Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Hell - Why God would send people there

God is not in need of any human being for his happiness. Nevertheless, out of love, not out of some bizarre weakness of supernatural beings, God created man. This being was created not out of an act of self-exaltation, as if God needed a weak being in order to exercise his might upon (which would undoubtedly reveal a weak god). Nor was man created as though God needed him for service. Instead, man was created to participate in the community of love that at one time only the members of the Holy Trinity participated in. Yet in the Garden of Eden, man chose to be like God but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God" (St. Maximus the Confessor ? - Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 398). The original intention of man's creation was at that point not an objective of man. On the other hand, God never abandoned the purpose for which He had made man. Nevertheless, God allows men to go to hell. In fact, contrary to what we as humans would do, God actually sends people to hell. The easier of the next to questions is "How does He?" He is God, and He has control over where people go. A person's own soul cannot directly move itself into hell, especially since God forces it to present itself to Him on judgment day, lest that person's choices caused them to move towards hell anyways and God's only part is "cutting the safety line" so-to-speak. In this case, God would not be responsible for transporting people to hell. Nevertheless, He will be responsible for sending them to hell on the grounds that He is the ultimate Judge. He gets to decide where people go. Granted, He is merely granting people their wish. Nevertheless, humans are God's children. Why should He send any of them to hell? This is the second question. If we put ourselves in "God's shoes" so-to-speak, the act of sending people to hell is illogical. If these people are our children, then we would want them all to be happy and be with us for all eternity. However, none of us is God. God, who is love, will only bring to be with him those that love Him. How could He accept anything else? Does that mean that God does not love those humans that He sends to hell? - Of course not! God weeps at the loss of His children because He loves them. When man sinned in the Garden of Eden, God wept. When a man suffered the consequences of that original sin, Jesus wept.

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