The good intention here is that they didn't want to make God look like a pre-Vatican II condemner. A loving God would never send anyone to hell, so we must be the ones who send ourselves to hell.
HERESY! HERESY! HERSEY!
We don't send ourselves either to hell or to heaven. We might pave the way, but it is God who makes the final judgement and His judgement leaves no wiggle room for mistakes in this regard!
IF YOU ARE IN HELL, YOU DESERVE IT BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT AND GOD MAKES SURE YOU ARE THERE!
IF YOU ARE IN HEAVEN, YOU DON'T DESERVE IT, BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT BUT GOD MAKES SURE YOU ARE THERE!
3 comments:
True. God sends all unrepentant mortal sinners to Hell after they die.
The metaphysical reality of a human soul without a human body is a decidedly precarious situation: it is a human intellect and will but no longer connected to a human brain and body so has none of the 5 senses: it is blind, deaf, cannot taste or smell and feels no physical extension.
If this human soul is a friend of God, is in union with God, then it is disposed to enter into eternal relationship with God which is heaven. On the other hand, if this soul is turned away from God towards creatures (sex, drugs, power, popularity, possessions - all things that require a body to have) it is instantly shorn of the enjoyment these creatures gave. Having no 'treasure' in interpersonal relationships, no loves apart from itself, what state could this soul enter if not a hellish one?
Imagine spending one's entire life building up a pile of mere things, vainly thinking that these things are the point and purpose and ultimate reality for life....only to discover that they can't follow your soul into the real destiny? How thunderously appalling it must be to be striped of all these baubles and trinkets, stripped of all these comforts and securities that one formerly trusted...and then aware that one continues to exist alone, dark, and in a void of silence!
Still even here, the human soul cannot enter hell by its own will power - a state of being created for the devil and his angels (and thus not for human souls which means it's all the more horrifying for mere human souls to be sent there!). It needs to be 'escorted' into such a state of rebellion where other mere creatures arrive to take one where one otherwise could not go.
Similarly the angels of God arrive to escort our souls to God.
Our calling card, our 'ticket' therefore is what we can take with us and that is the habits of either altruistic love, 'agappe' self-less, self-giving for the good of another which makes us God-like.... or our habit and bent of will towards selfishness which turns us blind to the good of others.
Strip away all our bodily functions and powers, leaving us only an intellect and will, and what is there left of us but our desires for communion or our desire for selfishness?
perhaps it would be more accurate to say that nobody goes to Hell without their own consent because God allows us to reject him.
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