In the catechism, as Catholics we learn that God made us .to “know love and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next life” If we think about it we can easily see that God specifically made us to be happy. What a normal person might see as a human “deficiency” (in comparison to God) only seems that way due to the fact that they don’t understand that to have all of God’s attributes we could never enjoy the most satisfying features of this life. What exactly do I mean by this?
Let’s take the fact that God is all-knowing as a starter. If we were all knowing, we could never be surprised by, for instance, getting a brand new car for graduation. We could not have a sense of humor since a sense of humor, as we see in the case of a comedians stand up performance or in a joke of a buddy, the thing that makes something funny is the unexpectedness of a different point of view or the use of a word or seeing a situation in an unexpected way or from a different point of view. Anyway how boring would life be for humans if we knew everything ahead of time? God expects everything since He knows all and “sees” all points of view.
Next let us look at the fact that he is all powerful. If we were all powerful we could never have the exhilaration that is the result of accomplishment. Our limitations mean that it is possible that we can fail at things. When the Wright brother worked to invent the airplane, at the start they were not sure that they would accomplish that feat. The fact is that when they did they experienced the thrill of accomplishment.
There a few other “alls” that can be attributed to God like all-present, all seeing etc. but I will only cove one more, that is he is all-just, to make 2 points. First, we can forgive someone for something they do not deserve forgiveness for (and if this were the end of their life and they were not Catholic, did not have perfect contrition for something they did or did not go to confession God would not forgive them because he is all-just), and because of this it may influence them to completely change their life (e.g. Alexsandro and Saint Maria Teresa Goretti). I see this as part of why God came as Jesus Christ and Jesus formed his mystical body – the church, on earth. We, as part of the mystical body of Christ, have the opportunity to save a soul from an eternity of horror and suffering. This is how the mystical body allows God to give humans another possibility for mercy. This is in addition the opportunity to appeal to our blessed mother to pray for help for us. Unlike the myth that out lady can somehow let us into a back door to heaven directly, the back door she allows us is here on earth – an experience that will allow us to see the error of our ways on earth, help in our emotions to find true contrition and go to confession. Second, If one is not in some way a part of the catholic church and/or fails to properly repent of a mortal sin, God is all just and will condemn that person to hell. Am I saying God has no choice? No what I am saying is in the creation of the concept of justice God “locked in” His choices on what he would do at the instant of creation. How he created the world could have conceivably been different but this was the best way to create the world to maximize the happiness we could enjoy in heaven. Maximizing the possible happiness of individuals in heaven is the reason God created everything the way He did. Before God created us He knew us and for the benefit of all those in heaven He created the universe the way He did (Jeremiah 1:5).
The fact is, as I read the bible, that God does not create the pains and horrors of hell, as I discussed in the previous blog. Now I did not say hell does not exist, because it does exist. I did not say most people do not go to hell because our Lord said “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 From the new international version of the bible) And therefore most people go to hell. I also did not say hell is not as horrible as some, if not most, fear it to be because our Lord said “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off, it is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, into the unquenchable fire.” (Mark 9:43-48). It is my opinion, from reading the bible, that the unspoken truth is it is probably worst that you can imagine. If God had created it you could imagine that there might be an end to the cruelty and horror there. But God neither creates it nor is he there to moderate it in any substantive way. His only commitment to them is to keep them in existence. Once again in my opinion, from reading the bible, is the ultimate irony for those in hell’s rejection of God is that God will create hell the same as heaven, with the only real 2 real differences being 1. God grants those in hell their response of “no” to repair of original sin in our beings brought to us by our redeemer whose face they spat in and 2. Their response of “no” to God to bring the order he tried to teach them in their earthly life. Now, who then creates hell? Where does it come from? The people like Hitler, Stalin. Pol Pot that are there as well as the devil and his demons. And like many people in 2021 America the people that “aren’t so bad” will not try and stand up for what is right and things will get worst. But, you say how could they let it get so bad? How did Cambodia under Pol Pot get so bad? How did the Soviet Union under Stalin get so bad? They got so bad because there was ultimately no outside source of moral rightness – no God or ultimate immutable law giver i.e. ultimately no ultimate law. In other words it was an anything goes society with no limits on what you could do up to and including murder and torture people at your leisure if you were powerful enough. Until these totalitarian governments were forced by there economies and dearth of people to collapse, they simply, In my view, continued to get worst. Without good people, all of whom will be in heaven there will be nothing to keep hell from getting worst and worst into infinity and that is the unspoken truth, that all should be able to deduce, about hell.
A perfect God on the other hand, unlike what Martin Luther proposed in his doctrine about humans being irretrievably rotten and Christ’s death covering over our sin with a white sheet, created us to be perfect. Part of being perfect of course is having free will. Adam and eve had everything to make them happy and had only really one law: do not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In heaven people will have free will but they will become “as the angels in heaven (Mark 12:25). But this will be because in saying “yes” to all God wanted for us in life and “yes” to all his precepts, we give are complete and unqualified assent to “fixing” the wound of original sin any way He wants to and in so doing will make us like angels. This being the case, since from all the bible passages I have seen, their appears to be no strife among the angels still in heaven, this means that there would be no strife among humans and no need for either police or soldiers. We could pursue our now ordered wants and desires anyway we wanted to and would always be mindful and practicing providing for the rights of all others, something that is totally foreign in our world.
Traditional Thomistic Catholic 