Leave room for God’s wrath- Romans 12:17, 19:21

Vengeance is mine, I will repay Deut 32:35

Justice desires Finality

Justice on Earth is arbitrary. We cannot ever hope for the perfection of Justice on Earth, since not being omniscient, we cannot prove guilt beyond doubt, and not being omnibenevolent, we institute proportionate retribution. We are unable to establish accurately neither the degree of culpability of the offender, nor that of the innocence of the victim, since we are all culpable. We will usually use the surrogates of “time for a crime” or “life for a life” or the ‘law of talion’ used in some societies of “limb for a limb”.

What we do all however experience is a need for justice to have finality. When we are harmed, we expect justice to remove the risk of that particular danger from our lives. Who would like be watering the plants one morning only to see a previous offender sniggering back at us over the hedge? Indeed we would like to extend that benefit to all society, either through life terms for killers or prison rehabilitation for lesser crimes. There was a recent outcry when a certain footballer convicted of rape after two years in prison was allowed to rejoin his club to play professional football.

The point of justice is certainly the right outcome, both for the victim and for the offender. Plato (who was Greek) equated it to righteous living, and many of his writings are devoted to the topic. In the Greek New Testament justification is cognate with righteousness (dikaiosune).

Thus we can see that there are two notions that are required for the perfection of justice: proportionality and finality. Of these, proportionality cannot be an an end in and of itself. The aim of the state is to end crime, not merely to hand out sentences. Unlike Department of Trade which is a sort of bartering agency, the Justice Department’s primary aim is not an ongoing sort of currency exchange. Rather, and interestingly the ultimate goal of the Justice Department is to end of the need for a Justice Department. Of course that this Is not a realistic ideal on Earth. But true justice for offenders is not just proportional sentences, rather it includes solving the problems that led them into a life of criminality as are commonly present.

The Price of Crime

One cannot use an Earthy frame of reference to audit God’s Law Court. This is theology by transposition. Since having received it as a gift, we cannot establish the value of life, we cannot establish the magnitude of a sin against it. Since we do not know it’s dignity, we cannot know the cost of it’s violation. Since we do not know the value of innocence or indeed it’s definition, we cannot know the heinousness of a crime against it. Is not the punishment for killing an adult the same as that of killing a child. And what is the punishment for a crime against God, the one who is most innocent, how can we measure it’s magnitude, or establish that it is anything less than infinite? What is sufficient punishment for the abuse of innocence? Does not the repugnance of the crime collate to the innocence of it’s victim? Is there ever sufficient punishment for infinite evil, for may not the retribution just as much be infinite? It therefore might be so that for God to condemn such a soul to oblivion may not indeed satisfy his Justice.

Indeed, how many years would the punishment be for a sin against God? How many years would be sufficient to atone for killing Jesus? After these years are over, would the person be free to try and kill him again? Like Lucifer is always prepared? How many years should a man suffer that has tried to kill you. Would you be happy if he was imprisoned for a few years and after that was free to eat at your table. What if someone had killed you, would he be OK to eat with you at the table in Heaven once he too got there. What if he had killed or raped or tortured a loved one? Would you feast with him at the table afterward though he was not sorry, but was going to boast about it during the dinner conversation. If he thought your loved one was good enough to torture for a laugh on Earth, why will he not think it in Heaven. What is the correct punishment for torturing a man for a minute?

Being unable to pass judgement beyond the temporal realm, the magnitude of retribution we are capable of meting out is limited to it. We are forced to confine our punishments to the Earth, even though they involve eternal beings. We must decree that the punishment in temporality is sufficient recompense for eternity, absurd though it sounds. We abhor civilizations past and present that inflict torture as punishment and inhuman treatment. We are forced to confer human rights on those that do not believe in the rights of others. We are limited by lack of jurisdiction in the spiritual realm and insight into innocence, therefore even when a court ‘establishes innocence’ it does so arbitrarily, and based on available evidence and societal standards of morality.

This is from Wiki: “The most well known of…early legal codes is the Code of Hammurabi, written in Babylon around 1750 BC. The penalties for violations of the laws in Hammurabi’s Code were almost exclusively centered on the concept of lex talionis (“the law of retaliation”) where people were punished as a form of vengeance, often by the victims themselves. This notion of punishment as vengeance or retaliation can also be found in many other legal codes from early civilizations, including the ancient Sumerian codes, the Indian Manama Dharma Astra, the Hermes Trismegistus of Egypt, and the Mosaic Code. Some Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, began to develop ideas of using punishment to reform offenders instead of simply using it as retribution. Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially for those who could not afford to pay their fines. Eventually, since impoverished Athenians could not pay their fines, leading to indefinite periods of imprisonment, time limits were set instead. The prison in Ancient Athens was known as the desmoterion (“place of chains”)…”

No one knows the true burden of anxiety and depression among victims of serious crime. What we do know is that rates of reoffending are high, and certainly hardly going to be comforting to victims. Capital punishment or life imprisonment carries with them the implication that there society has abandoned any hope of reformation in the criminal. How is a mental scar healed? How we we calculate atonement due for the abuse of a child or the rape of a woman. What formula do we possess for the reformation of a criminal mind? Punishment can never be anything more than arbitrary, something that a judge on the day deems as proportionate, and something that can vary wildly between nations.

God’s “Prison System”

God not only sets his own standard for atonement and retribution, he also spells it out for us: The just retribution for the smallest unrepented crime is simple and stark: eternal damnation. Any retribution is due not to the victim, but to Him. The compensation is paid directly to the victim, and this is ‘consolation’ the “wiping away of every tear” a complete cure for mental scars, is not not just a visit to the psychologist. In fact life imprisonment is the atheist equivalent of eternity, his solution to the reprobate criminal. In addition, Catholics and Orthodox believe in atonement due for sins in Purgatory, even for those whose sins are forgiven during their lifetime, and are otherwise fit for Heaven. This is God’s equivalent let us say, of punishment for non-capital offences. God’s “prison system” actually works, fire being used to obtain the desire effect: of reform and rehabilitation.

God’s justice system, then is one of perfect ‘Reform and Rehabilitation’, the ultimate ideal of every civilized justice system. It is so perfect as to reach out in mercy right up to the last thought of man’s earthly existence. Those only human beings who are outside it’s scope are those who put themselves outside it’s scope of their own Free Will. It is like the problem of corrupt government officials or rich oligarchs, no prison system can fix those who have successfully put themselves outside it. Peace, like Heaven, is to be found within Justice, not without.

There is none who is forsaken of God. Not the lowliest of the low, nor the oppressed, nor the most stricken or afflicted. None then, but those who have themselves forsaken God.

The Joy of Justice

Nothing’s funny except what is joyful. Just as a mishap against an innocent person is always mournful, one against am evil person may be funny just as evil is the opposite of innocence. In this sense for one who believes in good nor evil, it is hard to find anything funny. Justice is joyous and in this sense justice can be funny, if fun is joyful. This is why justice can bring a smile to the face, and cause one to laugh out loud, as if it were stand-up comedy. Thus salvation is joyous,  and Salvation from Damnation is funny. Is there humor apart form justice? But those types of humor are better described as (or phrases appended with the terms) hysteria, derision, cynical, hollow, and mania among others. These are not joyous states.

We’ve seen in human history that it takes one evil despot to ruin a thousand good intentions as we see in the rise of certain spurious ideologies and rulers like Napoleon and the Communist ideology that encompassed vast swathes of the civilized west and beyond. In Heaven it will take a single Good God to foil every evil intention in the history of Creation. As is my wont to say, Earth is a place where s*** happens. Heaven is a place that takes no s*** (pardon my French just this once!).  

A Deterrent, and a Fair Warning Given

The point of Hell is that it should make people not want to sin. God loves us so much, and he so wants us not to be raped, killed etc. that he has set up this huge ‘nuclear’ deterrent to try and stop is from doing so. Saying “Ah, it can’t be that bad!” is like some country saying “Ah, Britain can’t possibly have a nuclear sub!”, and trying to invade it. They’d be missing the point. It is God’s intention that if not for love of fellowman, then at least for fear of Hell, man should not abuse his neighbour. He so wants us to stop abusing each other that he even prepares eternal torment to stop us doing so “…the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels…”.

How would this work if Hell wasn’t eternal? Would people not run amuck even more believing that there was a way out of Hell? Do thieves not re-offend because they know that they get fed and sheltered in jail and can get out one day? But God doesn’t want us to offend in the first place, leave alone reoffend, hence the mighty threat. And finally, God does not lie, He will tell it like it is. He really thinks it is a bad idea to kill. If he says Hell is eternal, you can pretty much believe that it is. We do wish that he were bluffing, because we know that humans are always bluffing, nations are always exaggerating their capabilities. ‘The Bluff’ though, we have reason to think is not part of God’s repertoire. God’s only ‘gadget’ is love. If he says that choosing a career in murder is a bad idea, he means it quite literally. The threat of Hell in the Bible is explicit and repetitive. I do not have a problem believing that God sends souls to eternal Hell, rather, I would have trouble believing that he did not.

Atheists generally make not one, but two contradictory arguments. Their first argument is “how can God send persons to Hell?” and the second is “How can God allow bad things to happen on Earth?” without realizing that the former is the solution to the latter. Atheists ask why God would allow violence and yet they begrudge him for using violence when he does try to fix it. So now God is accused both of Violence and of Peace, of interventionism as well as of non-interventionism . In reality, God has not “allowed” suffering, the Bible is full of the  strongest possible deterrents against sinning, more than you will find in any other place, country or creed upon this Earth.

Evolution is an undoubtedly horrendous place to live in. Purpose is restricted to avoiding death, strategy is limited to accumulation of wealth. Charles Darwin did not need to travel to some remote isle to view it’s horrors enacted in the lives of insects, it was all around him here in Britain in the lives of his own people in the city of London. Thus as an end in itself, nature is terrifying. To say “because God gives us a rough road, so he cannot exist”, ignoring the fact that we actually are given a road, this is the error.

The extreme suffering on Earth provides the opportunity for two extreme goods. The opportunity for the sufferer to turn towards God. And the opportunity for the inflictor to turn towards God. God wants neither to go to Hell. This is because He is a God of infinite love. He gives them that much time to make this free choice. As much time as is required in the years of suffering inflicted in a concentration camp, or a Russian gulag, and various others. When a soul chooses hell then, it is not then for lack of sufficient opportunities to choose Heaven. God loves sinners so much that he allows them to torture innocents so that some of them will not be lost. He loves sinners so much that he allows them to be tortured so that they had they not turned to him in their joy, they might turn to him in their suffering.

There comes a time when God decides that the good have suffered enough and will intervene directly. This is either at the time of death, or on the Last Day when everyone will see him. When this happens, the choices have been made, and Paradise begins. The reason that Hell is eternal is that Free Will has ended. It ends with the vision of God. One cannot choose to sin in Hell because there is no God there to sin against. One cannot expect good to be done to you because Hell has a Darwinian philosophy, just like the one everybody seems to love on Earth. Can one expect to do good? I really do not expect it to be on the top of anybody’s priority list. 

People are dismayed that God gives us ‘only one chance’ in which we may gain either Heaven or Hell, while grossly overestimating the length of time that it takes to achieve righteousness in God’s eyes. A five year old child can bow their head and pray. God does not expect each one of us to save the whole world! There was a saint who received her calling aged only 7. I always tell the example of the five year old boy who shares a piece of his favorite snack with his brother and dies soon after, and a man who dies at a hundred who also routinely shared things with his relatives.  Who has lived the more righteous life? You don’t need to live to be a hundred to merit Heaven. You do not need to save the world. Just save yourself, God has saved the world. But you also grossly underestimate the amount of time available in which to be righteous. It takes only a second to say either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to God. You have 86400 seconds each day, that’s 86400 chances to go to Heaven each day. So it’s ridiculous to say that we only get one chance. How many seconds does it take to plan a murder? How many seconds does it take to find your target? How many to kill him? How many seconds do you get to say ‘Yes’ to God after you’ve killed him? How many Murderers and rapists drop dead after they’ve committed their crime? Time, I do not think is an excuse for damnation.

We may grossly overestimate the thought processes that are required to take us to God. All that is really required is to turn to Him. If one has no command over one’s body, then turning the mind to Him will suffice. A thought process that enables one to this entrains one to life that is eternal. There are two ways that people are tested. But both are tested by fire first, like clay. The fire in both cases is love and suffering. One by this is set ablaze with holy desire, while the other with an unholy rage. One burns with love. The other with resentment. Some will serve at the altar, and some will be “for the disposal of waste.”

The ail of the criminal justice system is to accord for all a fair trial. God’s trials are fair because he has perfect forensics, perfect psychological assessments, perfect video surveillance, and perfect logic. IN fact it’s so perfect that the Judgements are accorded without a trial.

“”I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” Jer.17:10

Scripture on the Fate of the Damned

But if one still has difficulty in believing in the doctrine of Hell, one would have to do so in the knowledge that Jesus preached this doctrine.(the parable of Lazarus, that of the 7 bridesmaids and that of the wedding guests, and several teachings, like that of the sheep and the goats, the teaching of the last day, when one would be taken and the other left behind where the vultures would gather, “Sin is crouching at your door, he desires to have you”, and others).

There are certain theologians, some of them even Catholic who are teaching that Hell does not exist. It is always sad when a man’s life’s work comes to ought, but the position is really untenable for all the reasons already stated. The main problem would be all of Jesus’ direct references to Hell in the BIble.  It is impossible to take these as metaphors. What can ‘unquenchable fire’, or ‘eternal torment’ possibly be a metaphor for?

Anyway, here’s a website that lists the biblical references to Hell:

http://christianity.about.com/od/whatdoesthebiblesay/a/Hell-In-The-Bible.htm

http://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/hell-bible-verses/

http://www.openbible.info/topics/hell. This last one has the most references.

So by al means feel free to follow these hell-bashing theologians. You also will have to forget about 50 Biblical verses while you’re at it.

Corinthians: “We must not put the Lord to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents; nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. These things were warnings to us..“

Matthew: “Then he began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.  “Woe to you, Chora’zin! woe to you, Beth-sa’ida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.  But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Caper’na-um, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”

(John 9: 39-41) “Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”  [40] Some of the Pharisees near him heard this, and they said to him, “Are we also blind?”  [41] Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, `We see,’ your guilt remains.“

(Matthew 12) “The men of Nin’eveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.“

Isa.59 [17] He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation upon his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in fury as a mantle.

Isa.61 [2] to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;

Isa.63 [4] For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption has come.

The Experience of Torment on Earth

No one goes to Hell without a direct experience of torment in this life. One does not go to Hell without a direct experience of the undesirability and unpleasantness of suffering. No one goes to Hell without fully realizing the pain of suffering, either through their own, through sufferings of others witnessed, or through that inflicted by them on others. The sufferings of Hell should never come as a surprise to anyone. If one can envisage a place of eternal happiness based on one’s experiences of transient happiness, and God’s promises of the same, one should also easily envisage a place of eternal suffering based on one’s experiences of one’s own experiences of transient suffering and God’s warnings regarding the same.

From history, one sees that God permits occasions for terrible and prolonged human suffering. This even of innocents. One has in modern times to look no further than the concentration camps where prisoners have languished for many years undergoing unimaginable atrocities. And there have been numerous and constant such instances down the ages. Does God permit innocent people to undergo terrible suffering? Yes. It would be a horrible mistake to think that those who were the victims of this evil were in some way guilty of sin and so therefore brought the suffering upon themselves, because apart from children, the victims of suffering also include Job in the OT and Jesus Christ, Son of God.

The Philosophical Aesthetic of Hell

There must be a point to this life. If in the end it didn’t matter, and everyone would be feasting at the table forever, then there was no need for this life of tribulations. God could well have created us in grace like the angels. If an evil person who has power over you says ‘I will now make your life a living Hell’, should one be able to look that person in the eye and say ‘My brother, if you do not repent, your eternity will be a far greater Hell than any you can conceive for me’.

Do people really think that they will first waltz through this life, and then, having died, will waltz through the next life seamlessly and without a care. If this was the message that Jesus intended to convey when He came down on Earth, would He not have waltzed through his life too, teaching and then finally dying peacefully as did unnumbered other sages and hermits of religions past. This option would certainly have then been open to Him.  He taught us to turn to good, while He himself suffered from the actions of those that turned to bad. Being God, could He not have taught us the former, while skipping the latter? We see what we might enjoy, while we know what we have been saved from. If the afterlife did not involve malicious violence, then the Son of God could have been spared it in his earthly sojourn. To break the eternal power of sin would not require God to suffer, if eternal slavery to sin did not involve suffering.  If eternal allegiance to the Devil was like a walk in the park, then breaking off his yoke should have been a stroll in the garden. It was God’s plan to break the power of sin. If the Devil was capable of keeping minions without causing them suffering, then God would have devised a plan of Salvation that involved no suffering. If the Devil could keep people happy, the rescue plan should have been happier still. The fact that it was not would seem to indicate that what was being avoided was likely worse still. Breaking the power of sin was to be extremely painful, but it could not be more painful than living under the power of sin. The journey to God could not be more painful than the journey to Hell. The journey to Hell could not be less painful than the journey to God. Those that think that Jesus’ numerous allusions to Hell were only a metaphor, should consider why the Crucifixion was literal. Those who think that Jesus was bluffing about Hell in his parables, should consider why He was dead serious on the Cross. They should be careful that they do not separate Jesus’ life from His death. Like all good freedom fighters, He died proclaiming what He had lived to proclaim. Heaven and Hell.

Do you really believe that the torments that the evil will endure in Hell will be less severe than the ones that they inflicted on the Earth upon the good? Do you really think that God will be more merciful to the evil in Hell than he was to the good on Earth and to his Son on the Cross. Maybe so, but this again is a perilous intuition.

Is the threat in Amos 8:7 empty? It is said of those ‘who trample on the needy’:

The Lord swears by the pride of Jacob, ‘Never will I forget a single thing you have done.’

If you believe there are evil people in this life, do you believe there will be none in the next? If you believe there is torment in this life why will there be none in the next. If God allows evil to exist temporally why will he extinguish it eternally? If his Son’s death brought no end to evil, why will the worlds end accomplish this? Only a Christian can guess the true extent of the feral maliciousness of Satan. Evildoers will grossly underestimate it, often thinking they might make him their comrade. Grey is the Devil’s favorite color. Not red, as many think. Red just happens to be the color of His Hell. But he dreams of a grey Heaven. A reliable way to avoid going to Heaven is to pretend that it doesn’t exist. An unreliable way to avoid going to Hell is to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Just like Heaven and Earth are disproportionate in their pleasures, and not like for like, so Hell and earth will be disproportionate in their sufferings, and not like for like. The multiplication factor is free will. The pleasures of the Earth are subject to time while those of Heaven are not. Suffering of earth is bound to time, while the sufferings of Hell are not. The pleasures of the Earth are freely chosen at a cost, while those of Heaven are freely given without cost. Suffering on Earth is vigorously resisted, while the sufferings of Hell are freely inflicted.

Imagine yourself climbing a steep and high rocky cliff, extending hundreds of feet into the air. The sheer rocky face has a crumbly few footholds, which you grasp at in desperation, some crumbling away as you claw at them. Some outcrops have eagle nests with large eagles watching over their young, and there are snakes in some of the crags. Your guide, however, is a stalwart, half mountain-goat. Your safety rope is tied safely to his waist, and although you frequently lose your hold, he barely even notices all your bungling behind his back. In fact if you didn’t keep screaming in terror, he may even forget that you were there, so great is his strength, so firm his grasp. Around you, above and below, there are many other climbers. Many, too many it seems, are dropping into the sea below, their bodies bashed on the rocks. Every time you stumble you scream, you tremble as you watch bodies breeze downward past you, some of these are people you know, some are acquaintances. Actually, if it weren’t for the carnage, the whole experience might be quite thrilling and exhilarating. Most of the climbers have flying humanoids in attendance. You have a glorious white angel, you can feel the rush of his wings by your ears. He seems to be enjoying the fresh mountain air and stretching his wings. However, some of the climbers have snarling demons, who after they have gained a certain height, are actually causing their clients to stumble. Some are openly assaulting them, striking at their bloodied and desperate hands and feet with sharp claws, they do not stand a chance. Down below, the bodies, though battered, are still screaming, and you wonder why they have not died yet. The sea water is quite bloodied and the large fish are still tearing into the screaming mass of flesh.

One can’t help wondering what Hell might be like though. There are, helpfully numerous terrifying visions of the saints to help us want to stay out of it! But I’ve wondered, what would it actually feel like, psychologically. The saints go into this too. But they tend you throw you straight into the deep end with it. I tried to get my mind to ease gradually into it.

I realized that Hell cannot possibly feel any better than what it feels like on Earth. It should at least feel as bad. So that’s a starting point. Hell should feel as bad as having to get out of bed to go to work in the morning when you would rather stay in bed or take the kids out for a drive or to the park. Hell should feel at least as bad as going to work in the morning knowing that there are people at work who want to put you down and humiliate you, especially the ones that want to get ahead of you. Hell should feel at least as bad as knowing that there is a rat race, and that if you don’t keep up with it is likely that your lot and that of your family will suffer and you may not have food to put on the table. Hell is at least as bad as the feeling that if you lose your social status through some mishap or miscalculation then you will have to live with in a neighborhood with neighbors who might be less savory than the decent smiley ones that you have around you. Hell should feel at least as bad as knowing that there are people who are out to get you. Some want to rob you, some want to steal, some want to hurt you for fun, and some want to kill you.

Hell should feel at least as bad as knowing that in your lifetime, at least one of these will succeed. Hell should feel at least as bad as knowing that if you do get persecuted, it is possible that no one might help you or stand up for you. For example when your insurance company refuses to pay out and there is nothing you can do. Or when religious minorities are persecuted in many countries or as they were under Communism and the world blames the media. As is happening in China and North Korea. While Chinese officials were forcibly aborting babies and even killing live ones in line with the state one-child policy, it will feel at least as bad as what one of those mothers may have felt as the rest of the world participated in the Beijing Olympics.

Hell will fell at least as bad as all this with one addition: there will be demons. All those clumsy criminals who were trying to harm you on earth and did not succeed will be replaced in Hell by demons who will succeed with greater ease, because the spiritual realm is their natural habitat. It seems reasonable to believe that this habitat will have some natural denizens, like any natural habitat does.  In hell souls will be as helpless as babies. We are not equipped to weather the storms of the Universe, leave alone of Infinity where without God’s protection we will be bashed about like dry leaves in the wind. One may think that our souls may take to the sea of eternity like fish to water and this may well be true, but what else lurks in that sea? Will we be kings of eternity like we were kings of our planet, being the only intelligent life on it?

If you think about it, even on Earth, man does not survive in most natural habitats. If he goes to the jungle he will be torn to shreds. If he wanders into the desert he will dry up and shrivel, if he jumps into the sea he will be torn to shreds. The further point about being accosted in the spiritual realm, is that death will no longer be an escape, since it is an escape provided only for the body and not for the soul which is indestructible. So when you do get severely accosted for example by a bomb attack in Hell,  like one of those myriad on Earth which no one cares about, then you still have to at least wake up the next morning to face it all again. But sleep and unconsciousness are escapes provided for the body and not for the soul, for it does not require the repair of sleep, being immortal.

If one thinks that the world that one lives in is OK, and that nothing is wrong with it and that all right and wrong is relative, and is generally unaffected by it all, then he will find that Hell is indeed a continuation of this relativism, in fact it will be a fulfilment of the portents indicated here on the Earth. If he thinks that it is quite OK for people to suffer and for no one to care, then he will find in Hell that people do suffer and no one cares. If he thinks that it is quite OK for the rich and the powerful on Earth to gather all the resources for themselves and to humiliate the weak, then he will find in Hell that the strong do hoard all the resources and humiliate the weak.

For example, Satan possibly sits on the only chair available.  If he thinks that it is OK for the talented people to lord it over those who are not talented then he will find the demons far more talented than humans. This is my point, that Hell will be at least as bad as the Earth. If you think that the philosophy of the world was brilliant, then you will find truckloads of the same philosophy in Hell. If you think that it is OK for needy people to be exploited for sexual purposes including pornography, then you will find in Hell that the weaker people do get exploited for other’s gratification. If you didn’t find cause for complaint now, you will find that Hell does not have a ‘Complaints department’ either. If you thought that it was OK that there be a premium on physical attractiveness, then in Hell you might well find that the physically attractive do garner more attention.

If you never liked saying sorry then you will find that in Hell that no one does say sorry. If you were never one to be grateful for life, you will find that in Hell no one says thank you either. And if you were never thankful that another baby was born into the world as there might not be enough room, then you will find that no one thanks you for coming to Hell either, as it stinks enough without you adding to it. If you were never concerned with right and wrong, you will find down there that no one else is. If you never liked to share, you will find there that no one does. If you never liked to pray, you will find that you do not have to.

If you think that your prayers are never answered, then you will find that down there they are not. If you never bowed your head to God, you might find that you get through the whole of eternity without doing so very much at all. If you never liked to smile at people, you will find very little reason to do so in Hell. If you on the other hand like to scowl at people then there will be plenty of opportunity to do so. If you’re one of those who ‘does not like to think too much’ then you will find that there isn’t that much to think about. If you don’t like to work then you will find that there is no work. Just like Heaven, Hell is also thus a fulfillment of portents on Earth.

Another way to look at Hell is this. Look at all the world around you. Where is God. The answer is everywhere, isn’t it. Now imagine what the world would be like if God just got up and left. If you are having trouble imagining this, then imagine what would happen if all the good people in the world just got up and left. The departure of God could not be less of a deprivation to the world than this, could it. This  brings a sort of beginning of the realization of what Hell would be like. Picture a beautiful scenery with the sun shining between the hills, and a little river flowing in the valley at the foot of them. Then picture the valley slowly, like an ooze from the banks of the river, spreading both away and into the river, start to fill up with blood.

One cannot really appreciate the beauty of snow-capped peaks when one is running in fear of one’s life. Believe me, the complaint of the denizens of Hell will not be it’s lack of picturesqueness. For this reason, beauty will be insignificant by it’s absence. Redecorating one’s house will not be on the mind. It is this departure of goodness which will bring a reign of terror that is Hell. For even after a day of labor in the death camps, one returned to the kind looks of one’s cell mates before the hungry, louse-infested and all-too-short sleep. 

Infinite Mercy

Before asking why God sends souls into Hell, is it not important to also ask why he lets sinners the chance to go to Heaven? Why do people ask ‘why does God send to Hell?’ Rather than ‘why do people rape and kill?’ Again, we ask “Why does God send killers and rapists into eternal torment, rather, we should ask “Why does God give killers and rapists the chance to enter eternal Paradise?” When people ask “How can God send sinners into eternal damnation?” it is unclear as to whom their concerns relate to. If it is to themselves, then the question is futile. It is like asking the tax department why you are being put in jail. So if you believe in God, you will certainly not live our life as if He didn’t exist.

God doesn’t send sinners to Hell, rather, he opens for them the gates of Heaven. The real enigma is not why God sends souls in to Hell forever, it is why does He gives souls who Rape, murder, mutilate and abuse the chance to Go to Heaven. I think what we have here is a case of misplaced concern.  From an individual’s perspective, sinners do not go to Hell,  Jesus came to save them. It is the righteous who are at risk. “I do not come to save the righteous…”. This is for me the most profound play on words that Jesus uses in his entire ministry. He is fully aware that no man is good “…only God is good…”. This clearly indicates it is not sinners, rather those who see no sin in them who are in danger of damnation. This is why I say that the concern is misplaced.

If an agnostic, or even a Christian feels concern that a rapist be condemned to eternal Hell and even feel a sense of injustice about it, he need not have been so worried, for he might not only find that that rapist sits at eh banquet in Heaven but also that he himself is left out. It only is the rapist who sees no sin in rape that is likely damned. It is the sinner who considers himself righteous who is at risk. It is the rapist or the paedophile who thinks that the girl deserved, or ‘had it coming’ it who puts himself in great peril of Hell.

At the same time, God is infinite in his mercy. Practically, this does not mean that God gives sinners one chance to save themselves, it means that God gives them every chance to do so. Just like in Quantum theory, a particle in it’s journey from point A to point B bizarrely is meant to take every path in the Universe to get there, according to Richard Feynman’s formulation, a sinner will have had every path to repentance open to him. His conscience will have incessantly called, the memory of his victims will have incessantly cried, the advice of his mentors will incessantly ring, the examples of good people will incessantly shine, and the sacrifice and suffering of the Cross will unceasingly beckon. It will, at the time of his damnation, have been impossible for a human being to conceive an avenue of repentance that had not been opened to him, and this is the meaning of infinite mercy. There will be no human argument asserting denial of amnesty to a damned soul while it was alive.

The evidence of God’s infinite mercy is of course Jesus forgiving his murderers form the Cross.

Eternal Oblivion?- Un-Creation of the Damned

To start with, even the reality of the term “oblivion” must be approached with extreme skepticism, since it has no reality. One cannot, for example, ‘grant oblivion’- one cannot grant a non-existent gift. Non-existence cannot be better than eternal torment, because what does not exist cannot be better than anything. For the purpose of comparison, an entity must at the very least exist, so a non-entity does not brook comparison.

Who is the question of oblivion addressed to? If it is a future question: “Why won’t he grant the damned oblivion?” Damnation itself, from the perspective of the elect, is oblivion, for it’s not as if Heaven has a viewing gallery for Hell. If the essence of “being” is goodness, then being evil is non-existence, or oblivion, and the road to Hell a gradual descent into it. The same analogy can be applied to any evil act, which is a negation of another’s existence, while a good deed is an affirmation of it. Evil is a tendency to oblivion, it is inherently self- destructive.

Universalism- the “Redemption” of the Faithless and Daemons ?

A belief held by some, which goes down allegedly to even some of the Church Fathers allegedly (I haven’t looked this up in much detail), possibly Origen in particular, is that all souls go to Heaven eventually, with some even believing that the devil eventually will (this last position was possibly held by St. Gregory of Nyssa, or at least mentioned by him. The Greek word for it is apokatastasia. This is an Orthodox Church article on it https://orthochristian.com/99054.html?fbclid=IwAR2Cp3vzpRElesGLrC6w2bVKh1vNjAKIu4jfCYv2VGse9Zm3WcPJ4zOyyiM.

The problem of Universalism is that it neutralizes the entire moral framework in the divine economy. Do universalists prepared to hold that those who willfully deny Jesus go to Heaven? Or that the faithless then undergo a post-mortem “conversion”? But there is no “conversion” after death, when conversion was the entire point of one’s life. There is no “faith” after death when God reveals ultimate reality to us, there is then only certainty. Faith is what we have in the absence of certainty, not in its presence.

That is the reason that the devil can never convert, because there is no possibility of faith for him in eternity. The angels chose for or against God in the first moment of their creation, and were able to make an informed choice for or against in that very moment. This only seems unfair to us because we do not comprehend what a timeless intellect might be like. An angelic intellect does not think discursively from one premise to another as we do in time, only eventually and painstakingly drawing to conclusions, sometimes several years, and even a lifetime later. An angel does not have “years” or a “lifetime”, that is why a single moment sufficed. They are able to grasp conclusions from the premises at the same instant and so also with the angelic knowledge of their Creator, they are able to grasp all the implications of obedience and disobedience to the divine will. In we might say that in that single moment they are able to make a more informed choice than we are able to in our entire lifetime. That is why their state is permanent, because in spite of this knowledge, they chose disobedience through pride and rebellion.

I don’t need to write a whole lot more here since “universalism” simply goes against everything else that we have already discussed in the article, and even more so than “eternal oblivion”.

“Why do I need to believe in God to go to Heaven?”

What it generally tends to represent more commonly though, in my opinion, is a railing against the justice of God in general. It is a protest against an attitude that is seen as unjust and unloving. “Why does a loving God not save the unbeliever?” What this really is, is an unbelief in God as loving. If an atheist truly believed in the existence of love in the world, a pure and perfect love, then could this perfection of Love be anything but God? There is no religion in the world which has a theology of salvation through unbelief in God, apart from those religions which have done away with God! This is because if God’s ways were seeing as just, then believing in Him would be seen as justice. On the other hand, had an ungodly man’s way been just, then why are we still waiting for that book to be written? Has there ever been an ungodly man who believed that it would be right for him to be sent to Hell had there been a God?

The question then, is broken down into two: Why does God require me to believe in Him? Because He is the Truth, would you believe in a lie, you would believe in nothing, and the question is tantamount to asking “Why do I need to believe in Truth?” The answer is the second part of your question “To be saved”. So one could rephrase the question “Why do I need to believe in Truth to be saved?” It then needs no further answer, none that has not been explored and affirmed a million times in literature, movies and in children’s fairy tales. Or one might ask “If you didn’t believe in God, and then He did save you, would you believe that you had been saved?” There is good reason to believe that one who did not appreciate God’s actions on Earth might not appreciate his company in Heaven. That’s what “saving” consists in. The Question then presumes that one is fit for Heaven, even though he thinks that Heaven is unfit for purpose, or, “Even if God is untrue, I would like to go to that place of untruths were it to exist, where the angels cry out in the Temple “Holy! Holy! Holy!” day and night. It is akin to saying that “Since belief in God, if He did exist, cannot possibly affect my chances of earning a place in Heaven, if it did exist, so I won’t!”

The problem with Hell is not so much one of a “Sin of Commission” on the part of God, as atheists like to pin it on, but it could have been one of Omission, had God deigned to have no consequence for evil actions. In the incredible multi-layered story of the Prodigal Son, there are those who will think that it was silly for the father to actually grant the son his request, that is, to make off with his share of the inheritance. The father actually did more than this, enduring considerable social insult in granting it. There are those who will think the father was unjust in taking him back. To be sure as there are many who would not have granted the first request, there are also many who would not have granted the second favor. But if you would just join the dots, the two negatives cancel out, the father is left with a son who is ready, for the first time in his life, to work for his keep.

Similarly also, there are two possible reactions to the patriarch Jacob gifting the technicolor coat to Joseph. There are those who will think that he was unjust, and there are those who will think that Jacob can do whatever he wants with his own money. Put differently, there are those brothers who are glad at their sibling’s successes. Yes, I do think such persons really exist on Earth. And in Heaven, for sure.

The Creation story is exactly the same, God lets us go, though some would think it was a foolish decision to leave us to our own devices. He also lets us come back, though would think that it unjust to forgive sins. But He is left with children with no desire to sin, and so the plan works.

“I don’t need God to be good”. This is the same as saying “I don’t need to go to Heaven for being good”

From St. Theresa of Lisieux Story of a Soul: “After earth’s exile, I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for your love alone. . . . In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.”

Beautiful paragraph in the CCC 1994: “…Justification is the most excellent work of God’s love made manifest in Christ Jesus and granted by the Holy Spirit. It is the opinion of St. Augustine that “the justification of the wicked is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth,” because “heaven and earth will pass away but the salvation and justification of the elect . . . will not pass away.” He holds also that the justification of sinners surpasses the creation of the angels in justice, in that it bears witness to a greater mercy.”