What is the point of a "Hell" for a forgiving God ?

Question

Every fair society is a forgiving society. Any fair punishment serves a purpose. That purpose is mainly to educate the person on what he/she has done wrong, give society the time to forgive the person and after the punishment the person is offered a fresh start.

At least this is what the perfect punishment in a forgiving society should look like. The best punishment makes the 'sinner' a better person.

Hell is a punishment without a future, without a chance of forgiveness and without the ability to learn from what the person has done wrong. Therefor it's a useless punishment. It has no value.

So, how on earth can a forgiving God even invent such an unforgiving concept as Hell?

Answer 1

VERY good question. I believe that hell is the absence of God and that the only way to get there is to deny God in every possible way through your life and at death. Since God gave us free will, it is possible to isolate ourselves in such a manner, thus we have hell.

So the form of your question that I personally ask is this: is it possible for a person (or rather, his/her soul) to change their mind and heart after death and choose to return to God? I honestly don't know, but I like to think that anything is possible.

Answer 2

Unknown to all, we are already experiencing the Book of Revelation, specifically Chapter 16 which talks about 7 plagues such as natural disasters. Christians think that Revelation had gone in the past but it is not, it is currently happening. The Catholic Church made a false interpretation of the prophetic words of God such as the Books of Daniel, Genesis, St. Peter & Revelations as well as Isaiah & Ezekiel. These prophetic words must be discerned, decoded, interpreted & explained by God's servants who are chosen to fulfill their true meaning. However, there are many who believed the false interpretations. In this vein, it would take strong persuasion for your replier to convince people but could not because Satan is winning mankind's souls. So God will destroy 50% of the world's population (per interpretation of Matthew 24: 40-41) at the coming of the Son of Man. The remnants will rebuild earth & renew people. Since Satan will still tempt & deceive these surviving people, God will jail him for a thousand years (see Revelation 20) to give room for the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ towards peace.

Answer 3

Hell is a metaphysical necessity within reality.

Imagine a man who has done evil all of his life, and is lying on his death-bed.

Into his vision comes the horrid land-scape of hell, and the inconceivable deformity and malice of the demons.

Inconceivable pains take hold of him as he sees where he is headed.


However, all the while, God's hand of mercy is stretched out to him - if only he will take hold of it.

But at the point of death, in a blind fury of hatred, he rejects the mercy of God and embraces the pains of hell.

He is so proud that he prefers absolute misery to accepting God's mercy.

He is in hell forever because he would rather hate God and man endlessly than ever be happy.


Hell is not something that God has created that He throws people into who disagree with Him, but is the outer darkness outside His loving order, for those who have decided to walk away from Him.




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Answer 4

Read the bible. God is very angry and jealous, not really a guy interested in giving second chances. If someone chooses to believe in a god that would do such things, then hell shouldn't be a surprising concept. Count me out.

Answer 5

We are all punished for our sins everyday in every trial and obstacle that we face. We are shown infinate (spelling) patience by the Father and even more forgiveness. He warned us about hell for a reason. To "educate the person on what he\she has done wrong" giving everyone a chance to correct themselves. He does not want anyone to go to Hell but for all His children to join Him in Heaven.

The sin we take on is a direct result for the original sin of disobeying the Word. In essence, we created our own Hell. A child who diliberately disobeys his mother or father creates his own "hell" because of his disobedience.

Answer 6

Since, in truth, hell is simply the grave, the point would be that the dead body has to be put someplace.
It gets a bit risky if they are just left to pile up on the street.
A burning fire to torture?
No such thing!
Its an invention of Dante ....a catholic painter.
Hell is 6 feet under and those who are there are conscious of nothing.
Ecclesiastes 9:5,10.
Plus it keeps the streets clean.

Answer 7

My concept of hell is the absence of God’s love. Spending eternity in isolation, alone, completely alone. This came to me the first time I truly felt God’s love through the Spirit. I can’t imagine a worse eternity than being separated from his love. I think that would be worse than any torment or the usual definitions of hell. We are not separated from him now, even nonbelievers; his Grace surrounds all creation. So what I’m talking about is complete absence of his presence.

But if you choose not to have God in your life, wouldn’t he be giving you what you want? If he said, you can spend eternity with me, enveloped in my love, or away from me without love.

Which would you choose?

Answer 8

Well since adam and eve bit the apple they were composed to sin, and there has been much evil in the world and not all souls are good, there has to be a place for them and that is with the devil. There just has to be a balance of things. Well I wouldn't really know I don't know how God's mind works.

Answer 9

Hell is a choice.Here is the biggest false concept.Hell was made the angels.It was never meant for people.But here is something hurts God.He gave freewill to walk towards,or away.You can't earn.You can't work hard.you could be his slave if you wish.But the fact salvation is a free gift Jesus the Christ.He loves us enough to let us choose.How many tears has he cried for those who choose incorrectly.

Answer 10

I think you die permanantly after going to hell, because the bible says something about people getting saved will have eternal life. Therefore, the damned must not have received the "gift of life" and are eventually going to die when they are cast into the lake of fire after Satan is defeated. (Or at least from my understanding...) Even so, the self-proclaimed "jealous" Christian God doesn't sound very nice.

"This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire." --Deuteronomy 7:5

"The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire." --Deuteronomy 7:25

Yowsa...