Talking about stuff.
Talking about heaven, talking about hell, talking about yes's and no's,
talking about free will and illusions, talking about
is God a tyrant, or is God a dad.
Spoiler: He's a dad!
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents. So, years ago
my dad was riding the truck with this guy and this man was reading a theology book
that had the idea, this idea that at the end of our lives in a moment of death
that no matter what we've chosen, throughout the course of our lives
God appears to all of us, and
he appears to us in all of his glory and all of his goodness and all of his love and all of his beauty and all of his holiness; and
that in the face of seeing God as he truly is with all that goodness and glory and beauty and love and holiness
that no one could say no to him.
That in the end of our lives
God reveals himself to us in such a way, that it would be impossible to reject,
it would be impossible to deny him. And so the conclusion of the book was that no one is in hell, because
everyone chooses God once he like basically overwhelms them with his goodness.
Now, I get that that's a nice idea,
but, when it comes to this we have to ask two questions. One: Is it true? And secondly: What does that mean?
What are the consequences of there being no hell because I think a lot of times we think,
how could a good God allow for there to be a hell? How could God still be good and hell exist?
Well, I would say that hell has to exist for God to be good. I don't know if that makes any sense,
Hopefully, it will.
Let's define heaven and hell quick first. One: heaven is God himself.
Hell is the absence of God. I mean that's really what we're talking about. We're not talking about like heaven is like
where it's awesome and so good
and you get to do everything you want and hell is just like, you know, dungeon and fire and whatever.
At the core, heaven is God himself and if I don't want God I get "not God" and that's
isolation, separation.
It's all those things that's not God.
So, if at the end of my life
God makes me choose him, so I can't choose not him, then none of my decisions matter.
I don't actually have free will and the thing is, when it comes to all the reasons we have suffering in this world,
all the reasons we have sin in this world is because we say that God allows us to have free will.
But think about it, if at the end of our lives,
God takes away our free will by making us choose him then, first of all we don't really have free will
because we can't choose when it really matters. And secondly, it means that no choice
you make in your life means anything. I mean sure it means that you can choose Skippy or Jif, but like any
questions or choices beyond that, like no no no, that, leave that to God. So,
A: We're not really free, and B: life really doesn't have any meaning, because choices are what gives our life meaning.
If we don't really have free choices, then we're just robots and there is no meaning to any of this stuff,
it's just a dream.
It's just an illusion, cause yes, there's a lot of great stuff in here, but there's also a lot of pain in this world.
And if in the end God is planning to just take it all away and overrule all of your choices,
overrule all the meaning that you live in this life, have in this life,
then he's keeping you in a bad dream and that brings us to the fourth devastating consequence:
If there is no hell, God is a monster.
If in the end of our lives God is planning on
overwhelming our freedom so that we could not not choose him, that we have to choose him,
why is he making us wait?
Like why is he not stepping in every time someone chooses not him and stopping them.
Like for example, if at the end of Stalin's life
God is planning on overwhelming Stalin's free will
so that he has to choose him, well, why in the world
didn't God step in earlier, before Stalin killed millions and millions of people?
If God was planning on stepping into the child abuser,
or the murderer, or the terrible terrible person's life at the end and overwhelming their free will,
then why in the world didn't God step in before they did those evil things?
If he's planning on taking away freedom in the end, then why does he keep us here right now?
Hell is the only thing, the only true reality that keeps God from being a monster,
because we have to be free to either choose him or not choose him or choose not him.
Right? God is good.
But he's not a tyrant.
Sometimes I think we will want a good tyrant over a good dad.
A good tyrant would keep us all safe, a good tyrant would overrule all of our bad decisions,
so that we'd always have to choose the good.
But then we wouldn't be free.
Sometimes it seems like that'd be a nice trade-off, right? You know, like OK,
well, maybe I won't be free, but I also won't be in pain.
But that's not who God is, he's not a good tyrant. He's a good dad.
He does everything he possibly can to give us freedom so we can choose love, not only in the next world
but also in this world.
No matter what he does as a good dad, he can't live our lives for us, and he won't live our lives for us.
He won't make our decisions for us, not in this life and also not in the next life.
Hopefully that makes sense.
There's more to it than that, but
I think it's just important to kind of get it out there, that we need to have, if we're gonna choose
God in love and choose God in freedom, we have to be able to choose not God.
Hell has to exist for God to be a good dad.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.
Oh also,
not to mention the fact that Jesus talks about hell a lot, and if Jesus is God
then hell has to exist. You know. I don't know, that's kind of a factor too. I don't know. The Bible, stuff like that.
Gosh. Loser.