Many people argue that God is not going to send those who refuse to love Him and obey Him to everlasting hell like He has warned since the beginning. I don’t know why these unbelievers are so adamant in their convictions. Is God untruthful? I don’t think so. Is God unable to carry out this threat? Is there someone else higher than God who will intervene and compel God not to be so harsh with those He created?
I think hell is real because God is real. When God promises that He will transform us into His sons and daughters if we believe His teaching and are baptized and live the Christian life – that is real also. No created person should expect to become a child of the uncreated God. Of the three major religions that base their faith on what God revealed to Abraham, the prophets and Moses – namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam – only Christians expect to be adopted as actual sons and daughters of God.
The Jews were offered this relationship first, but their first-century religious leaders turned the offer down. If the Jews had not rejected this ministry, the Temple would still be standing today. Gentile believers would probably never have built the Vatican in Rome, and the world would be immensely different. A vocation to the clergy might not be open to any gentile. It’s likely that only descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses, would be eligible. The Muslims think it is highest blasphemy for any created person to consider himself a child of God. The Muslims call those who think they are God’s children “infidels” and they go after them with a vengeance.
Right away we can see something deathly serious in religion. Why this conflict? Why is the
world so untrusting of God, and why does it come up with so many other religions, especially those not based on God’s revelation? I think the reason is that too many humans do not want any constraints placed on their aspirations. They don’t want a religion that has a moral code which requires obedience to God.
The presence of evil
Evil is another reality in this world. The ambition not to serve God, and actually to oppose God and struggle to have one’s own will prevail against God – this element of evil is not a blind law of nature like gravity is. It is actually rooted in a created person, Lucifer, a disgraced and fallen angel. Before God created the physical universe and before God created humans beings, He had created the spiritual universe and all the angels and tested them to see if they were willing to love and obey Him. When that work was completed, God created the physical world with human beings.
Lucifer was created to serve a special post in God’s heavenly kingdom, but he did not want it. He was a real angel, and his opposition to God was and is real. He is now perpetually at war with God, actually trying to kill God, if he could. This all was worked out before time began, and there is nothing we can do to change the role Lucifer is now playing in the universe.
Lucifer is real. Through his own wickedness, he has chosen to oppose God and destroy him if possible.
Lucifer begins his campaign against the human race
When Lucifer first tempted Eve, he displayed his total opposition to God by seducing her to doubt what told God her and Adam about the tree. As soon as she answered, Lucifer contradicted God and told her a deliberate lie: “God knows very well that if you eat this fruit, you will become like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).
Shortly after that, Lucifer tempted Cain to reserve the best of his crops for himself and offer lesser quality crops to God. Lucifer would not have been surprised that God punished Cain for this because Lucifer knew ahead of time that God would be offended by Cain’s stinginess. Lucifer deliberately led Cain into this situation just like he deliberately deceived Eve.
Lucifer’s continued his campaign against Jesus Christ
Lucifer showed his malice in his three temptations of Christ. Lucifer first chose to tempt Jesus by telling Him He didn’t need to fast. He wanted Him to turn stones into bread. Jesus responded by quoting from Deuteronomy, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
Lucifer then took Jesus to the top of the Temple and told Him God would always protect Him, essentially taunting Jesus to “Jump and see!” while reciting the Old Testament passage that stated, “On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:12). Jesus quoted again from Deuteronomy saying, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:6)
In the third temptation, Lucifer took Jesus to a mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory (Matthew 4:8). Lucifer then said he would give Jesus authority over all these kingdoms if Jesus would worship him. Jesus refused, commanding Lucifer to “Be gone!” (Matthew 4:10) again quoting Deuteronomy saying, “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” Lucifer then left Jesus, and angels served Him (Matthew 4:11).
Note that the sole reason Jesus is resistant to the temptation is that He refuses to disobey His Father. Lucifer’s attempts to sidetrack Jesus into considering the reasonableness of temptation fell on deaf ears.
Death is a hallmark of Lucifer
The pagan Roman Empire, under the influence of Lucifer, was notorious for making men fight to the death as a form of public entertainment. Rome is not the only country that did this. The ancient Aztecs did the same thing but on a smaller scale. During some of their festivities they would take two prisoners, tie their wrists together on a long leash and have them battle to the death on a small elevated platform in front of spectators.
The Aztecs exceeded the Romans in the way they slaughtered their prisoners of war. Conquered soldiers by the thousands were herded in front of huge crowds of spectators and had their hearts ripped out, still beating, to be offered to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec war god, as sacrifice.
The Holocaust and abortion
In our lifetime we have all witnessed two totally unjustified slaughters of human beings: the Holocaust and procured abortion. It’s strange how political options warp the moral opinions of whole nations. The Germans during WWII were sold on the Holocaust as a way to correct some of the problems in Germany, but the rest of the world could see the evil in systematically killing Jews in violation of God’s commandment: “You shall not kill.”
Since 1973, when abortion was ruled constitutional in America, we have a situation where abortion is deemed “necessary” as a solution to everything from inconvenience to overpopulation, while those who value the right to life see abortion for what it truly is: a direct violation of God’s commandment, “You shall not kill.”
Why are those in favor of the Holocaust and abortion so convinced of the justification of these mass killings while so many others are so adamantly against it? The devil is involved in this thinking. If the devil tempts humans to embrace something sinful, it is very hard for the human mentality to take a stand against it.
Today we humans don’t send captives to the arena or prisoners to Huitzilopochtli’s temple to be slaughtered. We send the most innocent and most helpless human beings to horrible deaths in abortion centers, and then justify the act by selling their tissues for medicinal value to the highest bidder. This done in modern man’s insane defiance against God’s law: “You shall not kill.” How do we tolerate this?
Let’s not kid ourselves. Death is the pastime of Lucifer. It is his way of hurling insult at God and of making mockery of God’s commands that we should not murder one another but live in love and appreciation of each other.
Two modern humans totally at odds with God
Richard Dawkins is a well-known atheist biologist who is convinced that God does not exist. Dawkins thinks believers are blind to the serious character faults their imaginary God has displayed all through Scripture. Here is a famous quote from his book, The God Delusion:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully (39).
There are many ways to answer this kind of skepticism, but I only quote him here for the sake of showing his line of thinking.
Theodore Cardinal McCarrick was a world-renowned leader in the Catholic Church, a bishop who consistently ordained more seminarians than other American bishops, but there was a dark side to this man: He had for a long time been accused of sexually abusing seminarians and seemed unrepentant in recognizing that this conduct is morally wrong for anybody, especially a Catholic clergyman.
You and I, as well as everyone else are burdened with concupiscence, which is the inordinate desire to do what God commands us not to do. It might manifest itself as a longing to steal, a predilection to lie, to dominate others, a thirst for power and, especially in today’s culture, a thirst to enjoy sexual misconduct, God has made us vulnerable to temptation in one of these areas (or in drunkenness or narcotic addiction) to give us an opportunity to combat devils in the realm they feel most confident in, the potential ruin of our souls.
I don’t like to single out individual persons and admonish them publicly for their sins, but these two men have flooded the Internet with their defiance of God. I don’t know if they are mentally ill and that’s why they do this or if they sincerely believe they are in the right and God is in the wrong, Perhaps they are playing a game with us and don’t believe a thing they are saying in addition to not believing in the existence of God. It’s not for me to judge them. God will judge them. But they are at war with God and His commands.
Conclusion
This display of evil and defiance of God’s holy law is unmistakably displayed by both devils and humans. Devils will never repent and ask forgiveness. But God has revealed that He will forgive repentant human beings – thankfully.
A great many humans, however, appear to me as firm in their opposition to God’s commands as the devils are. God has warned us that there is one sin that will not be forgiven in this life or in the next: the sin against the Holy Spirit.
Some Church leaders have described that sin as final impenitence (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1864). We humans, if we want to appear excessively smart and shock and humiliate those who try to correct us, we should understand that there is another witness to what we say: God Himself.
Be careful what you think and what you say. Nobody should want to be called to task for frivolous and wicked things he said during his life.
18 thoughts on “Why Hell Is Real and Forever”
Actually, I was a case worker (25 years) in the field of mental health and developmental disabilities when viewing that evil in the eyes of a prisoner at a correction facility. By working in this field one comes to understand the role clinical diagnosis and dysfunctional behavior caused by nature and nurture plays in these tragedies too. Your take on mass shooters and their subsequent suicide is very unique and plausible, however, it’s been said that they are cowards at heart and do not want to face the consequences which includes the death penalty. Anger is a deadly sin and left untreated may evolve into murderous intent. Remember the movie ‘Network’ “ I’m mad as hell and am not going to take it anymore” it is the mantra of a very loud and crowded world, dominated by an unchecked technology that has thrust us far further than we should be in such a short span of time. Our environs are not from the devil but science unchained. It has made many people mad, mad, mad. I live in the woods, with nature’s sweet breath, green arms and ethereal quiet – where everyone yearns (at heart) to, and should be. Thanks for the follow-up.
One item not mentioned here as supportive is universality of belief. Most major religions believe in the concept of reward or punishment for ones life. My wife is Buddhist and believes in heaven, hell, the devil and God (though in a somewhat different manner than Christians), She also believes abortion is murder for the same reason any thinking person does. While I am acquainted with the theological concept of invincible ignorance, it would seem that there are many fewer than we suppose that have no concept of right and wrong no matter what they profess to believe or not. One of the tragedies of today’s lack of energetic evangelization seems to be consigning many of these nonbelievers to an uncertain end.
Hello Donald Link,
Thank you for reading my article and for commenting on it.
You are quite right. There is a universality of belief. The Catholic Church calls it natural law. God has placed natural law in the minds of all human beings as an aversion against murder, rape, theft, lying, and many other sinful acts.
Pagans are aware of this natural aversion against evil. Pagan Greece and pagan Rome built up a system of Ethics based upon natural law. Humanists today base their moral code on natural law. The problem with ethics is there is no punishment for infractions of natural law like hell is a warned punishment for infraction of God’s commandments.
Pagan Greece and Rome for a time did well on ethics, but when society began to break down nothing could stem the tide of evil that resulted. As long as religious people recognize that God will punish with hell any infraction of His holy will, the world is less apt to descent into evil.
Thanks for your insight into this. It flows right along with my article.
Maurice A. Williams
Hello Brian,
Thanks for reading my article and thank you for your comments. I just wanted to mention that I think you are right on track with your Catholic Faith.
The source of evil temptation in this world really is a person, Lucifer, a rebellious and disgraced angel. He must think it is to his advantage to lead all humans into sin. That is why God punished him.
We have two more handicaps that we must deal with. One is concupiscence, something like an instinctive desire to do what we know God does not want us to do. It’s a weakness to fall into a thirst for power, bullying, sexual pleasure, alcohol and drugs, This desire to do wrong is one of the consequences of original sin, but God uses it give us a way to demonstrate our wiliness to follow God.
The third handicap is the influence of the world, the bad example that comes from the world and others humans. Our Catholic faith teaches us that we must resist the influence of the world, the flesh and the Devil. If we honestly try to do this, God will finish that work in us and, after conquering the world, the flesh and the Devil, God will take us into His heavenly Kingdom so we can be happy with Him forever
Maurice A. Williams
Peter, I was not referring to the people of the Church. I may be a skeptic but after that it
drops to outright unbelievers who couldn’t conceive of possession. The average agnostic
needs to witness (specifically) an exorcism (a super preternatural event) in order for their
unbelief to go viral. The coliseum in Rome and many other sites around the world abounded
in the most atrocious evil for hundreds of years without pause until the Holocaust revived
the specter. Documented miracles by a world wide cadre of professional doctors, scientists
and unchallenged sources are not being used to raise Catholicism above the fray and that is
the gist of my complaint.
Hello Ordinary Papist,
I would like to comment on you answer to Peter Darcy yesterday at 4:14 PM. You said “the odds of sitting in on an ordinary exorcism are nil.”
I think possession by a devil is much more common today that it was in the Middle Ages, when the Church was active in dealing with possession. But our unbelieving world doesn’t recognize a possession when it is right in front of its eyes, and nobody is on hand today to deal with one.
We have all heard of mass shootings where a person, sometimes a youth, bursts into a school classroom with an automatic weapon and opens fire on anybody in sight. When that culprit enters the classroom he is so overpowered by rage that one can see it in his eyes like you saw evil in another’s eyes during your eighteen months in SE Asia.
When that person bursts into the room, he is so enraged that nothing can stop him. If you got in his way, you would be the first one shot. After he has killed a number of innocent children, his rage subsides (the Devil is getting ready to leave him) and the enormity of what that person has done begins to overwhelm him. Often the shooter will then shoot himself.
Our culture does not recognize the existence of God or any devils and angels in the spiritual world. They attribute the shooting to the mere presence of a gun in the shooter’s hand, and their remedy is, of course, take guns away from everybody, which is no solution at all. I think nothing is more terrifying than to be confronted by a mass murderer, where there is nothing to stop his rampage.
You told Peter “the detailed angelic rebellion against God is not something someone can film” etc. The aftermaths of mass shootings are filmed every couple months or so as they occur. I pray that neither you nor I are present when a mass murderer bursts onto the scene.
Maurice A. Williams
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Oh yes, Maurice, the nuns always taught us to ‘pray always’. Heaven’s the goal.
Peter, no doubt. However, the odds of sitting in on an actual exorcism are nil, and you know that. See, that’s the rub – If the American Academy of science could verify the claim by Dr Ricardo Castanon’s research as advocated by CS columnist G. Van Son, if the Vatican opened up all the evidence of countless miracles (which I do believe) to CNN, PBS, Fox News, the NY Times, ect. then maybe you could convince the doubtful masses. When the third letter of Fatima was delayed for decades, and basically fizzled on the apocalyptical expectations, I personally felt cheated and taken advantage of as a RC. When these links, proofs and evidence are not forthcoming, an unbelieving world gets even more jaded. Surely you can see that. Also, as pointed out by learned others, faith, miracles, signs and
wonders are maybe personal in nature and there very nature, not for display.
I too have encountered great evil on a personal level, eighteen months in SE Asia saw to that.
I have seen evil in another’s eyes so fierce I had to look away for fear of being consumed and
so I believe in what is seen and not seen, however, the detailed and angelic rebellion against
God is not something someone can film in their minds and play it for an audience as Oscar
worthy, even private revelation may be for their eyes alone. In any case, we are only a few pages apart in our understanding. So Peace.
You too. Thanks for a charitable exchange.
Hello Ordinary Papist,
Thank you for reading my article and commenting on it.
I think that the evil each one of us experiences in this world comes from other humans and not from God because God is not the source of evil. God command that each one of us should love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The man that looked at you with fierce hatred, in his eyes is doing exactly the opposite of what God commands. If that hostile look engendered feeling of rage and hurt in your heart, it is the other man’s disobedience that caused it.
God can deal with rebellious angels and humans any way that He wants. He can overpower each one of us and force us to do His will, but He doesn’t want that. What He wants is for each one of us to recognize His will and force ourselves to comply with it. That way everybody in heaven is totally free.
This is a great gift to spend eternity in heaven always as a free person without outside compulsion to obey with threats of punishment if you do disobey. Everybody should long for it and do all in their power to try to attain it.
Hope this helps.
Hi Brian, as I’ve said before, Adam and Eve and Genesis is a profound allegory with a sublime message. However, the CC has liberated our understanding, allowing evolution to crossed the finish line and so we need to take it from there. The angelic demon’s war on humanity is a good analogy for everything evil, both personal and collective, but we have these primitive vestiges that fester in our developing brains that also account for evil, suffering and despair. Jesus referenced what was understood to the people of his time, of what they were capable of digesting in light of the aforementioned allegory. You seem to believe that figurative language has no place in teaching – see example to Peter on how parents parent. The basic tenet of our faith is Jesus Christ was born, died and rose from the dead. His purpose was to show us the way to evolve into what we are meant to
become, in order to glorify God and remain therein forever.
Your explanation is more in line with secular humanism than Christianity and means that much of what Jesus said must be considered allegorical, which is a viewpoint not well supported by tradition, the magisterium, or the scriptures themselves. Moreover, at the risk of sounding crazy, I believe in evil as a personal reality not only because of Christian tradition, but also because I have personally experienced it as such. If you have not known evil as a personal reality, that’s great, but I believe it is an error to discount it at only hyperbolic or analogical in scripture.
Hi Peter, seven is the age of reason and the word “ultimate” is too sophisticated and broad even for them to understand. Go sit in the corner for an hour gets honed down to twenty
minutes. I do agree with actions equal consequences but since forever is a term beyond human understanding I do not believe it is for us to definitively define what is understood to be infinite.
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So, God gave humanity the equivalent of a loaded gun (free will) to a immature species with the intellect of 6 year old’s, and then set free legions of supernatural creatures to drag them to hell. Our only hope is that we encounter an advanced civilization with a more plausible notion of theology, one that fills in the mighty gaps so apparent in this one.
The narrative laid out here is the beginning of the history of redemption that was known as far back as the ancient Jews. If this narrative is not true, then Christianity is meaningless and the realities of suffering and death are just biological happenstance. This belief in the personal reality of evil is the only context in which Christianity has meaning. The purpose of God being incarnate into material reality as a man (Jesus) was to liberate humanity from imprisonment to the personal reality of evil. If you’ve never heard this before (as I had not up until about two years ago), then you don’t actually understand Christianity. Most of the Church Fathers wrote about Jesus trampling the enemy underfoot and liberating humanity from the hopelessness of being captive to evil even after death. If this is merely figurative language, then there is no reason to be at mass on Sunday morning instead of the local bar. If this narrative is untrue, then our notions of good and evil, right and wrong are baseless, relativistic vanity. Thinking that this narrative is untrue is tantamount to denying the basic tenets of the Faith.