Seek Knowledge or Eat Your Pie

Humble pie never really tastes good, but in this instance I am glad to eat it.  Maybe it isn't really humble pie,  but I can't think of anything else to call it.

So what am I talking about you might ask... well, I am speaking to the fact that I am a teacher and I have come to realize that some things I have said in the past have not fully been correct.

As a theology teacher the question inevitably comes up each year whether or not I believe in hell or if people really go to hell.  From my past experiences and understandings, I had always said "no, I do not think anyone actually goes to hell".  I always prefaced this by stating something I had learned in high school; that hell would be an absence of God, and since God made everything, therefore hell does not exist.  To cover my tracks I would say something like the Church's understanding of purgatory would be what we think of as hell.

I don't think it is the worst thing I could have said and at the very least it may have given hope to students that were feeling, well, hopeless.

I have come to understand though, through the help of Father Barron and his wonderful YouTube series of commentaries, that what I have been believing myself and in tern teaching has been wrong.

The devil exists and hell exists.

Here's why... God indeed has created everything.  God created everything we see and do not see out of love, to be good.  In His love, God has given all His creation freedom.  We can either choose His love and accept His grace, or we can reject it... part of our being free.  There are angels and there are fallen angels; those angels that have rejected God's grace and love and exercise their powers on us through temptation in many different ways.  Thus, we have the devil and many demons (they tempt me oh so often).

Just as angels have chosen to not accept God's grace and love, so to can humans.  It is in the fact that God, out of His love for us, has given us freedom that we have to accept that hell can exist.  Undoubtedly, it is entirely possible that some humans have chosen to reject God and have ended up in hell.  It is well within our God given freedom that this is a possibility.  

Do we really know for sure? No.  But we can reasonably hope that all people are saved from hell. 

Pax!