Sin to wish/hope/expect someone to go to hell?

smoothrose

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Hey ya'll...

I've been reading a book by Anthony DeStefano entitled "Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To" this evening. He's a Catholic but writes this for a general Christian audience.

Came across something that kind of puzzled me:

"It's true forgiving others can be difficult. Yet many people completely misunderstand the concept. They think it means we have to have warm, mushy feelings towards the people who harm us. They think it means we have to like the people who have offended us or our families or have been guilty of some terrible crime. They think it means we have to forget the bad things that have been done to us. Nothing could be further than the truth.

Forgiveness has one meaning: wishing a person the greatest possible good-- which basically means wishing them salvation and heaven. If someone hurts us, we can be angry at him, we can dislike him, we can choose to stay away from him, maybe even for the rest of our lives. If someone has betrayed us, we may never be able to trust him again. We may never want our relationship to 'go back the way it was.' And if someone has committed a crime of some sort, we can do our best to make sure he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. God doesn't have a problem with any of that. But at the same time we are experiencing those 'feelings,' we must also, in our mind, 'will' that the guilty person is ultimately reconciled with God and goes to heaven. This may not be the most perfect kind of forgiveness, but it will do. It's God's 'minimum requirement,' and he will accept it. What God won't accept is when we wish evil on a person or hope that he will be condemned to hell. God reserves that kind of judgement for Himself alone."
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I remember reading verses in the bible like in Revelations, with the innocent crying out to God to avenge them or when God says verses like in Romans, "vengeance is mine, I shall repay."

It's one thing to not seek revenge yourself and leave judgement up to God. But I would be honestly creeped out at the thought of some famous sickos in history like Jeffrey Dahmer or Nazi Doctor Joseph Mengele in heaven. There's a reason we lock people like them up in jail as they pose a threat to society as a whole.

Why is it a sin to not want to see them in hell for the awful things they committed? I would not like it for child molesters or rapists to be in heaven either. It's just too creepy and unnerving for me.
 

Martinius

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I am not sure if being forgiven necessarily equates with entering heaven. The idea of a really, really bad person entering heaven IS a thought-provoking and troubling thought. But we cannot judge, and we cannot understand God's ways. Truthfully, it is not something that concerns me, I will leave it to God.

The earlier points the author makes are similar to some commentaries I have recently read about forgiveness and "turning the other cheek". As DeStefano mentions, many people interpret that idea as acquiescing to evil, threats or violence. According to the usage and meaning of that time, it means to stand up to hostility, not by striking back, but not by groveling either. The commentators who have dissected this passage in terms of the culture of that time make a good case for that view. As I mentioned in another thread on this, a good example of this approach is in the American civil rights movement, stressing non-violent resistance to oppression and violence. Forgiveness does not mean acceptance or approval.
 
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