Defrocked, former priest James Porter died yesterday. He had admitted to the abuse of over 100 children, over the course of 40 years. His exposure proved to be the catalyst for the widespread exposure of hundreds of cases of clergy child abuse.
My question for believers: can God pardon such a man? Does this horrible life merit redemption? People who experienced molestation as children frequently endure terrible lives…many fall victim to drug addiction, alcoholism, and depression. Clearly, James Porter was a very evil man…how couldsuch a man live with his conscience?
If there is a hell, it should be reserved for people of his ilk!
The short answer is yes, it is possible for Porter to be redeemed. No soul is so bad that it is beyond that. If a person truly repents of their sins, God’s mercy will not be withheld.
In addition, it must be said that repentence, nor any human act, is not what gets a person to Heaven. If a person has faith in God and God’s mercy, shown IRL by Christ, then one is “saved”.
As for Porter, two more things. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it seems to me that his continuing abuse of children showed a disposition not prone to repentance. Whether he ever did or not we’ll never know, it’s between him and God now.
And forgiveness from God is not the same thing as forgiveness by the civil authorities. One could commit a heinous crime and truly repent, even have their life turned around. But that would not mean release from punishment by the law, whatever that punishment might be.
Didn’t mean to stray into witnessing territory in MPSIMS, but that’s where the question was asked.
I believe everyone goes into the same place- the pure love & pure justice of God through Jesus. What happens there is between them & God. If he can be fixed & really wants to be fixed, I’m not going to say God will refuse to fix him. But it will hurt like Hell… literally. If he ever finds redemption, it will not be by sparing him one bit of pain that’s coming to him, but by experiencing fully that pain & going through it with Christ, Who at Gologtha assumed all the pains of every abusing & every abused person (the external violence in THE PASSION was nothing compared to the internal violence He experienced.)