Does it ever seem like our kids ask the most complicated questions at the most inopportune times? Like when my daughter asks about boys the second we’re rushing out the door. At times I’m equipped to answer those questions. Other times, I don’t have the energy. It’s then that those questions usually come.
The same thing happens at school. Like the other day when I needed to get through a lesson plan and some students asked: “I heard Pope Francis says there’s no such thing as hell. What do you think, Mr. Stu?”
Now, I know they should have known better than believe what the media says; especially when it comes to the pope. I preach to them all the time how unreliable most news sources are when it comes to reports about the Church. So the first thing I asked them was where they heard it. I wasn’t surprised to hear it was from the mainstream media. The second thing I asked was: “What do you think?” Without hesitation, someone piped in with the all-too-common question: “Why would a loving God send someone to hell?”
I thought about it a minute — hoping not to exude that look of consternation I get when my daughters ask questions. Then, as is often the case, I related the question back to my own fatherhood. And although I’m far from perfect in that role, it bestows on me at least a cursory understanding of the love of the Father for us. In fact, our parenthood is an indispensable model when it comes to mitigating confusion about love. We love our kids unconditionally. And, “Who among us if our children asked for a fish would give them a snake instead?”
This kind of stems back to my last column, the one about free will. I love my kids. I shared that with the class. Then I asked them: “If I tell my kids that I love them so much that they aren’t free to choose whether to love me back — If I force them to love me, is that love?” Without hesitation, they answered, “no.” Then I asked: “What if I love them so much, that I give them that freedom — freedom to love me, or freedom to not?” The class agreed … that’s love. So I wonder — why is it any different with God?
By saying there is no hell, are we not effectively saying we’re not free to choose? And doesn’t our culture already try to do that for us? The key in all this is that we’ve turned to the media so much to learn what love is, we’ve forgotten what it isn’t. Love isn’t really love unless it confers on us the freedom not to return it. The proverbial “If you love something set it free” isn’t all that far from the truth. What our culture completes that with is, “If it doesn’t return to you, hunt it down and kill it.” Maybe that’s what’s so great about the freedom God offers — the idea that Jesus really means what he said: “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The real definition of hell is the absence of God. And I witnessed a lot of that for one score of my life as a police officer. But it wasn’t because God sent people there. It was because they chose it. I believe heaven is filled with lots of weak people. I hope to be one of them. What it’s not filled with are people who were forced to be there. Nor is hell riddled with those who descended there because God didn’t love them.
One of my favorite singers is a man who passed away a few years ago: Dan Fogelberg. Perhaps a line in one of his songs sums it up best. In writing about his earthly father, he said this: “I thank you for your kindness, and your stories of the road. I thank you for the freedom when it came my time to go. I thank you for the kindness and the times when you got tough. And poppa I don’t think I’ve said ‘I love you’ near enough.”
In an ironic way, hell exists because God loves us, not despite it. With freedom comes the opportunity to choose something other than God — and Lord knows our culture is replete with people who do that. The good news is, there are also people who allow the Kingdom to reign in their hearts. And if it begins there, it’s certain to spread.
Paul Stuligross is director of campus ministry at Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Preparatory High School and is a former police officer.
