This is in response to William Larochelle’s letter (March 4). It is not a rebuttal to his point about rejecting the doctrine of hell, only an assertion that one can dismiss that idea and still retain one’s faith.
One book I recommend is Pastor Rob Bell’s “Love Wins,” which demonstrates a growing understanding within Christianity relinquishing belief in eternal punishment.
I don’t have an answer to the Bible’s passages about that merciless condition. But what a sweep of fear that application of unending torture casts over many religions. The spirit of its hurting should inform us of its source, because the revulsion it creates makes non-believers of so many.
As a young boy who served my church at altar, I asked my father if he could place me in hell for anything, even something grave, that I did to him. A good and devout man (he was a watchmaker with a store on Lisbon Street for decades), he answered that he could not.
In addition to our spirit/soul, God gave us a mind to reason and a heart to feel.
For me, concurrent sentences from a book on the subject address it best: “Omniscience and Infinite Mercy are two qualities of God that texts for eternal hell can never bind together with the gift of free will. Or explained this way: What a hurtful tender would be this present from his heart (of free will) if, in its giving, endless agony was, for many, foreordained.”
Paul Baribault, Lewiston
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