WHEN A CHILD IS CONDEMNED TO THE EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT OF HELL

If God is love and Jesus is God and sees all then how can they be content never mind happy if people are in Hell for all eternity? If they are the saints can be happy to see adults in Hell they may not tolerate the thought of children being in Hell. Seeing them there would ruin their Heaven forever.

JP Moreland argues that if a child goes to Hell at death that child would be before God on the same level as an adult. So the child made a decision against God as final as that an adult would have made for if the child could have made a different decision had he or she lived longer God wouldn’t or shouldn’t have taken her or him so early! As if even God could know a future that will never happen? The Bible says God knows the future or what will happen but God knowing a future that won’t exist is impossible. God cannot know if Diana would have married Dodi had she lived to 1999 instead of dying in 1997. Looking back into the past, God can’t tell exactly what happened in 1950 if Hitler hadn’t died in 1945. He can’t look into a past that didn’t exist.

To say that a child of say eight years old should go to Hell like a profligate who lived to his nineties and is as much an adult as the profligate as far as the decision making process is concerned is just plain silly and pro-child-abuse. The Hell doctrine always forces theologians into silliness of this level. That men who claim to be intelligent examiners of the faith would tell us things they must know to be absurd is distressing and shows that they put a vicious doctrine before their obligation to give rational teaching. To them it doesn’t matter if the doctrine is evil and insulting to decency as long as Christian dogma is presented in a way that can fool lazy or stupid people.

We know that you cannot love the sinner and hate the sin for the sin reveals the sinner. The two cannot be treated as separate. Christians say they love sinners and hate sins but that is an empty boast. And especially so when it is children who are damned in Hell.

“The saints…not only do not pity the damned, but they even rejoice in the vengeance inflicted on the injuries offered to their God. Neither can the divine mother pity them, because they hate her Son” (page 95, Sermon X, The Sermons of St Alphonsus Ligouri). If the damned hate God so much that they destroy their own happiness to spite him and do this endlessly then they would want to kill God. But to kill God would be to kill themselves too and they are supposed to be selfish beings who want power and pleasure. It is all contradiction.

Hell is about punishment not about reform. But even if it is not about reform it has to keep the door open so that the person can reform if they want to. A God that does not leave that door open is pure evil. The doctrine denies that he leaves the door open. Thus Hell leaves us adoring an evil God and condoning and celebrating his evil. No sane person can be okay with a Hell like that and children being in it.


Conclusion

The doctrine that the damned suffer forever in Hell is vindictive as proven by the Christian hope that they will be happy in Heaven despite all this. Only a tiny minority of Christians are aware that there is any proposed ethical solution to the problem of a mother being happy in Heaven while her young son languishes in Hell apart from gloating over the suffering. They assume that she will gloat over her child’s pain. And indeed honest theologians must admit that the doctrine forces them to this conclusion for the proposed ethical solutions are not ethical. So the believers are striving to go to a Heaven that makes them vindictive. This makes them vindictive now. They don’t have to wait to die before stooping that low! A Church or religion that teaches such a doctrine needs to be rejected with severity. Even if the Church had a solution for the problem that avoided the vindictiveness the fact that the vast majority of people who believe will assume that Heaven requires you to gloat over the damned to be happy there is enough to charge the Church with gross evildoing and irresponsibility.

BOOKS CONSULTED

APOLOGETICS AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, M H Gill & Son, Dublin, 1954
APOLOGETICS FOR THE PULPIT, Aloysius Roche, Burns Oates & Washbourne LTD, London, 1950
ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM ET DEFINITIONUM, Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Edited by A Schonmetzer, Barcelona, 1963
‘GOD, THAT’S NOT FAIR!’ Dick Dowsett, [OMF Books, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Belmont, The Vine, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 3TZ] Kent, 1982
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1994
HAVE WE TO FEAR A DEVIL? Fred Pearce, The Christadelphian Office, Birmingham
HEAVEN AND HELL Dudley Fifield, Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham
HELL – WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT IT, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1945
JEHOVAH OF THE WATCH-TOWER, Walter Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House, Minnesota, 1974
LIFE IN CHRIST, PART 3, Fergal McGrath SJ, MH Gill and Son Ltd, Dublin, 1960
RADIO REPLIES VOL 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938
REASON AND BELIEF, Bland Blanschard, George Allen & and Unwin Ltd, London, 1974
THE BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1978
THE CASE FOR FAITH, Lee Strobel, HarperCollins, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000
THE DEVIL, THE GREAT DECEIVER Peter Watkins, The Christadelphian Birmingham, 1992
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF BIBLE DIFFICULTIES, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
THE FOUR MAJOR CULTS, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press, Carlisle, 1992
THE KINDNESS OF GOD, EJ Cuskelly MSC, Mercier Press, Cork, 1965
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE REAL DEVIL, Alan Hayward, Christadelphian Bible Mission, Birmingham
THE REALITY OF HELL, St Alphonsus Liguori, Augustine Publishing Company, Devon, 1988
THE SERMONS OF ST ALPHONSUS LIGOURI, St Alphonsus Ligouri, TAN, Illinois, 1982
THE TRUTH ABOUT HELL, Dawn Bible Students, East Rutherford, NJ
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT HELL? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEAVEN?, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1988
WHY DOES GOD? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Paul Publications, Bucks, 1970