Dear Editor: To “Hell? Yes!”  I say, “Hell, no!”  This may be a bit heretical, but if God is Love, as St. John tells us, how can that same loving God damn any part of His creation to eternal separation?  In the Creed, don’t we recite: “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”

If all things that can be seen, and all things that are unseen have come from the mind of God, does God damn Himself? Even the very existence of a heaven and a hell are dependent on the creative aspect of God.  So is anything ever really separated from God? Perhaps our awareness of being separated is very real, but is there ever really a separation if our very life breath and existence have come from God?

With trying to comprehend the mind of God, and His judgement towards heaven and hell, why is it that Judas was chosen to betray Christ, and not Peter or one of the other Apostles? Didn’t Peter also betray Christ three times?

So then why is it that Peter sought forgiveness, which can be seen as a heavenly state, while Judas was trapped in the hellish damnation of his own mind, and then goes on to commit suicide? Peter goes on to lead the early Church, and receives the stature of sainthood, while Judas supposedly is damned to hell and  is forever seen as the “betrayer.” Who knows the mind of God, but God?

St. Thomas Aquinas argued that God is beyond the limitations of the human mind.  How can the mind, with its limitations of time and space even remotely begin to comprehend the infinitude of God, His justice, His grace, and His ways?  Aren’t these all attempts by our feeble, limited minds to explain the enigma of life here on earth as well as our conjecturing on the life hereafter?  Can the human mind even begin to grasp the concept of infinity – that which is beyond time and space, when it is limited by those very same parameters?

Rather than trying to explain that which is beyond explanation, why not focus on a more simplistic agenda which sums up the direction that all religions should be ascribing toward: Be good and do good!

If that was the dogma that all religions followed, much like that which Jesus commanded us to do when he stated, “Love one another as I have loved you,” wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place? We wouldn’t need talk of eternal damnation, or heavenly existence in the hereafter, since the Spirit of God would be present here on this earth and wherever it is that the soul may travel to once it leaves this mortal body.

JERRY KUZNIEWSKI

Beechhurst