Posted on 11/29/2004 10:32:50 PM PST by kattracks
The death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat raises an interesting and significant question: Is it morally and theologically acceptable to hope anyone goes to hell?That was my first reaction to the death of the godfather of modern terrorism. But I recognize that many people, including many who share my moral assessment of Arafat, might reject such a reaction, let alone publicly express it. But there is a good case to be made for hoping that Yasser Arafat now finds himself in hell.
In order to do so, three issues need to be addressed:
First, is there a hell? Can rational people believe in such a thing?
Second, if there is a hell, does Arafat merit going there? And can any of us mortals judge a person worthy of hell?
Third, if there is a hell, is it acceptable to hope someone who we believe merits it goes there?
First, is there a hell?
Among those who pride themselves in being what is deemed sophisticated in our time, the notion of hell is either absurd, immoral or both. It is also identified with Christians, especially conservative Christians, and, therefore, the sophisticated feel particularly compelled to reject the concept.
Yet the belief that those who commit evil are punished after death is hardly restricted to Christianity. One of the Thirteen Principles of the Jewish Faith as laid down by the codifier of Jewish law, Maimonides (1135-1204), is that God rewards the good and punishes the bad.
One, therefore, need not be a conservative Christian to believe in some form of hell for the evil. All one need be is a rational believer in a just God. For if there is a just God, it is inconceivable that those who do evil and those who do good have identical fates. A just God must care about justice, and since there is little justice in this world, there has to be in the next. And belief in the next world is also not confined to Christianity. As the Encyclopedia Judaica, the greatest contemporary compilation of Jewish scholarship (edited largely by non-religious Jews) notes in the first sentence under the heading "Afterlife," "Judaism has always believed in an afterlife."
The second question is easily answered. Much of humanity has been adversely affected by modern-day terror. The lives of millions -- virtually all Palestinians and Israelis, for example -- have been terribly affected by Arafat. And there are hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been destroyed or shattered by him. At the same time, other than a few sycophants enriched by some of the billions of dollars he embezzled from the Palestinians, no one has had a better life because Yasser Arafat lived.
Throughout modern history, even terrorists had moral boundaries. Terrorists historically attempted to avoid murdering innocent men, women and children. Arafat, however, made the murder and maiming of completely innocent men, women and children the very purpose of terror and one of his life's major legacies.
Yasser Arafat single-handedly made nihilistic acts of cruelty routine, even respectable. Many people were horrified at the Palestinian slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But humanity gradually became inured to Arafat-style slaughter. Palestinian and Muslim disciples targeted schoolchildren for death in the Israeli city of Ma'alot and later in the Russian city of Beslan; tortured and murdered American diplomats in Sudan; and Arafat created a society whose only exports were new forms of religious hatred and new expressions of barbarity. Thanks to him, the Palestinian name is identified among people of goodwill with barbarity just as the German name came to be associated with barbarity as a result of Hitler.
If, then, there is a just God, and Arafat was the particularly venal human being described here, the answer to the third question is obvious.
Just as any decent human being would want good people to be rewarded in whatever existence there is after this life, they would want the cruelest of people to be punished.
So, of course, I hope Yasser Arafat is in hell. It means that a just God rules the universe. If you think that is hard-hearted, consider the alternative, that one of the most corrupt and cruel human beings of the past half-century is resting in peace. Whoever isn't bothered by that is the one with the hard heart.
I subscribe to the theory of milti dimensions, it seems biblical when Peter spoke of being take to the third level of heaven.
Hades has many descriptions from dark caves to burning with shame. Hell is not lasting it is a temporary holding cell for those that find being in the presence of God unbearable or repugnant. When Christ went to hell to set the captives free some chose to stay rather than follow Him. I use to find that amazing that some would choose to stay after knowing the truth. Having become more familiar with the world it's not as shocking as it was upon first reading.
I do know this from sciptures God will dwell here on earth, a changed earth for sure, but this earth, His Holy City floating above the place that today's Jerusalem resides.
When hell is thorwn into the lake of fire I believe that those that chose it will perish with it. Araft engaged in decades of the murder of innocents, will his punishment be etneral awareness of his state? Or will he perish into a perpetual sleep from which there is no awakening? I know God to be both kind and just, I trust He will handle it all the the most perfect way.
I don't think so. No matter how just it might seem to me, I won't do it.
The Bible says "Judge not, lest ye be judged...".
In DIE HARD WITH A VENGENCE, Zeus (Sam L Jackson) says "F*ck 'em, let 'em cook...".
I'm siding with Zeus on this one.
What about heaven:
FOREVER
UNENDING
Painless bliss you will never truly know. Forever. No hope of respite. Ever. Simply put, there is no one deserving of this. The Pauls,Wyclifes,Luthers,Kings,Popes,Calvins,Grahms of the world: I cannot believe in Heaven. It makes no logical sense, and in fact it only caters to the most narcissistic,prideful desires we as human beings possess.
I make no statement about my believe in Satan. I'm still wrestling with this issue as I grow older.
But Heaven? No. It has no place in the universe of a Just God.
Dude, sometimes things need to be said twice. It appears this is one of them. This is my first double post and I need precicely that it happened.
Brother, I implore you to change your heart in this matter.
Scipture intimates that not even the Archangel Michael would impute Satan (Jude 9).
The Word itself, brother, should be sufficient to ensure you that the mortal that enters hell has bargained for suffering beyond their comprehension: hell was created for Satan and his minions (not mortal man). God in his infinite justice decreed it appropriate that those mortals who reject the implied righteousness through faith, of Christ's attoning work upon the cross at Golgotha, will spend eternity with Satan and his minions in the Lake of Fire. That is much much much worse than hell. Hell is interem holding place for those who are "absent from the body, [but not] present with the Lord". You don't want to see anybody in hell (see Lk 16:19-31).
Vengence is mine sayeth the Lord.
Consider the saying, "this hurts me more than it hurts you". One thing absolutly "soul anhiliation" is NOT taught in scripture. Moreover, the harvest is plenty but the reapers are few. You need to try to comprehend if an ant would move the entire earth to the moon one grain at a time, along a string connected between the two bodies, after when the ant completed moving the earth to the moon one second of eternity had elapsed. In the mean time: all those people who rejected Christ were in the Lake of Fire.
You don't understand the nature of sin, if you believe in moral relevance i.e. there's a difference between your mother not coming to Christ and Arafat. Essentially, and intrinsically there is no difference whatsoever. Your joy in Arafat's punishment will be not even lukewarm.
Your name, Biblical Proportions, seems like a strange choice for someone who doesn't believe in Heaven.
This is a stupid article.
I think that modern churches spend far too much time contemplating the "love" of God and not nearly enough teaching His rightiousness, Holiness, wrath, etc. It all needs to be taken together, IMHO
Hello Lara, I was just goofing on what OOPisforLiberals posted. Biblical Proportions is my stripper name or I'm a Christian bodybuilder let your imagination run wild.
It's #2
I don't so much hope that he's in hell, as acknowledge that he chose the life he led, that it's very improbable that he ever repented of it, and that it's therefore very probable that he's not in a good place right now. No, I'm not gloating about it, but I bet I know of someone who is...
I agree with you fish hawk.
My post was responding to the title of the thread, "Is it ok to hope anyone is in hell?"
Do you pray.A very nice question.
I do believe there is justice in the next world when there is so little of it in this one. A just God rewards the righteous and punishes the evil-doer. There is an after-life and I do not believe the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pot, Amin, and Arafat get to enjoy eternal rest and peace. Their punishment in whatever hell they are in is deserved.
I get it now. Sorry.
I hope every pedophile either rots or continuously burns in Hell.
Interesting question! I certainly can't claim to have a definitive answer, but I would like to share some thoughts.
First, we all share anger and indignation at the presumption, affrontery and barbaric savagery demonstrated by Yessir Assfat and his ilk, the Hitlers, Stalins, Amins and Islamofascists too many to name. We all, also have a moment of pause when we consider the notion of Hell and the consequence of wishing any human to endure that fate.
Next comes our "but God is Just, and therefore must deal with sin" phase, followed by our "God is loving and merciful" phase, where we find it to difficult to see our loving Heavenly Father allowing his children to suffer.
I believe a hint at what the reality might be is contained in the following. Jesus, our Christ, was perfectly God and perfectly Man - hence his Hebrew name, Y'shua, "God with us". At a moment that was not a moment, but an eternal NOW, He made the supreme sacrifice, a total and satisfactory atonement for all sin, at all points in time. (Einstein once commented that time was only a device given to man by a merciful God so that we would not have to comprehend everything happening all at once.) The perfect being, the Theanthropos, could make nothing less than a perfect sacrifice. "It is finished" He didn't say, "It is finished except for mass murderers, abortionists and child molesters." Nor did he say "It is finished except for the venial sins, which you're going to have to do penance for".
To suggest that Christ's sacrifice was anything less than perfect is to demean His perfect Divine nature. To suggest that WE are able to comprehend the depth of God's love and forgiveness is arrogance.
Paul put it this way, "All of your righteousness is as filthy rags." Billy Graham put it another way, "The closer you get to the light, the dirtier you realize you are."
This is why the Orthodox churches have always taught that all things will work out for good in the end.
Apokatastasis.
I'm hardly a theologian but just a thought. Hell is often thought of as a place of physical pain. What if Hell was a place that was absent of God and His Grace? Perhaps He sees that as a fitting situation to those that choose to reject Him in life.
Yasser Arafat brought untold misery to his own people. He turned them into a people that could not accept peace. He turned them into a people that hated other humans enough to want them exterminated off the face of the planet. He was a terrorist to the bitter end. He sent children off to blow themselves up, either directly or by proxy.
If there was ever a man to an eternity in hell, Arafat would be the one. I see it this way.
With people like Arafat I primarily wish them incapable of continuing their damage. Once they are dead, I commend their fate to God in heaven. Then I dismiss them from my mind and let Him handle it.
Wishing anything for Yasser Arafat positive or negative, is a waste of time. Thank God he is gone.
That is in fact the exact position of many Catholic theologians.
I have to argue that it is not what is termed here as "theologically acceptable" to wish anyone to hell. As the Bible says "Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?" (Ezekiel 18:23). Therefore, as the LORD does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked, neither should we. Rather, we should hope and pray that all find forgiveness (though we know that not all will). All that said, it is proper to look at Arafat and judge him on his merits (or, in this case, the lack thereof). We know that he was a murderous traitor who deserved a bullet from an Israeli assassin through his head decades ago. Yet, we do not wish hell on him.
I think many people say such things, not truly understanding what they are saying. As heaven is beyond the human mind's comprehension in its goodness, so hell is beyond the human mind's comprehension in its terrors.
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