WHAT KIND OF PERSON FINDS IT EASY TO BELIEVE IN HELL?
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 hard to believe. Some people say it is easy. Others say it is no harder
to believe than the other doctrines the Church has such as Jesus being God,
rising from the dead and giving salvation through baptism and the pope being
infallible and so on. It is hard to warm to the other doctrines if they make it
easier for people to believe in Hell when they believe in them. It is as if they
encourage or smooth the way to dangerous or disturbing beliefs. Besides, to say
those other doctrines make it just as easy to add the doctrine of Hell to your
belief system is to deny how disturbing the doctrine is. The doctrine only
appeals to malicious people or those who have been desensitised to such an evil
claim as that a sinner should suffer forever in Hell if he doesn't repent. Those
who say it is easy or not too difficult are certainly betraying their own smug
feeling that they won't go there but that other people will. Their
vindictiveness simmers below the surface.
What is easy about believing people die and rise again go there to burn and
suffer forever for a sin or two? The belief demands quite a few miracles such as
bodies rising from the dead, becoming immortal and miracle beings to inflict
everlasting torment. If it is easy to believe in it, then the reason surely has
to be because the victims of Hell are thought to deserve it more than anything
else. That would suggest that the believer is not a good piece of work. If it is
easy to believe people would deserve hell then they deserve it even if there is
no God. If it is hard to believe in Hell then that is telling us that our
natural instincts revolt against the idea. By silencing them we silence our
conscience and become evil. We are doing what the child abuser does. Hell is a
vicious vindictive doctrine. Commonsense says that Jesus rising from the dead is
very unlikely for everybody stays dead and that even if he rose we cannot be
expected to believe he did. Believers answer that we don’t know what is likely.
They don’t believe that argument themselves for life cannot go on if we don’t
make assumptions about what is likely. They are just being bigots. So the
doctrine of Hell is very unlikely for all the miracles it involves. They have to
be bigots to defend it so it is a doctrine of hate.
If a Christian says that it is good to believe in Hell, they may also admit that
the doctrine is horrible and they recoil from it. If they are okay people then
they will say they try to believe in the doctrine but cannot. That would be
acceptable for a Christian for it is only wilful doubt or denial that is a sin.
Clearly those who profess the doctrine are showing that they have an evil side.
Christians say sin not harm is the worst of all evils. They say harm is not necessarily sin but harm is the result of sin. So Hell is useless when it fails to stop sin. Why bother refraining from harm then when you are a sinner already? If you would commit adultery if there were no Hell then you are as much of an adulterer as the one who actually has adulterous sex (Matthew 5).
If the teaching means harm is only a symptom of sin and otherwise has no
effect on making something a sin then clearly we have, "Murder is only bad
because God says so and not because of the victim."
If we are good people we will do good for its own sake. We won’t need belief in
Hell. It will have nothing to do with making us good. It actually may make us
act good but not be good. Jesus said that people who do that are the worst
before God though man may like them a lot.
Hell then has nothing to do with making us genuinely good so it is clearly a
vindictive doctrine. What would you think of somebody who believed that the
tooth fairy will torment you forever if you don’t brush your teeth every
morning? You would believe that person is indulging in vindictive wishful
thinking for the doctrine is useless and the person could believe something
nicer.
The apostle Paul said he spoke for Jesus and Jesus spoke in him (1 Thessalonians
2:13, 4:2/ 2 Corinthians 13:3). He declared that if it were possible he would
consent to be lost, that is damned and separated and rejected by God, if it
could mean Israel could be saved in his stead (Romans 9:1-5). He stated that
this was the truth and that the Holy Spirit revealed it to his conscience that
it was true, "It is the truth that I have tremendous anguish over my people
Israel and wish I could be lost and cut off from God to save them and I say this
in union with Christ. My conscience assures me that it is the truth as does the
Holy Spirit." This clearly indicates that the modern Christian notion that we
make our own Hell and that God doesn't punish us there is false. If we make our
own Hell it would be a sin to wish that you would sin and curse him and be lost
forever even to save others. God sends people to Hell of his own free will. God
went to the trouble of revealing to Paul that Paul would go to Hell for Israel
to indicate his approval of Paul's feelings and anguish. The Church cannot say
that the wish came when Paul was overcome by weakness and so his wish that would
normally be a sin couldn't be for he didn't fully consent to it.
To send someone to Hell means they are forced to stay in sin forever and sin is
what God says he wants rid of. A God who hates sin should hate it for what it
does to us but and try to save us all from it and leave the possibility of
salvation open to us during the entire eternal span of our existence. We
conclude that the doctrine is malicious.
It is terrible to suggest that anyone who dies even might go there. What kind of
compassion is that for them or the bereaved?
The teaching of Hell makes sin very serious indeed. It implies that you would
turn your back on all the people you love and God and on love itself for all
eternity. That is a very harmful and heavy burden of guilt the doctrine seeks to
impose. Severe psychological damage could be done to children and the
impressionable. Christianity should be discouraged by the state not by
persecution but by making sure everybody has access to reasonings that answer
and refute the faith.
If you have a baby and abandon it and it dies as a result of exposure and goes
to Heaven it could be better off. It would be worse off if you let it live and
it went to Hell. In principle, not in practice, the Church has to agree that
this logic is correct. Christianity is evil and twisted and if it lets you spare
the child it does it without real love. The principle makes sure of that. The
love it has is for its faith not the child.