Your Question: With an all-merciful God, wouldn’t he consider the weakness and sinfulness of all people and let everybody in heaven?
First, we have to recognize that the mercy of God is much more than we can imagine! When we fall away, he is always waiting to welcome us back when we come to Him and ask for His wonderful forgiveness and mercy. No matter how many times we turn away—even if we keep doing the same things over and over—God will welcome us back when we seek His forgiveness! He did, after all, take into account our sinfulness and weakness and become incarnate. Additionally, God gives us help to amend our ways—especially when we turn to Him in the sacrament of Reconciliation.
Beginning from this understanding, however, we also wrestle with the fact that though Jesus talked a lot about the promises of eternal life, he also talked about hell. We understand “hell” to be a state of eternal separation from God. While often portrayed as a place of physical fires and little red devils running around with pitchforks, we may be better off to think of hell as a state of being, rather than a “place.” Why is this radical separation from God a possibility?
God loves us more than we can imagine, and desires that we love him in return. The only way we can love God is if we have free will. Without free will, we are incapable of love! How many times have you heard a love song that includes the line “I can’t make you love me” or something similar? Well, it’s true! Love, by its nature, must be a free choice we make—what we call an act of the will.
This freedom God gives us is an amazing gift. It is at the center of being created in the image and likeness of God. It separates us from the animals, and is one of the fullest expressions of what it means to be human. God could have made the world so that we were just a bunch of automatons that ran around, serving God without any question. But, God wanted something more. He wanted us to be able to LOVE! And, in order to love, we have to be able to CHOOSE to love God. In order to be able to choose to love, we need free will.
The consequence of free will, however, is that we must also be able to choose to not love God. We can choose against God, and we can reject God. This possibility is illustrated in the Genesis creation stories—our first mother and father chose to deny God.
When we consider that God can do whatever God wants to (because He is, well, GOD), it is amazing that He did this. God allows the possibility of His creation rejecting Himself, just so that we can have the joy and sweetness of loving God. Love is that valuable and that wonderful, and it is the action by which we most express how we are made in God’s image and likeness (because God Himself is Love). We get to love God, and have a love-relationship with God, rather than being automatons. Furthermore, we get to love each other, rather than simply co-existing with each other like ants in an ant farm.
We also can reject God, however. God had to allow for that possibility in order to us to be able to love Him. This is always a possibility when we have free will in a broken world! It is therefore said that God doesn’t send people to hell, but people send themselves to hell. You can think of hell as the eternal choice a person makes against God—a choice in which the person says that he/she does not want God in his or her life. So, in summary, God wants all of us to be with Him (1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pt 3:9). God allows the possibility of freedom, and also the possibility that we will reject Him.
We cannot know exactly who is in Hell. We cannot presume know the innermost state of a person’s relationship with God, and we cannot presume to know God’s final judgment of a person. This is not mean, however, that we can’t know what is wrong and right, and what constitutes good and evil. We live in relationship with Christ through the Church, walking in His ways. Christ, through the Church, teaches us ways to live that, with God’s help, will bring us closer to God and will help us to live in harmony with one another. That’s why we don’t just do whatever we feel like doing all the time and simply trust that God will think it’s okay if we are pretty good people. God has revealed to us how we should live, and so we seek to know and live God’s truth! The point is that we know that the Church is our light in the darkness, and gives us a way to live that is true, good, and brings joy and freedom to our lives. By God’s power, and with our cooperation with that power, we trust that God will lead us closer to Himself. We trust in the Lord’s mercy, while seeking to live holy lives. The Lord is indeed kind and merciful, giving us freedom and the ability to come to love him more every day.
Beginning from this understanding, however, we also wrestle with the fact that though Jesus talked a lot about the promises of eternal life, he also talked about hell. We understand “hell” to be a state of eternal separation from God. While often portrayed as a place of physical fires and little red devils running around with pitchforks, we may be better off to think of hell as a state of being, rather than a “place.” Why is this radical separation from God a possibility?
God loves us more than we can imagine, and desires that we love him in return. The only way we can love God is if we have free will. Without free will, we are incapable of love! How many times have you heard a love song that includes the line “I can’t make you love me” or something similar? Well, it’s true! Love, by its nature, must be a free choice we make—what we call an act of the will.
This freedom God gives us is an amazing gift. It is at the center of being created in the image and likeness of God. It separates us from the animals, and is one of the fullest expressions of what it means to be human. God could have made the world so that we were just a bunch of automatons that ran around, serving God without any question. But, God wanted something more. He wanted us to be able to LOVE! And, in order to love, we have to be able to CHOOSE to love God. In order to be able to choose to love, we need free will.
The consequence of free will, however, is that we must also be able to choose to not love God. We can choose against God, and we can reject God. This possibility is illustrated in the Genesis creation stories—our first mother and father chose to deny God.
When we consider that God can do whatever God wants to (because He is, well, GOD), it is amazing that He did this. God allows the possibility of His creation rejecting Himself, just so that we can have the joy and sweetness of loving God. Love is that valuable and that wonderful, and it is the action by which we most express how we are made in God’s image and likeness (because God Himself is Love). We get to love God, and have a love-relationship with God, rather than being automatons. Furthermore, we get to love each other, rather than simply co-existing with each other like ants in an ant farm.
We also can reject God, however. God had to allow for that possibility in order to us to be able to love Him. This is always a possibility when we have free will in a broken world! It is therefore said that God doesn’t send people to hell, but people send themselves to hell. You can think of hell as the eternal choice a person makes against God—a choice in which the person says that he/she does not want God in his or her life. So, in summary, God wants all of us to be with Him (1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pt 3:9). God allows the possibility of freedom, and also the possibility that we will reject Him.
We cannot know exactly who is in Hell. We cannot presume know the innermost state of a person’s relationship with God, and we cannot presume to know God’s final judgment of a person. This is not mean, however, that we can’t know what is wrong and right, and what constitutes good and evil. We live in relationship with Christ through the Church, walking in His ways. Christ, through the Church, teaches us ways to live that, with God’s help, will bring us closer to God and will help us to live in harmony with one another. That’s why we don’t just do whatever we feel like doing all the time and simply trust that God will think it’s okay if we are pretty good people. God has revealed to us how we should live, and so we seek to know and live God’s truth! The point is that we know that the Church is our light in the darkness, and gives us a way to live that is true, good, and brings joy and freedom to our lives. By God’s power, and with our cooperation with that power, we trust that God will lead us closer to Himself. We trust in the Lord’s mercy, while seeking to live holy lives. The Lord is indeed kind and merciful, giving us freedom and the ability to come to love him more every day.
posted by staff | 1:10 PM
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