thy necessary light

God dwelleth in a light toward which there is no path;
He must become that light who need of vision hath.

If gazing on the Sun endangereth thy sight,
The blame is in thine eyes, and not in that great Light…"

- Angelus Silesius (1624 - 1677), Polish-German Catholic mystic & poet

“…In order to attain perfect union, we must divest ourselves of God…The common belief about God, that He is a great Taskmaster, whose function is to reward or punish, is cast out by perfect love; and in this sense the spiritual man does divest himself of God as conceived of by most people. The intellectual where is the essential unnameable nothingness. So we must call it, because we can discover no mode of being, under which to conceive it…it seems to us to be no-thing…You must give up human understanding if you want to reach the goal, because the truth is known by not knowing…This is the highest goal and the ‘where’ beyond boundaries. In this the spirituality of all spirits ends. Here to lose oneself forever is eternal happiness…Here in this region beyond thought the human spirit actively soars…In this wild mountain region of the ‘where’ beyond God there is an abyss full of play and feeling for all pure spirits…It is hidden for everything that is not God, except for those with whom he wants to share Himself…Eternity is life that is beyond time but includes within itself all time but without a before or after. And whoever is taken into the Eternal Nothing possesses all in all and has no ‘before or after’. Indeed a person taken within today would not have been there for a shorter period from the point of view of eternity than someone who had been taken within a thousand years ago…Now these people who are taken within, because of their boundless immanent oneness with God, see themselves as always and eternally existing…be steadfast and never rest content until you have obtained the Now of Eternity as your present possession in this life…”

***- Blessed Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest ***

 

[FaithInTheLord]

Great post.

except God is vengeful in a perfectly merciful way. It is written that vengeance is his.

God does have very real wrath. The way it works is God permits things to do what they will without his intervention. I don’t like the way that sentence is worded but I can’t find better words right now.

Of course we could never really know if something is God’s wrath or a test that is a result of good. Or just a test that is a result of something we cannot comprehend.

 

[Neoplatonist]

How can God be blamed for letting a person choose what they want to “be” for all eternity?

He must also get out of his head the idea of “eternity” as “unending time”. Eternity is not time. Eternity is timelessness.

But that brings up the interesting problem: We are as children compared to God, farther than the distance between a human adult and a kindergartner. Similarly, in comparison to eternity, this life is a blink - less than the equivalent of one hour relative to our whole human life.

Now given these things, who in the world would create a system where a child’s entire life is decided once and for all by how they happen to behave during one particular hour of one morning at kindergarten? (This becomes all the more unsettling when we contemplate how much more it holds as we extend the distances out since the gap between us and God is even greater, and the gap between this life and eternity is even longer.)

 

[Vouthon]

Great post.

except God is vengeful in a perfectly merciful way. It is written that vengeance is his.

God does have very real wrath. The way it works is God permits things to do what they will without his intervention. I don’t like the way that sentence is worded but I can’t find better words right now.

Of course we could never really know if something is God’s wrath or a test that is a result of good. Or just a test that is a result of something we cannot comprehend.

Thank you for your reply brother/sister Faith

The phrase “vengeance is the Lord’s”, while obviously inspired by God, is I think an example of what Silesius (a mystic approved by the church whose book the Cherubinic Wanderer was published with the imprimatur and nihil obstat) meant when he spoke of, “the anger, rage and indignation ascribed to Him by primitive imagination”. The divine authors of Scripture were, after all, ancient people who spoke inspired truths as delivered through their human minds.

In the context in which it is spoken, in the Torah, it is actually a limitation of violence - telling the ancient Jews not to take revenge upon other human beings but to leave everything to God.

I agree fully with you when you write, “The way it works is God permits things to do what they will without his intervention”, only that I view this as God’s love, peritting a person to choose what path they want to take, heaven or hell, respecting our freewill. You are correct in that this is actually, also, a form of “justice” in that the person will receive - in a perfect naturally way, without God intervening to restrain the person’s freewill - the fruit of their actions: hell.

God’s love is thus both merciful and just. I prefer “justice” to “wrath” because vengeance and “anger” are human emotions, whereas God is impassible according Thomas Aquinas, without emotions.

God cannot have “wrath” because God is immutable (unchanging) and impassible (without human emotions). For him to experience wrath would bring him down to the human sphere and denote change within him, which as you know cannot be because God in his Essence is wholly transcendent and unknowable.

Emotions are a result of changeableness. God is one eternal divine act, which in his very nature is the self-emptying love between the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.

I therefore view the language of scripture attributong “emotions” to God as figurative, for the benefit of human beings, rather than testament to the actual reality of God.

 

[Vouthon]

But that brings up the interesting problem: We are as children compared to God, farther than the distance between a human adult and a kindergartner.** Similarly, in comparison to eternity, this life is a blink - less than the equivalent of one hour relative to our whole human life**.

Now given these things, who in the world would create a system where a child’s entire life is decided once and for all by how they happen to behave during one particular hour of one morning at kindergarten?

And yet as distant as we might be from God, and as like children we might be to Him, we are made in God’s Image and have an immortal soul breathed into us at conception directly from the Holy Spirit, created out of nothing rather than anything else created like our mortal bodies. Our nobility cannot possibly be imagined. Our soul is an abyss almost as deep as God Himself. Nothing else in creation can compare to us. That intimacy between God and ourselves lessens the gap quite considerably in my opinion. That gap is closed even more through love, with God’s self-emptying of Himself into creation in the person of Christ. God became man, so that we might become God. Is there any “distance” there?

Yet again, you are thinking according to human understanding - according time. Our human life is a like a “blink” compared to endless time, it is not a blink compared to Eternity, which outside time and exists as an Eternal Now. Eternity is here when we lose a sense of past and future. A man could live for a million years and still be in ignorance and sin. A man could be alive for 17 years and have a simplicity and natural goodness far in advance of that. It is not a matter of how much time is given to us to decide whether we want to lose ourselves and return to God or remain with our individual “self” and selfish will for all eternity (which remember is not eternal time but a timeless state). What matters is what you are inside now because eternity is an Eternal Now and what you do with the time you are given. And here we must dispense with human categories of judging other people: so-and-so did that particular sin and so he/she is damned. That is not how it works. It is all about one’s state of mind. Catholicism recognises implicit desire and will for forgiveness, for goodness, for baptism for God which can redeem a person even if he/she lacks explicit desire, provided that they are on some level ignorant. How many people have an invisible, implicit desire for forgiveness within them, even perhaps not apparent to themselvs? Its impossible to tell but its a reality.

That is of course, where purgatory comes in as well. Most of us, even if we are objectively in mortal sin (subjectively we might be vincibly ignorant), are most likely in a state of “purgation”. We are trying to be good, we want to improve. I think that most people, even if they are attached to inordinate desire, actually want to be good people and deep down have an implicit desire for forgiveness. We might not be able to see but God can see into the deepest core of a person, and thus I feel that his grace would seep into that person and continue to help them advance towards heaven. If they remain in this state of purgation, of trying to be better even if they fail, then I imagine that they will remain in this state when they die: purgatory, and eventually progress to blessedness. God does not judge according to human understanding. He would not have created us doomed to failure, which is why purgatory exists as a subsequent state of mind in addition to hell and heaven. And purgatory exists not because God created it (Iis a state) but rather because of the way he created us, in his Image, such that it is very difficult for a person created to be naturally good, despite original sin, to completely reject all semblance of humanity and have no remorse, even on an implicit level, for his actions. Human nature is grey, rarely black and white. I personally, although it is just a “hunch” without any claim to certainity, would place most people in that purgative state of mind.

If it were a simple option between heaven and hell (absolute perfection and absolute imperfection) and if infinity and eternity were a perpetual succession of unending time to which our fleeting life could be thought of as a “blink” in comparison, then I could see it as unjust, however that is not how it appears to me in fact.

As Christians we believe that God has done all that he possibly can to save us from ourselves, without denying our freewill to choose. That is why he became man, out of love for us and even prior to this sent the prophets and ancient wise men into the world to guide humanity. He intended no evil for us, only our good - yet he must allow of us the freedom of “will” to choose, because else we are not made in his Image because God is free of everything and has a divine will. Without our freewill we cannot be made in his image but are like unto animals, without responsibility for our actions.

Excellent thoughts though. We need to grapple with such hard questions

 

[Abnormality]

Interesting conundrum. On one hand, he says he does not believe in God Then he says God sends people to Hell. If he truly does not believe there is a God, then going to Hell becomes a moot point because there would be no God to send us there.

I’ll bet he actually believes in God or at least that He exists, but somehow thinks that by not following Him he is somehow not bound by God’s law and therefore he is safe from Hell.

You can find the idea of God undesirable without actually believing that God exists. The OP would do better to rationally argue why Gods nature as love would justify him torturing bad people in eternal fire.

Without that, neither of you have a rational justification to believe in hell. You just believe in it.

 

[nhamm10]

I agree with the past poster. God doesn’t send people to hell, it is a choice that you make whether you will head there or not. It is Your actions, Your words or lack of that would put you on that path. His choice. Have him watch these links. Maybe it might help him?

cbn.com/700club/features/life-beyond-the-grave2/?cpid=DM1210291

I can’t get the exact video but there are about 10 to choose from some are people who experienced heaven and some who experienced hell.

 

[Neoplatonist]

Our soul is an abyss almost as deep as God Himself. Nothing else in creation can compare to us. That intimacy between God and ourselves lessens the gap quite considerably in my opinion. That gap is closed even more through love, with God’s self-emptying of Himself into creation in the person of Christ. God became man, so that we might become God. Is there any “distance” there?

If it were a simple option between heaven and hell (absolute perfection and absolute imperfection) and if infinity and eternity were a perpetual succession of unending time to which our fleeting life could be thought of as a “blink” in comparison, then I could see it as unjust, however that is not how it appears to me in fact.

As Christians we believe that God has done all that he possibly can to save us from ourselves, without denying our freewill to choose. That is why he became man, out of love for us and even prior to this sent the prophets and ancient wise men into the world to guide humanity. He intended no evil for us, only our good - yet he must allow of us the freedom of “will” to choose, because else we are not made in his Image because God is free of everything and has a divine will. Without our freewill we cannot be made in his image but are like unto animals, without responsibility for our actions.

Excellent thoughts though. We need to grapple with such hard questions

Great ideas. I like the level of engagement you’re bringing to this.

1. Our soul is an abyss almost as deep as God himself. He is infinite and we are not. There is no ‘almost’ in a comparison like that.
2. You could be right about the danger of thinking about time in a linear fashion. We could compare this life to a pixel in a larger picture, or a grain of sand on an infinitely large beach, or other possible analogies. The principle distinction remains that in this lifetime no one willfully chooses the bad over the good, so if they do, it is because they still have an insufficient understanding of the good, they have been to slow to act on the good (though, again, the lack of haste is going to be a reflection of them not understanding some aspect of the good), and so on. As learning, seeking souls, surely they would, at some point cross the line to a sufficient understanding of the good, such that their wills would desire what their improved knowledge shows to be good, and their actions would move in accord with their new will. To compare this to something like math class, either we are a) learning disabled, and can never pass beyond a wrong grasp of working with fractions, b) we are fine and remedial work will help us take the next step, or c) the teacher is not able to connect the material with our learning style. Now often there is a claim in theological discussions of something like d) we are willfully resistant to understanding. However, I think such resistance can always be linked back to some misperception or gap in our understanding, which necessarily moves into one of a - c.
3. God loved us and poured himself into this world to close that distance. I can allow for that, so maybe we are more like middle school students compared to an adult. Still a serious gap - especially in terms of complex moral understanding and reasoning. However, pouring our love into a child to bring them closer in one sense does not create a leap in their intellectual grasp of mathematics or metaphysics. Nor does it necessarily hasten their moral development, otherwise every child of a loving parent would grow up to be a virtuous person. (We must bracket the fact that many of those loving parents also provide proper moral and religious formation for their child. While causally connected, these two things are not identical.)

What do you think?

 

[ChurchSoldier]

Our natural state is separation from God and therefore on the path to experiencing “darkness and gnashing of teeth”.

It is only through God’s love that some of us come to accept his offer to be with Him.

He so want’s us he has done everything possible to ensure we have the opportunity to receive the message and accept the offer, including sending His Son and creating a body of faithful to ensure the message is carried down through the generations to us.

Hope your friend turns his heart.

PAX

 

[Neoplatonist]

Our natural state is separation from God and therefore on the path to experiencing “darkness and gnashing of teeth”.

It is only through God’s love that some of us come to accept his offer to be with Him.

He so want’s us he has done everything possible to ensure we have the opportunity to receive the message and accept the offer, including sending His Son and creating a body of faithful to ensure the message is carried down through the generations to us.

Hope your friend turns his heart.

PAX

There are a lot of ways of teaching and reaching out besides telling a few people and having them write and speak about it to everyone else. Have angels appeared to you to reassure you that God exists and he cares? Have you heard a booming voice from the sky or a burning bush that spoke or seen priests raise anyone from the dead? I think we are a long, long way from being able to say “he has done everything possible.”

 

[FaithInTheLord]

Thank you for your reply brother/sister Faith

The phrase “vengeance is the Lord’s”, while obviously inspired by God, is I think an example of what Silesius (a mystic approved by the church whose book the Cherubinic Wanderer was published with the imprimatur and nihil obstat) meant when he spoke of, “the anger, rage and indignation ascribed to Him by primitive imagination”. The divine authors of Scripture were, after all, ancient people who spoke inspired truths as delivered through their human minds.

In the context in which it is spoken, in the Torah, it is actually a limitation of violence - telling the ancient Jews not to take revenge upon other human beings but to leave everything to God.

I agree fully with you when you write, “The way it works is God permits things to do what they will without his intervention”, only that I view this as God’s love, peritting a person to choose what path they want to take, heaven or hell, respecting our freewill. You are correct in that this is actually, also, a form of “justice” in that the person will receive - in a perfect naturally way, without God intervening to restrain the person’s freewill - the fruit of their actions: hell.

God’s love is thus both merciful and just. I prefer “justice” to “wrath” because vengeance and “anger” are human emotions, whereas God is impassible according Thomas Aquinas, without emotions.

God cannot have “wrath” because God is immutable (unchanging) and impassible (without human emotions). For him to experience wrath would bring him down to the human sphere and denote change within him, which as you know cannot be because God in his Essence is wholly transcendent and unknowable.

Emotions are a result of changeableness. God is one eternal divine act, which in his very nature is the self-emptying love between the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.

I therefore view the language of scripture attributong “emotions” to God as figurative, for the benefit of human beings, rather than testament to the actual reality of God.

You have given me a lot to think about. … Emotions being a result of changeableness. I can not find a gap in that logic. I have never read any of St. Aquinas do you have a link where I can read what he taught? I am also interested in St. Padre Pio and the tribulations I have heard he went though but I can not find a decent link online. Could you recommend any?

His vengeance is just - mans is not. In fact it would be better if we had a separate word for vengeance that comes from God and vengeance that comes from man. Since we don’t we allow our words to confuse us.

 

[FaithInTheLord]

There are a lot of ways of teaching and reaching out besides telling a few people and having them write and speak about it to everyone else. Have angels appeared to you to reassure you that God exists and he cares? Have you heard a booming voice from the sky or a burning bush that spoke or seen priests raise anyone from the dead? I think we are a long, long way from being able to say “he has done everything possible.”

You are drawing conclusions and making assumptions.