Eternal Damnation....Eep.

Great Debates
1

Ok, first off, Hi!

Secondly, I wasn’t sure whether to put this in IMHO or GD…so a move wouldn’t surprise me.

Ok, so. The way I understand the Christian judgement system is this:

  1. You’re good. Into Heaven you go, my friend.
  2. You’re bad. To Hell with you, foul being.

And then, added rules depending on your particular beliefs, such as, I believe, the Catholic belief in Purgatory, where you go for a while as a sort of “smaller” punishment for the less evil crimes against God and fellow beings.

However, (and I may easily be wrong with this) I haven’t seen any form of Christianity that doesn’t disagree with those main two rules. They disagree on what constitutes good or bad behaviour, but in all cases i’ve seen it’s those two options. I’m pretty sure it’s the same deal in Judaism, and I believe also in Islam, but I don’t know enough about either to say it with great confidence.

Anyway, my point is this; you commit a crime against God, you go to Hell. Which…well, it seems kinda…harsh. I look at it like this:

  • You’re in constant agony. Doesn’t sound too nice, but ok, that makes sense for some sins/crimes, if they’re large enough.

  • There’s no chance of salvation. Which is where I start to have trouble. Once you’re there, that’s it. All is said and done. You’re not getting out, ever again, even if you repent (and I imagine you might be thinking about it :stuck_out_tongue: ).

  • You’re there for eternity. Now, honestly…eternity? Terrible pain and suffering…forever?

I can’t think of a crime that’s worthy of that level of punishment. I’m not a Christian myself, so I’ll admit that my judgement on these things is going to be different; blaspheming, for example, in my book would be worth a considerably lesser punishment than a Christian would believe in. However, I think i’d have roughly the same perception of murder, or rape, or theft as a Christian would. I’d definetly say that theft, no matter what you steal, is not worth eternal agony with no respite. Rape and murder? Yes, those would be worth a VERY high punishment in my opinion. Months, years, decades of constant pain? Acceptable. But eternity? This really does seem exceptionally harsh for a God who’s primary attribute, according to his believers, is benovolence.

So basically, I just want to ask…what are people’s views on this? Are there Christians who would agree that that’s an acceptable and relevant amount of punishment?

2

You get a whole lifetime to repent and repair the damage. The rule is you have to see the error of your ways BEFORE you get the punishment. We all know children who , when they find out just how bad the punishment is, beg and plead for forgiveness, promising to be good from now on, even though they were given plenty of opportunities before the punishment began to right their wrongs. Same thing with God. No do-overs. Benevolent, but strict, that’s God.

Now as a Methodist, we don’t get into Hell imagery. You just don’t get life everlasting in heaven if you’re bad. An eternity of nothingness can be worse than an eternity of pain and suffering.

3

Almost certainly GD, for religious debates/discussions.

This is incomplete, if not downright wrong, as it leaves out Chirst and his role in salvation (which is kinda the whole point of Christianity!). Exactly what that role is and how it works is explained differently by different branches of Christianity. Martin Luther, one of the founders of Protestantism, is famous for stressing that Christians are saved by grace through faith, not by works.

I am not a Catholic, but as I understand it, it would probably make more sense to describe it as being purged of whatever would make you unfit for Heaven, rather than as a “punishment.” (Hence the name.)

Maybe where you err is in thinking of it as some cosmic judicial system, where you’re “sentenced” to Hell for your “crimes” in life. There are other ways to look at it. For instance, your actions—and your allowing or refusing to allow God to act on you—influence your soul and make you into the kind of person who would be “at home” in Heaven or in Hell.

4

You’re wrong. A Christian doctrine that disagrees with those two beliefs is called “Universalism.”

5

We need Siege and Polycarp in here, not me. But as a lifelong Christian here’s my take on it.

It isn’t really good or bad behavior that sends one to Heaven or Hell. No person can be “good enough”, we are all sinners and there’s no good way to make up for that. What saves us is faith in God. It’s like John 3:16 says, God loved us so much that Jesus to die for us and save us from our sins. If we believe that, then we are Christian, never mind the fringe stuff folks hang on religion

One could live a “bad” life, and if they truly accept Christ and his love for us, even right before the end, then they will be in Heaven when they die. Jesus said it Himself to one of the criminals that was crucified along with Him, “today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Moses protested to God that he was “slow of speech”. I hope I have muddied the waters enough here.

6

Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates…For All Eternity!

7

Thanks. I thought there would probably be at least one that didn’t. And it occurs to me I should have said “I haven’t seen any form of Christianity that does disagree”, but you got what I meant anyway :slight_smile:

And Baker, I see what you’re saying, but while your belief system says that we can change right up until the end, there’s still a point at which we’re judged either good or bad. And inevitably, an amount of people are going to be judged to have been bad under any “rules of living” set out. And they’re going to Hell (in some belief systems, as Baker pointed out). I don’t think that anyone deserves the level of punishment that entails; the horrible agony for eternity with no salvation.

8

Ok then. I think my point still stands though; if you replace “good” and “bad” with “having faith” and not, it still works. My question isn’t really on what behaviour/beliefs/actions get us into Heaven or otherwise, but rather on whether Hell, for any reason, is an out-of-proportion reaction to the “wrong” behaviours.

Ok, that makes sense.

So you’re saying that, when you die, you’re fine no matter which way you go? If i feel “at home” in Hell, why would I want to avoid it? If I either do not believe in God, or do but feel no need to act in the ways he feels fit, then I am rewarded anyway? This is the opposite to the original problem; Eternal damnation seems much too harsh, but being sent to somewhere that you’d feel at home seems far too lenient. If God’s so benovolent that he rewards the faithful servant, the murderer, the good but unbelieving, the evildoers acting in his name, etc, then frankly to me it seems his judgement is impaired.

9

Some Christians look at it this way: if during your lifetime, you choose to worship God, then after your mortal life ends you can expect an eternity spent with God.

OTOH, if during your lifetime you choose not to worship God, then you can expect an eternity alone, separated from God. This Godless eternity would be without hope, with an awful lot of regret, forever.

Christians believe that God is God and he made everything including ourselves and he gives us freewill to accept or reject Him. We just have to accept the consequences of our choice.

10

Actually, there are several Christian views-

the traditional one- those who will not entrust themselves to God through JC go to Hades, an unpleasant holding cell, until the Return of JC & the Last Judgement at which time they go into Gehenna/the Lake of Fire to suffer forever.

Variations of the traditional are-
-literal torment a la Dante’s Inferno & Chick tracts,
-self-centered deterioration & exile from God’s Presence a la C.S. Lewis,
-continual hostility against God feeling tormented by His Inescapable Presence a la Eastern Orthodoxy
(I see the latter two as consistent with Divine Love & Justice, the first definitely not).

the next most common- but minority view- the unrepentant are fairly judged for their sins & maybe also their virtues & finally go into eternal death (SD Adventists, JWs & Armstrongists are the main groups which hold this).

and finally, Universal Salvation - which can be specifically Christian (JC provided salvation for all humanity & therefore all humanity shall eventually realize that & accept His salvation, if not in this life, then in the Afterlife) or pluralist (God loves & accepts everyone regardless of beliefs or behavior).

There are variations within each group- my belief-

Everyone, in this life or the Afterlife, will have adequate opportunity to entrust themselved to God via JC. If any remain hostile against God/JC, then God/JC will be completely fair & loving in allowing them to either die out, languish forever in His Presence or let them go out into that Exile they have chosen. I kinda hope that all will come to God/JC (I don’t really hope that for child abusers, Nazis & the like) but those who will not will only be damned after having full opportunity to be saved.

11

Yes, this is what I have been taught as well. My understanding is that you cannot earn your way into heaven with good deeds. The only way in through accepting Jesus as your saviour, whether you are good or bad. Which is just as well for me because I am not particularly good.

Of course I could be mistaken about the whole thing…

12

What Baker said is a pretty good, quick summary. (Lorenzo’s take is not too bad, either.) The focus is on the idea of God loving, and saving, us, not so much on His judgment. In fact, I’ve seen some theologies that suggest that the outcome depends on us, in much the sense that we can make choices that affect us physically.

To draw a rather stupid parallel, suppose eating chocolate cake to be a sin, for which God is said to judge us and condemn us for being fat. In point of fact, getting fact is the consequence of eating the cake; God will save us from eternal obesity by a cosmic Weight Watchers. To show how the analogy works, suppose that holding the attitudes that Paul fulminates about will result in us evolving personalities characterized by bitterness, envy, distrust, and separation, not because we’re judged as evil by some external force, but by sheer spiritual/psychological (“pneumatological”?) processes within us. By God’s grace, we can free ourselves from this doom, which every one of us has enough of the “bad” attitudes within ourselves to end up in, by drawing on His strength and love.

I believe I’ve told the story before of a college friend who was brilliant, vibrant, intensely interested and motivated – until he got far too heavily into drugs (a wide array of stuff). The person that resulted was a burned-out husk of the wonderful person he had been, without the abilities he had had. I use this analogy to suggest that “the wages of sin is death” is not penal in nature but rather a truism about what the ultimate results of unsaved human nature are. There comes a point when we have burned all our spiritual bridges, cannot turn to him and cooperate with grace in changing who we are. Until that point, God is always ready to save. Hell is simply the frozen awareness and bitter regret that what we once were, we no longer can be, and there is nothing we, or God, can do to alter that.

Presuming that some sort of individuality survives death (a given for the issue raised here), we don’t know at what point we become constitutionally unable to make such a choice … whether there is grace available after death or not. The afterlife envisaged by Greek and Jewish thought said not, that the spirits of the deceased were powerless, volitionless wraiths. Some Greek writer put in the mouth of Achilles’ dead spirit in Hades that it was better to be a living swineherd than a dead hero. Hence the underlying assumption that one must turn to God and accept His grace before death.

13

I have to point it out again: this wasn’t supposed to be about what will result in a person’s getting into Heaven, but rather whether you think that any “negative” option after death is too harsh. In your example there, I’d say that an eternity alone would also be far too harsh a punishment for any crimes: it’s for eternity, and there’s no salvation. Very harsh.

This, to my mind, seems to make God quite petty. Giving us free will, well, I’d say that was the act of a benovolent god, but saying that we either have to love him or we are damned and some kind of bad thing happens to us after death seems like blackmail, really.

Well, there have been plenty of people throughout history who accepted God and did very bad things; I point out the crusades as an example. The semi-recent wave of child-molesting priests would also suggest that there are people who are bad, and yet still believe in and worship God. Does this mean they still get into Heaven? In this case, God still doesn’t, to me, look that good. It appears he’s letting in his “friends”, the people who believe in him, no matter what they have done: This, surely, is too lenient for some. Likewise, some “good” people who don’t believe in God are going to go to Hell/Gehenna/be alone/bad place, and that, in my opinion, is far too harsh.

If I understand this correctly, you’re saying that by committing sins, this itself changes us and makes us more “evil” or “incorrect” with regards to God, and that his role in this is giving us the oppurtunity and support to not commit sins.

But if support in God is needed to escape doom, then belief in God is implied. Thus people who don’t believe or accept God are doomed, no matter how good they are (or how much cake they have avoided eating). Again, this, to me, suggests that God is more concerned about people liking him than people doing good; as the former will always get into Heaven while the latter may not. And the latter will be sent to a place from where there is 1) no escape and 2) some kind of torture (be it pain, the seperation from God, or being alone) for eternity. And that just seems far too harsh.Under all the systems outlined so far, I personally am going to the “bad place” as I don’t believe in God. Now, i’m not going to claim to be perfect, but i’d like to think that, generally, i’ve done good stuff so far in my life. If I got run over tomorrow, I’d be sent away to the “bad place”. As would many, many other people. To me, this does not say “benovolent god” it says “benevolent god, unless you don’t like him”.

Could I also ask (as no-one seems to have done it yet) that people answer the question of whether they feel that the “bad option” of their particular belief system is out of proportion to the bad actions or bad beliefs that we hold in life, or the bad person that we have become?

14

Christ & His disciples are pretty explicit that if you claim to love & worship God and mistreat people (especially children), you’re gonna be in a world of hurt when you stand before God.

As far as “buddy up to God or get hurt” goes-

People who reject God/JC for lots of reasons- lack of understanding, revulsion at how They’ve been wrongly represented by those who claim to know Them, despair at Their seeming inaction in the face of evil, or sometimes, people can reject them out of their own badness & rebelliousness. God/JC will judge all fairly. There may be people who die as hardcore atheists but are good to people, who then awaken in the Afterlife & eagerly embrace God/JC when seeing Them as They truly are. There may be others who die professing deep faith in God, yet are petty or cruel to people, who awaken in the Afterlife to find they have so deformed their souls as to render them incapable of embracing God/JC.

However, there are people who serve God & other people, and so fit themselves to enter eternity happily in harmony with God, while there are people who reject God & live for themselves or some false ideology who will render themselves incapable of living happily with God forever.

15

The problem I have with this is that someone could live a very good life and still go to hell because they didn’t accept Jesus as savior. Doesn’t make sense. A Buddhist monk who lives by Buddhist principles {which are amazingly similar to the teachings of Christ} and leads a modest life of service and kindness toward his fellow beings and reverence toward mother earth, goes to hell with truly evil people. Pardon my bluntness but it’s ridiculous. I have reverence for what Christ taught and know many fine Christians but that aspect of their doctrine is an incorrect interpretation of what Jesus taught IMHO.

As the Reverand points out, it treats Jesus as if he’s on some ego trip. It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, you have to believe in me, me, ME!!
It also ignores a whole lot of passages in the Bible saying we will be judged according to our works.

16

Make that the good Revenant. My mistake.

17

I agree with you. People can do some pretty horrible things in this life life but is there anything that warrents* eternal * damnation with no chance of redemption and reformation. I don’t see it as part of a benevolent God.
kittenblue said

A whole lifetime compared to eternity. Again it seems kinda petty. If you take the passage that says “a thousand years is as one day to God” and interpret it literally {I know it isn’t} then an 80 year life is the equivilent to 2 hours. So our loving and eternal, benevolent God gives his creation 2 hours to get his or her act together and then it’s judgement. Again it doesn’t make sense. I think the idea of spiritual development over several lifetimes makes much more sense. We do face the consequences of our choices but get a chance to choose differently.

That’s another problem I have with Christianity. Most thinking Christians will agree that you must behave a certain way to be sincere. My question is where is the line drawn? How much “sin” will God tolerate because you profess to believe in Jesus. Supposedly a Christian who struggles with say alcohol or drugs or whatever, will be forgiven for every backslide as long as he asks for forgiveness. The kind and generous atheist who lives a good life, after a lifetime of making positive contribution to all around him, is sent to hell for not believeing. Think about it. My dear Christian friends say, “well we just don’t understand the justice of God.”
I’ll admit I don’t, but I can’t imagine that my own imperfect sense of justice is better than the Lord’s. The other answer I get is “It’s right there in the Bible” We have to see the Bible realistically and interpret it with a sense of “what is love?” I think Christianity has been stressing the wrong passages for years and explaining away other passages that make more sense.

Again I agree with you, that this explaination falls short of making sense when you think of God in the Love and Truth sense. I don’t think it’s a matter of God requiring belief in him. It’s a matter of truth. Are we these limited physical beings or are we eternal spiritual beings? If you choose to cling to the limited physical being aspect and that is not true, then you face the consequences of that choice. When we begin to realize that we are spiritual beings then our choices start to change. You also see people choosing eternal qualities such as love and truth even before they believe in eternity. IMO choosing love and truth is choosing God even if you reject all the contempoary concepts of God, because love and truth are eternal qualities.

My beliefs are made up of studying different religions and coming to my own conclusions so I follow no specific doctrine. I don’t believe in any punishment scenario. The question that remains for me is can we come to a realization of our spiritual nature and still reject love as a path. If we do what then? Don’t know.
In the Book of Mormon there’s an interesting section that says in the presence of God every imperfection will be revealed and if we are not prepared, it would be more painful to be in God’s presence than to not be. An interesting metaphor. HAve you ever seen someone do something so loving and unselfish that you thought “Wow, I feel like a selfish ass in comparision” HAve you ever complained about the small stuff and then met someone who was positive and upbeat who had much more serious problems than you?
When you come out of the dark the light is painful. You have to get used to it gradulaly.

18

Might as well put in a word for another Christian’s view.

Mortality is a natural state. All life shares one characteristic. That characteristic is death. Immortality is not natural. It is miraculous, and comes only from the Lord. That which is in you that is able to become immortal is that part which is the reflection, the image of God. To bring it out of the destruction that is the inevitable consequence of life, you must bring that spirit within you back to The Lord.

Sin is that which comes between you, and God. Destruction is not a punishment, it is your natural end state, as it is for all other things, living, or non-living. Sin simply keeps you from the miracle that God has promised to you. Piety, Sanctity, Charity, are all wonderful things, but they are simply things of the world, like all other mortal things. Love God. Love each soul you meet, as if that soul were God Himself. One day, it will be. Salvation comes to us from God through Christ, and immortality is a consequence of divine love. It isn’t a club, it isn’t a test, it isn’t a bank account with a balance. It’s what God chose to give us, if we would only take it. It is Love. Pure. Simple. Given freely.

One opinion, with no authority, on the nature of sin.

Tris

“We have met the enemy and it is us.” ~ Walt Kelly, Pogo ~

19

The notion of Hell is really the number one thing that drove me out of Christianity as a teenager. To this day, I cannot reconcile these two Christian tenets:

1.) God is love.
2.) God is willing to torture people for all eternity (via either physical torture, or an eternity of emptiness and regret).

It’s all based on the completely arbitrary time of death, which I find hard to understand. A person could live a long, bitter life of evil and horribleness only to truly convert as the priest discusses God with him on his deathbed; he goes to Heaven. A friar could devote his whole life to God, then reject God at the end of his life because of all of the suffering and madness in the world; he goes to Hell.

Do children go to hell, even infants? If so, how can you blame the child who didn’t have an opportunity to form beliefs? If not, how is that fair to the rest of us? If God truly loves us, why does he put some in a situation that puts their soul at risk, and others get a Get-Into-Heaven-Free Card? Why are people who are born into a family that exercises one religion, and who never examine their personal faith closely but just go along with it, OK if they’re born Christian but not Hindu?

Besides which, I could never understand how it’s a choice between accepting God and rejecting God. How many religions are there and have been in human history? How am I to know that the Bible is the correct sacred text, and not the hundreds of others? God has chosen not to make himself known in any sort of objective way – not subjectively, in my experience, even when I, as a Christian, desperately prayed to understand these things and to have some sort of real experience that would show me that God existed. Oh, because you can’t put God to the test. Convenient, that, considering it has exactly the same effect as God not existing.

I can’t accept that anyone would deserve to be miserable for eternity – not even the very worst human being that ever lived.

20

What Tris said.

Look, Revenant. Someday you’re going to die. So am I; so are all of us.

Hypothetical situation set up as a parallel:

Now, I claim, and have proven (by evidence some people feel doesn’t meet the standard of proof) to have a fantastic panacea gerontological drug that will prevent your dying of old age. (Just call me Ira Howard ;)) It does take some work on your part; you have to abstain, for example, from eating grapefruit or asparagus, or climbing mountains over 2,500 meters in height. (Never mind why those have bad side effects; I’ll explain if you’re really curious, but I do list them as contraindicators.)

And I will send you this miracle drug completely free. I don’t demand you like me and write me on how you’re doing, though I’m glad to get such mail and will send you back letters of support as you pursue your extended, grapefruit- and asparagus-free life.

The one thing that is inherent in your benefiting from this is that you trust me. I’ll provide you with evidence of people who have been using my drug and are surfing and dancing in their eighties, and a statistical summary that shows that nobody who has consistently used my drug has died except by fatal accident. But none of that will do you any good if you don’t believe it and trust me that my claims are in fact valid. (Yeah, there are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there; but I want you to be sure that my product works, and I’ll provide you with sound evidence that it does. Unlike a lot of people, I’m not in it for the money, but because I don’t want to see people dying of old age, and I have fortunately found the way to prevent it, and am offering it 100% free, with only expecting you to comply with the conditions that are medically required for it to work.)

That doesn’t mean I’m making any weird demands on you about “having blind faith in me” – just that the fact of the matter is that for it to do you any good, you have to trust me enough to write and say you want to get on the program and take my drug, and be willing to abstain from grapefruit, asparagus, and climbing high mountains, so that it will work.

I’m doing this because I care about people, and I did discover this wonder drug, and how it works and under what conditions. And because I care about people, I’m offering it to them free. All I ask is that you investigate my claims, and if they seem valid to you, trust me enough to order it and take it, and abstain from those three things that will stop it from working.

Am I asking something odd here? You’re free not to believe me, of course. But you’ll die of old age. And it’s not my fault if you do; that’s a part of human nature, that you will. I’m prepared to give you something that will prevent that – but you need to trust me enough to ask for it, take it, and eschew doing the things that will keep it from working.

Do you see the parallel between that and Christianity? And does it make sense under those terms?