Everlasting Torment in Hell and Divine Mercy

Christians teach that if you die without a relationship with God and the forgiveness of sins you will suffer eternal punishment in Hell and that is unavoidable and there will be no chance of release.

Christians say that warning people about Hell even if they show no sign of having to go there is an act of mercy. It is the supreme good work. It is being an ambassador of God's mercy.

Christians say that telling you that unless you offer all your sins to Jesus for forgiveness you will suffer forever in Hell and that will be what you deserve. That is plainly bigotry. The atheistic humanitarian dies among the lepers she serves all her life goes to Hell while the profligate goes to heaven by repenting on the deathbed. And there is the fact that you are accused of deserving eternal Hell by your sins. A person you hits you for fun deserves a punch back (that does not mean you can give him one! We are talking about principle) not an eternity in Hell. And there is the blackmail part – do Christianity this way and no other or else. And there is the fact that you need to know the gospel message is true and you cannot know that. It is too serious to get wrong. Nobody has the right to risk hurting others like that over mere religious belief. And especially when people who get saved by Jesus are no better or worse than most other people.

The Christians have a weak response and it is this. It is not bigoted or nasty if you think holy water is shrinking your deadly brain tumour and the doctor tells you you are being ridiculous and the scan says different. But it is not the same as warning people they are for Hell. At least there is evidence and proof involved. The scan shows the tumour is thriving and nothing can justify anybody saying it is shrinking. You have a right to your beliefs and opinions but not to your facts. Facts are not about what you want to think. Also, God is not physical so he cannot be physically hurt.  The doctrines that he is offended and broken hearted by our sins is a metaphor. He is perfect and self-sufficient so he cannot be influenced by anything. Frankly then our sins do no harm to him. They insult him yes and that is why the Christian has a problem with them but it does not matter. The Christian cannot say all that matters is that it matters to us if we become the kind of person that would show disrespect to such a good God.

Christianity is extremely harsh against sin. It says it is so bad that it deserves the misery of Hell forever. This is exploitation because they want us to feel so bad that we will be addicted to religion and be always looking for God's mercy which is the only way out. Religion sees itself as the conduit of mercy. It is a twisted sick form of mercy. Religion accuses those who cannot see sin as bad as it does of not understanding sin and therefore of not understanding how God is so good that he detests it infinitely. Obviously one cannot go to God in Heaven at death if one has that big of a misunderstanding of him and sin! Heaven is supposed to be based on a relationship with God. The Church goes as far as to point to its saints such as St Margaret Mary Alacqoue who suffered horrendous guilt and horror at the seriousness of their sins, sins we would regard as being barely sins, as proof of the horror of sin.
 
Some Christians try to attract people to their version of God by saying that he died in the form of Jesus Christ to keep everybody out of Hell. This makes us wonder if Hell is made up in order to make us so grateful to God and the Church that we will serve the Church? That would be very manipulative. We consider a fortune-teller to be manipulative if she gets money off a client in order to dispel some evil that may be looming according to the crystal ball. But the Christian kind of manipulation is particularly cruel and disgusting. It is extreme to suggest that God is keeping you out of eternal punishment and so you should serve him in gratitude.
 
Christianity and Islam teach that at death, if we are estranged from God by sin, we will go to Hell to suffer forever and once we go there it is impossible for us to leave.  Catholics call such sin mortal sin.

Hell is a doctrine of hate. Jesus said that unless we believe in him and get his forgiveness we will go to Hell forever at death deprived of mercy for all eternity. If he said we must love the sinner and hate the sin, this does not apply to the damned for loving them is tormenting them and they will never change. They are anti-love. They hate it. Love is not love if it hurts another being - if it is good for you and not them then you are selfish.

You cannot say the damned are essentially good but twist that good into evil and use that as an excuse to say that you can love them. You cannot say they are good in their nature and therefore lovable because the whole point of hating evil is that it is a mockery and distortion of good!

It is said that hate is primarily failing to see the value of the person and his or her works. The person is not seen as a person. That may be but if that objectification whether it is total or just high is what makes hate bad and dangerous and self-destructive then do not forget that you do not need hate to engage in that! Not caring enough for others is even worse. If a person is full of malice you cannot love them - period! And there is no hope of loving them if their malice is made permanent!

All the apparitions and miracles in Roman Catholicism promise that God will forgive the sinner and show mercy. Yet they seemingly occur to bolster the claims of the Catholic Church to be an infallible teacher and which has infallibly revealed that Hell is real and that there is no escape from it for those who go there. It is believed that the person who dies in serious sin goes instantly down to Hell and there is no escape and the punishment is everlasting. This is a dogma of the faith having been proclaimed by Jesus Christ who is God in the Bible and by the infallible Council of Trent. If the Church is wrong about that then we can no longer believe in Catholicism for this Hell is part of the tradition that the Church says is infallible revelation from God.

Now, if we deserve unending torment then we cannot dodge it except by repenting and throwing ourselves on God’s mercy. The purpose of true punishment is for showing that wrong should not have been done and because the alternative is rewarding. If you don’t mete out retribution then you are not serious about opposing wrong. Only whitewashers would be more interested in deterring or reforming the criminal for deterring does not change the evil desires and we are all capable of crime and nobody tries to reform us.  They look to the future and not the past. So, you have to be punished mainly because you have asked for it. So, mercy is a declaration that a person should not be punished as much as they should be. Therefore mercy implies at least half-hearted approval for sin. It is saying that it is bad and terrible but that you have to give some measure of approval to it all the same at the same time. God hates you when he approves of your sin by forgiving you and letting you off the hook. His sending you to Hell if you fall into mortal sin again is still an act of hate for he has not repented of having had mercy upon you and because he believes in mercy. We all have committed Hell-deserving sins like letting the starving die and not doing enough about them. We are murderers. But when God half-likes and approves of sin it is undeniable that his sending us to Hell is an act of hate. He is punishing us for something he likes. The hatred of sending us to Hell would be a greater hatred than the weak hatred shown to us when he gives us mercy.

A God who sends to Hell is into revenge not retribution for retribution should try to reform or at least allow it to be possible. If revenge is ever right it is always right and so mercy is offensive.

Forgiveness is putting a person saying they are sorry before the fact that they have done wrong. You are more sure that they have done wrong than that they are really sorry for doing wrong. And if you do it for your sake to rid yourself of ill-feelings that is not real pardon. You don't need to forgive for that. With forgiveness you will do it not for the sake of your feelings for that is selfish but so that you will be of service to the offender so it has to be done for the other person alone which is rewarding them. So forgiveness is degrading.

God surely cannot be accused of putting a profession of sorrow for sin over the fact that a sin has happened. He will know for a fact if the person is truly repentant. True. But say he was the same as us and is more sure that a sin has happened than that it has been repented.

An all-powerful and all-good God cannot forgive for that means he does not love himself (and therefore anybody else) and he should for he is infinite and perfect love. He can wish he could forgive under the right circumstances but he cannot forgive. It is a terrible sin to ask for pardon. It is really asking to be rewarded for doing wrong and adding on a further insult. It is worse than the sins you have committed.

Forgiveness implies that retribution is right. The alternative views of punishing see its purpose as causing a conversion from crime or deterrence. Forgiveness makes no sense in such a scenario because it can’t be right to want to cancel what should be done to prevent evil in the future. But with retribution it is not about the future so much as making person pay for a past bad deed. Retribution is an evil theory for we have no free will and forgiveness evilly implies that it is true. The past is past and cannot be undone. It is the future that must be looked at. Retribution is the same as revenge which Christians know but won’t admit though they read in inspired scripture how God said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” (Romans 12:19). Retribution is commanded in scripture and the Christians pretend that it is not the same as revenge which is supposedly trying to pay back wrong for wrong. There is no difference and Christianity is a vengeful religion. To look up to its bigoted God as good is to set yourself a goal of becoming like him. To see the wrong thing as good, results in you becoming closer to that bad ideal for even when we do evil it is because we perceive it as good.
 
The Christians hold that God was right to bring forth evil on the earth such as nettles and thorns and scorpions and sickness on account of Adam and Eve having sinned in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. God’s logic was that though their sin was just eating a forbidden fruit it was consent to evil and if you consent to evil you consent to all evil and you give God the right to punish you forever. In other words, if you create evil by even a “small” sin, you are breaking order and control and creating what can destroy all order and goodness. So to consent to disorder at all is to consent to what cannot be controlled and what cannot be controlled can eventually destroy everything so any sin you commit makes you totally evil.

God is not merciful and forgiving if forgiveness is bad. That means that once you commit a sin you are destined for Hell forever if there is a Hell. He will not punish you infinitely in one moment in this case because when he does not do it when you sin he does not want to be friends with you ever again. His not giving you the instant punishment means that he prefers to be out of your life and your heart.

The doctrine that sin deserves everlasting punishing permits us to do what we like to others. If forgiveness is wrong then nobody should expect it and deserve whatever they get. If it is wrong to hurt a person who deserves it can’t be too wrong by human standards. It’s minor. It would be cruel to punish a person for giving another their come-uppance. If you don't like that view then if they have to be punished it needs to be lenient.

Would it really be right to condemn a person for hurting a person who deserves it? Even if the latter has been pardoned he or she still deserves it. Forgiveness does not say that you don’t deserve punishment anymore but that you will not be treated as you deserve. When there is a choice between condemning a person who hurts a person and deserves it and the latter is it obviously the first who should be declared faultless or at least to be a person who had not done much wrong. When, according to religion, we all deserve to roast in Hell forever it follows that everybody should excuse cruelty but within limits for we have to survive on this planet.

What if somebody wants forgiveness from you desperately and you decide that not forgiving them will be the best revenge for it will hurt them more than anything else? They are in a position then to receive the most suitable punishment of all. There is something right about the idea that if a bad person needs to suffer then if there is a choice they should suffer from not being pardoned.

We can turn over a new leaf and hate our sins even if God won’t forgive them so let nobody say that mercy is justified to enable a person to have the chance to change. The main thing for believers is God's mercy and this is put before any change in the person. For Christians, God must be merciful even if people accept this mercy and then change moments later. They approve so the change in the person is not a huge matter for them.

We would go to Hell forever, the instant we sin if there were an unmerciful God. Perhaps we can repent our sin and do an equivalent measure of good works in its place to cancel it out. Then God does not damn us, to give us a chance to atone. That would be an alternative but Christianity or Islam cannot accept it.

If you believe something, you are treating it as real. You are trying to use your perception to make it real for you even if it isn't. Therefore to believe in Hell, those who die estranged from God suffer forever in Hell according to the Church, is to try and make it exist. Whoever does this and feels no shame or revulsion is an abnormal person. It is a way of deliberately trying to hurt some others as seriously as possible. You are no advertisement for mercy.

God magically makes sure that at death though you live on you cannot repent anymore. He calls all to repent except those who are about to die. It is warped to be okay with a God who gives you countless chances if you kill millions and who kicks you in the guts in your deathbed when you can't do any more harm! It is not God who is warped for he does not exist but the believers certainly are.