God & Hell- A Philosophical Juggle
We Catholics accept that God is omnipresent. This means that He is everywhere throughout the universe. Our theology also teaches us that God is present even in the immaterial world or spirits.
Yet Jesus has mentioned in the Gospels several times that on judgment day, the sinners will be sent to hell where God is absent and there will be great sadness.
Now, this is the philosophical quandary. If God is omnipresent, how could He be absent from one place - hell? Does this mean that God is not really omnipresent? If He is absent from one place, could He also be absent in other places?
The only way to retain God’s omnipresent nature while also accepting that Hell is real and is devoid of God’s presence, we will have to consider that Hell is not really a spatial dimension but a state of being.
Hell will thus exist for us when we are in total rejection of God. Hence it’s the absense of God in us that manifests itself as Hell.
There are people who deny the existence of Hell because of their misunderstanding of God being all-loving. They misinterpret God’s benevolence as extingusihing Hell because He can’t stand His creation suffering eternally in Hell.
What we fail to understand is that the choice of Heaven or Hell is made by us. God being all-loving rather honors our freedom that He gave us. This is one of the lessons of the parable of the Prodigal Son. God will never impose Himself upon us. That’s what it tantamounts to if God rescues people who hate Him from Hell as they would have to spend an eternity with Him.
