As for the rest I am not sure. To me a lot comes down to intent and what you actually have in your heart. The way he went about becoming POTUS, first as a “Democrat” and then as a “Republican”, what his actual agenda was/is, how any of his life’s actions have assisted his fellow man or the glory of God ------ to me he would be headed down. But there are those even within my denomination who lend a much more forgiving nature to God than I do and they just could be right. So call it maybe a coin flip in my brain.
Personally, I don’t believe in an afterlife. But I’ll pretend I do for the sake of argument. And I’ll pick the traditional Christian afterlife because it’s the one I’m most familiar with.
Trump’s actions up to now are certainly putting him on the highway to Hell. As somebody pointed out last week, Trump manages to practice all seven of the deadly sins.
But Christian belief is that redemption is always possible. So Trump could acknowledge his sinful ways, seek forgiveness, and get into Heaven.
In my view, Trump’s agenda is generally an immoral one (which I obviously don’t support) so any success he achieves in enacting that agenda will be an aggravating factor rather than a mitigating one.
I’m going to keep rebutting this argument whenever I see it. Trump is not just another politician. He’s far worse. Pretending the terrible things he does are typical helps normalize those terrible things.
I think this is the first one that doesn’t presuppose that hell exists, so in this one I can say the following without fighting the hypothetical: I’m an atheist and don’t believe in an afterlife. There is no hell.
Also I have doubts that Trump actually has a political agenda beyond personal profit and aggrandizement, so I think he’d be almost unique among politicians for the lack of “the greater good justifies the means” protection his ‘political’ beliefs might give him.
As for whether some theorized God would be willing to ignore anyone’s personal evils due to the overriding agenda they pursue, that would depend heavily on the deity, but I’m not sure whether I could even consider respecting any deity that did so. I’m not really into the idea that good deeds erase bad ones - that doesn’t sound like a sensible system.
I don’t believe in hell, but if there is one he’d be a good candidate not just for politics and racism but for cheating repeatedly on his wives.
But let’s look on the bright side. If he went, he’d immediately tell Satan that he could do a better job running the place, and the first thing Trump would do would be to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out.
In traditional Catholic theology, the Seven Deadly Sins - the broad categories that encompass the worst of the worst - are: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.
I don’t think anybody here is presuming that Trump going to Hell is our call. It’s possible to speculate over possible outcomes without having control over them.
The OP (a non-believer in any sorts of heavens or hells) is rather pleased at the many thoughtful and serious responses. Thanks
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It is true that I cannot judge who goes to heaven or hell. Only God can. But I can speculate based on what God has already said. I am a rational creature. God gave me the ability to reason. And that reason is vitally necessary to following Christ and understanding his message.
Of course I do have a requirement not to cast judgement over disputable matters. But I’m not doing that. Inasmuch as I am casting judgement, I am doing so only for that which isn’t disputable. And inasmuch as I am saying things that could be disputed, I am not passing judgement, simply stating what I believe will happen.
Jesus himself and his followers had no problem telling people when they were sinning. Jesus had no problem explaining how the path some people were on would lead to hell. And, remember, Jesus didn’t sin. And he was fully human (as well as fully divine). So he cannot of have done something that was sinful for us to do.
I do step back from “Donald J. Trump will go to Hell when he dies” because I can’t say that. I can’t know what will happen. But I do not refrain from what I said originally. Only salvation and repentance can save anyone, and I find it extremely unlikely he would seek the first or do the other.
Even if I push the Lewisian “that which you did in service of Tash, I count as service to [Jesus],” Trump has shown none of that. The only person or cause he appears to have ever served in his life is Donald J. Trump.
Oh he’s going to hell. The only question is to what circle he goes:
Circle II: Lust. Yes
Circle III: Gluttony. Probably (lovely hamdurgers)
Circle IV: Greed. Yup
Circle V: Anger. Probs
Circle VI: Heresy. Hmm, he might get a pass on that one.
Circle VII: Violence. Unknown. Convince me one way or 'tother
Circle VIII: Fraud. Big Time.
Well in a sense we all create our own personal hell via our lack of foresight, or introspection. Not literally everyone but definitely a lot of people. But it’s also the human condition in many ways to feel dissatisfaction and always want more, never feeling content, both a good and bad thing, in my opinion.
Believing in an actual physical or otherworldly dimensional plane of eternal damnation is just silly and for children. Do you really think Dr. Josef Mengele is suffering in hell right now? Nah man the guy died on his 60’s on a beach in Brazil or Argentina or wherever probably after getting laid and escaping justice for his many vile atrocities. Such a ridiculous notion.
My answers are yes, although definitely not the conventional sort of Hell, and no, he’s not necessarily going to it.
The way I understand it, the mere act of doing sinful things isn’t the issue; it’s doing them in spite of knowing better. Put a different way, if a severely mentally handicapped person say… pulls an “Of Mice and Men” Lenny, and kills someone, that isn’t something that will send the handicapped person to Hell- yes, someone died, but the handicapped person wasn’t aware that he did anything wrong, or his understanding may be very incomplete. I’m not 100% sure Trump is fully aware that all the things he’s doing are sinful or wrong.
Like others have pointed out, there’s always that chance of redemption- even after you’ve died. I tend to conceive of evil as the absence of God, and of Hell as sort of a reformatory where people are completely shown the error of their ways in a way that a mortal person never could grasp, and are given the ability to repent.
I don’t know that Trump is *that *bad in terms of his sinfulness; he’s certainly no saint, but a lot of what he’s doing is more along the lines of assholery, not outright evil. I mean, Harvey Weinstein seems a lot more evil than Trump to me.
Really? Because I would say the reverse. I think Trump’s committed all of the sins Weinstein has committed. But I also think Trump has committed a lot of other sins that Weinstein hasn’t. I think that Trump, due to his much more influential position, has caused far more sins to be committed than Weinstein has.