Does God love those in hell?

MSGR POPE: God’s love never fails. I will go so far as to say that even the souls in hell are loved by God. How could they continue to exist if He did not love them, sustain them and provide for them? God loves because God IS love and that is what Love does, it loves. We may fail to be able to experience or accept that love, and that inability may at some time become permanent for us. But God never stops loving. How could he? God does not merely have love, He IS love. And love cannot NOT LOVE for it pertains to love that it love. God has not stopped loving the souls in Hell. How could He? They surely refused to empty their arms to receive his embrace but God’s love for them has never been withdrawn. How could God not be love?

COMMENTER: Are you trolling Msgr? Where is the love in keeping you alive in hell? It is a lot better to just cease existing than suffer eternal torment. Is that his way of showing love? Let me put a good example. I will let some bad people torture you and your family for your mistakes. They will rape your children, slice them up, but since I LOVE YOU, I will keep them alive, to be tortured again. And you can multiply this example to a trillion, zillion, quantillion whatever illion times and it still doesn’t fit eternity. Do you think I love you?

God a monster? Now, the likely point of our commenter is common to a lot of atheist comments I get. Namely, that our God, the Christian God of the Bible, is a monster, that he is vengeful, punitive and hateful. The point is to make God, and the whole notion of faith, seem unreasonable and untenable, cruel and despotic, especially when squared with the far more “reasonable” and “civilized” notions of humanism.

And yet our commenter has effectively presented a conundrum that can really only be resolved by a kind of nihilism. For, if God keeps the souls in hell alive, then he is vengeful and hateful. But if he slays the wicked, then it would also seem, to most observers, that he is vengeful and hateful. So no matter what he does, God is vengeful and hateful. The only solution would seem to be a kind of nihilism in which we remove all ultimate notions of right and wrong, all notions of consequences, all notions of reward and ultimate justice. This in turn requires that we remove human freedom as well since, no matter what we did, the result would be the same.

This would seem the only way our commenter could envision a God who is not vengeful and hateful. It’s very all or nothing. Either God is vengeful and hateful or he completely removes our freedom and everything associated with it, thereby forcing one solution.

Questions to ponder – Beyond this though there are other questions to ponder, based not only on what the commenter says, but also what I have said. I want to say that I do not write these questions glibly or merely to tweak. They are not rhetorical (merely argumentative) either. What I am trying to do is take up the voice of a questioner who is authentically trying to wrestle with a difficult topic. I think many of the questions I raise have a clear answer, and propose one at the end. But I merely raise them to paint a picture of what might go through the mind of one pondering the matter. So here are some questions that might occur in terms of God and the souls in Hell:

1. Is it really a sign of hate or vengeance, rather than love, that God sustains the souls in Hell?
2. Does he really keep them alive merely to torment them?
3. What is more loving, to sustain them or to slay them?
4. Is the description of hell advanced by our commenter over the top or is it accurate? Granted, the torture of my family for “my mistakes” would be wrong since, theoretically they are innocent of my mistakes and would not be in hell.
5. But what of the torture of guilty in hell? Is our commenter’s description accurate in this sense? Jesus after all, uses some pretty vivid descriptors of hell where the fire is never extinguished and the worm dies not (Mk 9:48). Where there is wailing and grinding of teeth (Matt 13:42) and where there is torment and thirst (Lk 16:24).
6. Are these images of Jesus just allegory (figurative)?
7. Are they Jewish hyperbole (exaggeration)?
8. Or are they to be interpreted in a literalistic way?
9. In other words, is Hell really this bad?
10. Are the Biblical descriptions as understood literally the only way to see Hell?
11. And if it is, is our commenter right that it would be better for God to slay the wicked?
12. If it IS better, is God despotic and vengeful in keeping them alive in this condition?
13. Is “killing the patient” ever good therapy?
14. Should God just cancel the reality of hell and bring them to heaven?
15. If He did, would this also cancel justice?
16. If He did, would this violate the freedom and the choice of those who preferred not to live in his Kingdom?
17. If it does violate their freedom, is killing them only thing left?
18. Is THAT just?

In striving to resolve these sorts of questions we might start by saying that Hell is not unjust

Continued below.

RileyG said:

Thank you for posting in detail. It's appreciated

Click to expand...

You’re welcome!

I'll stick my neck out here and talk of a "vision" I had regarding my father.

I've often claimed the night he died he appeared in my room. We talked and argued and my last sight of him was a blood curdling scream and it was obvious something was coming for him. In his own words on that night (way back in January 1979) he admitted "I've been an absolute mongrel to you!" (me, that is). I still don't miss him.

Anyway I discussed this with my Presbyterian pastor a number of times, and he once said to me in his office (after he'd accepted my story) "I think I'll ask to see him (my father)" after he died himself which happened in January 1992. I can't remember if this was before or after he'd told me he'd been diagnosed with cancer.

Anyway one night sometime after the pastor died I seemed to have a vision of the pastor meeting my father.

The pastor said "You've been down there all that time and you still haven't learnt anything!!" By that time it was 13 years as they both died in January 1979 and 1992.

My father almost seemed to sneer and snapped back "What's there to learn?? That I'm doomed!?"

The pastor was quiet for a moment and then remarked "All right, you can go back now." My father turned, seemed to look down, screamed and disappeared.

And that was it. I suppose what stuck with me was the phrase "You've been down there all that time and you still haven't learnt anything!"

Do the damned want to change?

It's just over 45 years since my father died

I wonder if he's learnt anything and wants to change? Of course the same question applies across the board.