But, some of these skeptics are beginning to panic. They deny hell, but fear death.
Why does a man or woman fear death is there is no hell? Is it the mere thought of annihilation, of nothingness?
Or, is there a deeper truth in the heart which cannot be denied?
Those who say to me that they do not believe in hell say it too often and too loudly.
Interesting. If they really did not care, why bring it up?
If they really did not care and live like they do not care, living in sin and ignoring the basic piety due to God, why do they bring up hell, again and again and again?
One person stopped talking to me about this as my answer is "Just read what Jesus had to say about hell."
A conversation stopper for fallen-away Catholics...
Most of the people who tell me that they do not believe in hell have not been to church in decades. Some are women who have practiced birth-control and see nothing wrong with playing god.
And, yet, they seem obsessed with hell.
The panicking of the secularist is becoming epidemic.
The Pope Emeritus writes this in his book I am reading this week, noting that outbreaks of group stress and anxiety which plagued nations:
"The violence that marks these outbreaks of anxiety an fear is a kind of self-defense againt the doubts that threaten belief in the ideal world of the future, since human beings are by their nature directed toward the furture. We cannto live if this fundamental element of our being becomes void."
He writes that real hope, in the chapter of that title, Hope, is based on the "true future beyond death".
The false, ideological hope which centers on man's so-called ability to control the future is a sham.
One thinks of a political poster in the not too distant past which touted a false hope. Indeed, the Pope Emeritus was absolutely prophetic in his assertion that any hope based on man rather than the kingdom of God is not only a sham, but truly deceptive.
We Catholics concentrate on God and His Love, not hell, although we should meditate on hell now and then.
Again, the Pope Emeritus writes, "The aim of Christian hope, by contrast, is a gift, the gift of love."
I was so fortunate to have nuns in grade school who taught almost every year that our God is a God Who entered time and history for our salvation. The God Who loves clearly, by His life on earth, shatters the deception of the false ideal of progress and human independence from God.
God entered history over and over in the Old and New Testament records of encounters with God, and still does through His Church
Those I meet who keep bringing up hell are living in an unreal world, one which is not the world wherein Christ entered.
to be continued...