Sunday, August 4, 2019
Toward a Morally Meaningful Definition of Sin
What is sin? And no, I'm not talking about sin (sine), cos (cosine), and tan (tangent). I'm talking about sin in the religious and moral sense. Is sin simply the violation of Divine Law?
Hell Doesn't Make Sense
Why I have a problem with the traditional conception of hell, even if I accept its existence
I was talking to a good friend about hell yesterday, and I told him that the idea of hell accepted by many religious people does not make sense to me. My question is not exactly "How can a loving God send people to hell?" but rather "What exactly is the purpose of hell?"
Now, people may be thinking, "Is this writer stupid? Doesn't he know that the purpose of hell is punishment? Obviously, that's why people burn in hell."
I understand that hell exists to punish people for their sinful acts, and I'm not going to quibble about what sin is (for that, read Toward a Morally Meaningful Definition of Sin). I'm questioning whether hell actually accomplishes any practical purpose. To answer this question, we need to discuss the purpose of punishment.
In human society, punishment serves multiple purposes: to inspire repentance, to gain justice for victims, to prevent other people from engaging in the same evil act, among other purposes. But what is the purpose of hell?
It is not to inspire repentance, since repentance requires, to borrow my friend's word, "introspection." You may say that by being punished in hell, a person is already forced to look into himself and understand the weight of his sin, but I don't think this is the case. Common beliefs about hell include burning and being tortured by demons. These conditions don't exactly make for an introspective soul. Most likely, the person will curse God and the world for their pain and suffering and be angry at everyone but themselves They will be too busy thinking about their torment to look inside themselves.
What if hell is not what we traditionally believe it to be, though? What if hell is a place (if it can properly be called a "place") not of physical torment, but rather of emotional agony — the emotional agony of isolation, the pain not of burning but of being forced to confront the evil of your own acts and your own nature? Perhaps, hell is not one place, but many — a hell for each person — where they come face to face with their own demons, and the remorse they failed or refused to experience for all their wrongdoing throughout their lives gradually overwhelms them. This would be their repentance, their excruciating sorrow ovet their wrongdoing.
Now, people may be thinking, "Is this writer stupid? Doesn't he know that the purpose of hell is punishment? Obviously, that's why people burn in hell."
I understand that hell exists to punish people for their sinful acts, and I'm not going to quibble about what sin is (for that, read Toward a Morally Meaningful Definition of Sin). I'm questioning whether hell actually accomplishes any practical purpose. To answer this question, we need to discuss the purpose of punishment.
In human society, punishment serves multiple purposes: to inspire repentance, to gain justice for victims, to prevent other people from engaging in the same evil act, among other purposes. But what is the purpose of hell?
It is not to inspire repentance, since repentance requires, to borrow my friend's word, "introspection." You may say that by being punished in hell, a person is already forced to look into himself and understand the weight of his sin, but I don't think this is the case. Common beliefs about hell include burning and being tortured by demons. These conditions don't exactly make for an introspective soul. Most likely, the person will curse God and the world for their pain and suffering and be angry at everyone but themselves They will be too busy thinking about their torment to look inside themselves.
What if hell is not what we traditionally believe it to be, though? What if hell is a place (if it can properly be called a "place") not of physical torment, but rather of emotional agony — the emotional agony of isolation, the pain not of burning but of being forced to confront the evil of your own acts and your own nature? Perhaps, hell is not one place, but many — a hell for each person — where they come face to face with their own demons, and the remorse they failed or refused to experience for all their wrongdoing throughout their lives gradually overwhelms them. This would be their repentance, their excruciating sorrow ovet their wrongdoing.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)