Would you prefer hell not to exist? Do you think that if only we knew that there was no such place or state as hell, then our faith would be more comforting and our life more joyful? Would you think it a good thing if, as some non-Catholics believe, everyone were to go to heaven, no matter what they have done wrong? . . .
The doctrine of hell should certainly encourage us to avoid sin, to fear God’s judgment, and to pray and sacrifice for sinners, but it also proves just how much God has given to us in creating us. It proves that we really exist as ourselves and that what we do really does matter and have its full effect. If God made us real and made us able to do things and then stepped in to nullify the things we had done, or if He prevented their effects, He would be making us not fully real. He would be giving us our individuality and personal identity and freedom and powers with one hand and then taking it back as soon as we used it freely in a way He disapproved of. We should not really be free.
Hell is not primarily a threat. God did not create it as a deterrent primarily. God gave us such a deep reality as independent persons, and gives such truth to what we ourselves choose and do, even if He disapproves of it, that its effects will necessarily follow. If we did not have the power to choose to reject God in our lives, would it be possible to choose Him freely? You cannot love God, in my opinion, unless you choose to love Him. . . . You cannot choose to love God unless you have the power to choose not to do so--when there is no alternative, there is no choice--and if you choose to reject God, yet hell did not exist, then your choice would be a fiction. . . . God has made us so real, so intense, as it were, that if we choose to reject Him, we do live without Him, and living without God is hell. On this earth, for a time we may be able to comfort ourselves with trinkets, but in the long run, being without God is hell.
So I would say that we can make a good case for the view that hell is a comforting doctrine, because it proves that God takes us seriously and lets our actions and choices have their proper effect without His making them unreal.
It follows from what I have said that when we choose God, when we decide to live a good life, when we deliberately practice our faith, then the results of that are equally real and unavoidable. We go to heaven by our own free choice. It is true that our choice needs God’s grace to make it real—we cooperate with His grace—whereas if we choose to reject God, we make that choice without any grace. Nevertheless, our good actions and choices are really ours and really do have their effects. Human freedom may be a fearful responsibility, and we do well to keep the four last things [death, judgment, heaven, hell] in mind as we use it, but if hell does not exist, then heaven is not a reward for our own use of human freedom, and it would mean that we should not really enjoy heaven as ourselves. This depth of responsibility for our own actions and choices and their effects makes us very deep indeed as persons and, therefore, able to receive a very deep beatific joy in heaven. Because the future involves either heaven or hell for us, we know that God takes us very seriously, that He values our decisions enormously as being of very great reality and importance. We are extremely important creatures of God. It follows that in our everlasting happiness in heaven, we shall not be God’s pets; we shall be His children, as we are now, and He will love us not only to give us the happiness of great pleasure but will love us truly and make us feel very deeply wanted and loved by one so infinitely great as we shall then actually see God to be. . . .
Purgatory is something we do not know very much about, except that it exists, but I think that just as hell is a proof of God’s love for us, a love which takes us so seriously that we have the power to choose our state for all eternity, so purgatory is a creation of God’s love. Purgatory is the temporary condition of a person who is not quite fit for heaven, but who has not rejected God. He dies in the grace of God, but without growing to the full stature as a Christian that he could have done. Now I suppose that if God had wanted to do so He could have decided that if we die in the state of grace, but not free from all sins and defects, He would by a miracle wipe out all those imperfections and take us straight to heaven. But if He did that, our perfection in heaven would not be our own. Not only should we have had faults, but their removal would not have been attributable to us. I think that in purgatory we accept a very painful state for a while to straighten out at our own expense, as it were, the kinks and dents and twists that we put in ourselves. So when we leave purgatory cured, the improved self that goes to heaven is really our self. . . .
We are only creatures, but we are real persons with all that that implies, and if it had not been revealed to us by God and by experience, we should never have dreamt that even God could create a real person other than Himself. We are real, and what we do is real, and what we do has its full consequences, but we are not perfect, any of us. It is true that just as our good actions have their inevitable effect, so do our evil ones, but there is one thing that we can do that even an angel cannot do. If we have done wrong, we can repent. We can be sorry, and because of the unlimited good that Jesus Christ did as Man, if we repent and go to Him, our evil deeds do not have their eternal consequences. They have temporal consequences, just as they did on the human body of Christ in His Passion, but God can forgive our sins, turn aside their effects on us, and yet leave us as truly ourselves when He heals us. This is true because of Jesus Christ and His sufferings and His dwelling in us and us in Him.
There is nothing in our faith as Catholics to regret. It teaches us our incredible dignity and power, and it teaches us how to appreciate and respond to the infinite love of God. It teaches us to have confidence in Him.
