Is Heaven for Sale?

Is heaven for sale?

Can God love us more than he already does now?  Who does God send to hell?  Is there a limit or tolerance to God’s love for us when the evil found in life or our rejection of God’s love appears?  Finally, how far away from us is God when we build a block through sin so he cannot reach us?   

To answer these and many more that we as humans can fabricate which easily contort within our minds, a  twisted subjection of who and what is God when sin stands before us.  Developing a negative response to a question that removes any sense of understanding about the nature of God, we create a path that will quickly guide us away from the freedom of finding God’s mercy.

From Genesis in the creation account (First story of Creation) “God looked upon everything he had made, and found it very good.”  (Gn 1: 3).  The only thing God rejects is sin.  He is so holy that it is impossible for God to look at sin.  If we find ourselves in hell, it wasn’t God who sent us there!  That entity would be because we rejected God to the point that our final desire is to go where God is not.  That can be a poignant sense that has completely put any effect of right in the first place to our understanding of freedom from evil and replaced it with eternal suffering.

There is a philosophical thought that no matter how often we sin, or the degree of its presence, we can just turn and find that God is right there; he never left our side.  The overwhelming degree of his never leaving us is found in Genesis where he looked upon everything he made and found it good.  Does that mean as humans we were created good?  Absolutely!  God did not make anything evil.  Our misbehavior in morality has found a way to enter our lives, but not because we crave it.  We must seek the creator’s love to help us circumvent the attractions that lead us to the thought of pleasure.  Here is where sin fights to capture our soul by rejecting God.

Another question adds to the confusion of the evil some if not many people who commit atrocities so heinous that society wants to eliminate them.  Hitler, Assad, and many more have committed crimes against humanity that hell may not be big enough to hold them.  Well, this may be true, but they enter that abode by their own choice.  They, like you and me were shown how merciful God is when Jesus spent volumes of examples that everyone has the opportunity to change and seek his forgiveness.  Unfortunately, that never appears to become reality.  But, it isn’t our place to make judgments on anyone no matter who they may be.  Jesus did not go through his Passion, crucifixion, and death for good people.  It was for those who carry the conviction of sin without seeking forgiveness which is always available.  

God’s love and forgiveness is so powerful that the most severe evil in the world doesn’t stand a chance when confronted by even one morsel of God’s mercy.  Place one speck of evil represented by a drop of water at the ocean’s vastness representing God’s mercy, and it jumps into the water of mercy, it is absorbed as if it never was.  That is God forgiving the souls who seek God and find repentance within their hearts.  

The above questions regarding God and if he or will he forgive are answered with one word,   Love.  God is love, and he loved us first.  See 1: Jn 3 ff.

Ralph B. Hathaway