Topic: Why would our loving God send people to hell?

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: July 31, 2004

Moderator who originally posted this source: Father Phillip

Question:  If God is loving why dose he send people to hell? Cant he give them a second chance? No one deserves infinite damnation, not even Hitler because punishment should have an end so the person can learn from there mistakes, like a mother spanking a child for acting badly. He acts he gets spanked then he will know not to do it again or he will get spanked. How is he loving when he makes us suffer so much with war and hell.  Could some one tell me?

Answer: 

You raise probably the most profound question in the entire universe. There's a technical name for what you're talking about; it's called "theodicy" but that doesn't matter a whole lot, I guess. The classic formulation of what you're asking goes something like the following: "If God is all Good, how can God allow suffering in the world?"

Great minds have thought and prayed about this issue for millennia, and they haven't come up with an answer to it. So, I certainly don't claim to know the answer either.

One of the really great books written on this question is called, "Evil and the God of Love" by John Hick. It's kind of long and a bit complicated, but for college students who are really interested and committed, it's the best resource around for understanding this difficult, complex, and challenging set of issues.

The short answer, though, to your question is this: While we are confronted with so much evil in the world, our experience of the God Who is revealed in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is of a LOVE that is even greater than the greatest evil. Though evil may SEEM to have the upperhand from our limited point-of-view, the fact is that God is winning over the long-haul.

And the only people who go to hell -- though nobody knows FOR SURE -- are those who even till the very last breath of their lives say, "NO!!!" to God. Our belief is that in any life, no matter how wicked the actions of that life may have been, if the person in the last instant even whispers, "YES!" to God, that person has the hope of heaven. The LOVE and COMPASSION and FORGIVENESS of God is so utterly INFINITE that God will grant the hope of heaven to any of us if we will but open ourselves to God. Because God so profoundly respects our freedom of will, God doesn't "force" us to accept Divine Mercy, but God is ALWAYS willing to hear even the quietest and shortest prayer for that mercy.

Thanks for thinking about this important set of issues; you sound like a really great person!

Blessings!