Why Hell isn't all that unreasonable

[sdegutis]

One reason I used to object to all forms of Judeo-Christian monotheism is because of the duality of either Heaven or Hell, either eternal happiness or eternal pain. It seemed to me that if someone wanted only a small amount of happiness and lived a mediocre life, not too great and not too evil either, that person should have an fitting final destination that’s neither not all that wonderful nor all that horrible.

But human beings are built to be extremely happy. That is our ultimate goal in life. Which explains why we’re constantly looking for happiness all the time in everything we do. And yet nothing we try satisfies our happiness. No matter how happy we are or no matter how long, it’s never enough. Which makes sense, because we are designed for pure happiness, our desire for happiness is infinite. But we look for it in created things, which are by their very nature finite. That is why God, who is the only source of infinite goodness and happiness in existence, is the only way to satisfy this natural urge.

And since God is infinite, there’s no way to have “some” of God, it’s either all or nothing. And if God is infinite goodness, then to be with God is infinite happiness, and to be without God is ultimate sadness and misery. So Hell shouldn’t seem so unreasonable or unfair, it’s only a natural consequence of the principles at hand.

 

[Perplexity]

I think Catholics would say we can never experience God in his fullness, only to the maximum of our capacity to do so. But, if you were to disagree, why couldn’t we have only some of God’s love? Supposedly, that’s what we do now. Further, the theist would probably grant that we partially experience God’s other properties by resembling them, like free will, moral agency or knowledge. Why should love be different?

 

[RedDuke50]

I think Catholics would say we can never experience God in his fullness, only to the maximum of our capacity to do so. But, if you were to disagree, why couldn’t we have only some of God’s love? Supposedly, that’s what we do now. Further, the theist would probably grant that we partially experience God’s other properties by resembling them, like free will, moral agency or knowledge. Why should love be different?

God can’t give only a portion of Himself for a spirit is not able to be seperated or broken like material things are. So, He loves all people infinitely for He is infinite. Yet, as we are created as finite creatures, we can’t hold infinite love, but He is still loving us infinitely. I hope I helped a little bit.

 

[JDaniel]

I think Catholics would say we can never experience God in his fullness, only to the maximum of our capacity to do so. But, if you were to disagree, why couldn’t we have only some of God’s love? Supposedly, that’s what we do now. Further, the theist would probably grant that we partially experience God’s other properties by resembling them, like free will, moral agency or knowledge. Why should love be different?

Perplexed:

You put lots of words into the mouths of Catholics. During our time here, we will always doubt that God really, really loves us. But, that’s a good reason to pray. However, the OP’s point was that no matter what we do, we can never receive that absolute security of knowing his love as it seems to always be extraordinary and elusive.

We know good from bad, ethical from unethical, moral from immoral. Though we are infused with them, “love” is a Transcendental. The secure knowledge of that love that each of us continually seeks, but cannot seem to grasp, can only be obtained after this life, provided we have favor with God. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t love some of us, he loves all of us. It means that should we not wish to be with him, he loves us so much that he will grant our wish to be free from him.

A rather dumb choice, in my opinion.

God bless,
jd

 

[Perplexity]

I guess I don’t see how the last two comments directed to me are responsive to what I actually said.

 

[sdegutis]

I think Catholics would say we can never experience God in his fullness, only to the maximum of our capacity to do so. But, if you were to disagree, why couldn’t we have only some of God’s love? Supposedly, that’s what we do now. Further, the theist would probably grant that we partially experience God’s other properties by resembling them, like free will, moral agency or knowledge. Why should love be different?

Every single act of the will is either a rejection or acceptance of God in our lives. There is no in-between this. There is no partial acceptance and partial rejection. Sure, some of our actions in this life reject God, such as when we hurt someone, and others accept God, such as when we love someone. Yet each individual act is either one or the other, either acceptance or rejection.

Now in the life to come, everyone will only continue on the path they last chose in this life. That is to say, if we died in a state of accepting God, then we will be in Heaven, and if we died in a state of rejecting God, we will be in Hell.

But my point was that human nature seeks an infinite supply of happiness, but creation or created things can only supply a finite amount of happiness. Yet even though we can only receive happiness to the degree we were created, we still seek an infinite supply. Only God can provide that since only God is an infinite supply of goodness.

As an analogy, consider a person drinking directly from a faucet. The faucet represents God and the act of drinking represents our seeking happiness and the person represents a person. Now, the faucet never runs out, so even though we can never receive an infinite supply all at once, since our mouths can only accept a finite throughput, we can continue receiving the water infinitely in time. Yet, if we took a bottle of water and drank it, we would be left unsatisfied or unquenched, and would quickly run to another bottle of water to get the same fill. This is because the bottle is finite. Now the bottle represents created things which are also finite, and thus they can never fully satisfy our appetite. But God, who is infinite goodness, can.