EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT OF (NOT JUST IN! HELL IS PUNISHMENT) HELL AND MOURNING

God should be put first when he puts himself first to consign people who die in mortal sin to Hell forever. Hell implies that the worst thing we can do is turn our backs on God and is so bad that we must suffer forever for it if we die. Clearly we have to love God alone and use others as tools to please him. Mourning must be a sin for it implies really loving others which the doctrine of God forbids so Hell and God both ban mourning. You are not supposed to really care if a person dies or not as long as God is happy. Jesus even dared to tell his apostles that if they really loved him they would be glad to see him die and go to the Father instead of wanting him to stay with them (John 14:28).

Catholics say that Protestants who hold that Catholics are going to Hell are bigots and being very uncharitable. Very isn't the right word. They are being totally uncharitable. If that is bigotry, then what is it to look upon a dying person and think they might or probably will go to Hell? The Catholics actually admit - albeit indirectly - that Hell is a vindictive doctrine.
 
You are not allowed to disapprove if God sends a person to Hell. It is impossible to see how it could be right or possible to mourn the dead when you think, “If he or she is in Hell I don’t mind. I am untroubled if he or she is condemned to despair eternal”. This attitude turns your tears into crocodile tears. It is true that it is better for no Christian faith to exist than for one person to be damned over it. The Church denies it but it is as true as ever.

If feelings are allowed then you have to feel glad that he or she is in Hell forever if he or she is there but you would have to feel terrible about the sins that put them there. It is just the sins that trouble you. The more one hates sin the better so the more one loves God the stronger will one’s loathing of sin be. The holy have to live in torment. It is more important to emotionally hate the sin than to be happy that a person is in Hell so if it comes down to a choice you pick the first.

Some say that nobody has to have bad feelings about sin and it is enough to just unemotionally disapprove of it. You can disapprove and still feel happy as long as it is not sin that is making you happy but disapproval requires some measure of unhappiness so unemotional disapproval is a fiction.

To have no intense feelings against sin would only be acceptable if you can’t hate it as much as possible. It would be a sin not to hate evil and sin as much as you could for it deserves it. If we do not try to emotionally hate sin as much as we can, then we do not love God for the less you choose to hate sin the closer you are to committing it and to take a step towards sin is to sin. The doctrines of Hell and sin are a recipe for complete misery.

What happens when you hate sin so much that you end up killing a person to stop them sinning? That would not prove the hate immoral because you killed in spite of your hatred for evil more than because of it. Though the killing was wrong, you could not resist. It is better to do that than to take a step towards sin.

So, Hell on earth gives you Heaven forever after.

Everlasting punishing is a nightmare that has no light at the end of the tunnel for the relatives and friends of suicide victims. The Church regards suicide when committed by any anyone who is in their right mind as a sin that merits everlasting damnation. Many methods of suicide are painful and prevent the victim from thinking clearly enough to be able to repent. The Church says that nobody can know for sure where any dead person has gone but this is no consolation when it is most likely that sane or reasonably sane suicides have gone to Hell. In the turmoil of bereavement nobody can be blamed for feeling awesome torment at the thought that the person even might be in Hell even if it is unlikely.

The apostle John (1 John 5:14-17) declared by the authority of God that when we see a person die in sin or without God’s mercy we can be positive that that person has gone to torment unending. He wrote that we can pray that God will give life – the life of God, ie, grace – to the person whose sin takes away that life but whose sin is not deadly. Some Catholic Bibles have the verse that you cannot pray for anybody who you see committing a mortal sin. The Catholic term, mortal sin, was not used by John to mean serious sin that makes God reject you but a specific kind of serious sin that could not be repented. John forbade praying for a person who committed the deadly sin. This sin could only be what is called final impenitence – holding on to your antagonism towards God on your deathbed – for what other sin could not be repented? John is saying that we must not pray for anybody who has died without showing repentance. The person cannot repent after death which is why prayer is forbidden. Incidentally, Rome should not use this text as a proof for mortal sin for Rome teaches that mortal sinners should be prayed for.

The thought that a person might be in Hell is every bit as painful and damaging as a parent who feels that something bad has happened to their runaway son or daughter. Correction – it must be worse. It may be an unlikely possibility but it can happen and that is what torments.

The Church says we do not know how high the chance is that people will go to Hell. We have to assume that it is very high to be on the safe side. It is better to die of terror than to suffer in Hell forever. This will make people who have the humanity to mourn the dead suffer terribly.
 
The sight of a priest or minister “comforting” the victims of bereavement ought to make you sick. Hell is not about a person sinning and getting what they deserve. Hell is about a person being punished for DYING in sin. But it was not their fault that they died there and then and death is no excuse for sending people to Hell. Death is bad enough without all this insensitivity and callousness. God should make people and spell out the consequences and ask them to choose instead of making them sin and repent time and time again when he only wants one choice from them.  

You are most sure you exist. You are less sure that God exists. You are less sure again than that Hell exists and even believers admit the doctrine is a problem for they work hard to reconcile something so bad with the love of God. It is impossible to be as sure that an idea that is a problem is as true as one that is not. It takes a lot of malice and nerve to teach that a person committing a sin on earth when he is not as sure that God exists and is less sure that Hell exists should be sent to Hell. To really choose Hell you would have to be completely sure it exists for you only choose something in so far as you trust that it is true. The hell doctrine is like saying somebody who was not that sure that he committed murder should be treated the same as one who was sure. It is really the old doctrine that God does not accept sincere error and demands that you know the truth before he will save you back again. It is the old triumphalist Christian ethos, “unless you believe you will be damned”.

All desires are bad in a sense for they are at least a bit painful – they crave something you don’t have so they are painful. In this the Buddha was completely right. This tells us that we should fill our minds with the desire to be happy and the desire to see others happy for these desires are less painful than the desires fuelled by anger and hate. The Hell doctrine tells us to hate sin intensely and above all evil therefore it is an enemy to this noble doctrine. In that way, it tells us to hate ourselves.