The Damning of Infants

I just finished a book: Christian Universalism: God’s Good News for All People, which was excellent and I highly recommend it. A wonderful and easy-to-understand book whose author, Eric Stetson, is truly inspired.

I don’t think there is anything that should be emphasized more than GOD IS LOVE. God’s love is beyond the greatest parental love on earth. We cannot comprehend. He wraps us in his love.

Most people do not realize that the early Church was largely Universalist and took a major turn into the idea of an eternal hell when translated OUT of Greek and into Latin by St. Augustine, who could not speak or read Greek. A big problem when attempting to translate, right? His most important ideas which are contrary to the Biblical Gospel include, first and foremost, the belief that the very essence of our being is evil, because humans are defined in God’s eyes by our “original sin” that is passed on as a sexually transmitted disease at birth, and therefore damnation is the default destiny of all people – even unbaptized babies who die in infancy – because of God’s furious anger. Secondly, he taught that hell is eternal and anyone who is not saved from divine condemnation during life on earth will experience eternal torment. Along with this idea is the teaching of predestination by God of some people to heaven and all others to hell, not because of their works either in this life or past existence, but because of arbitrary favoritism. The cornerstone of Augustine’s religious system was the belief in the necessity and unique power of ritualistic church sacraments and priests for people to attain salvation from hell, based on the concept of “created grace” that can be dispensed only by the Roman Catholic Church.

Speaking of infants and children, my sister recently gave birth to a beautiful son named Adam. He is perfect in every way and if he were to be sent to “eternal hell” right now, it would be because God created evil for the purpose of evil, which I don’t buy. His soul is clean and reflective of the cyclical nature of life and being, I believe we are born innocent and will return to innocence by the universal redemption of God.

Catholic priest J. Furniss (that name is ironic) wrote about hell in a religious book for children:

“The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire…You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in Hell – despair, desperate and horrible! ...God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse and never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in Hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of this world in its early childhood.”

[Furniss, Reverend J. The Sight of Hell: A Catholic Book for Children (1870)]

Scary, yet UNTRUE.

Some denominations are taking steps beyond avoiding the topic of hell to strides toward Christian Universalism. In 1995 the Church of England Doctrine Commission wrote in an official report, The Mystery of Salvation, that it is “incompatible with the essential Christian affirmation that God is love to say that God brings millions into the world to damn them.” The same report states “Over the last two centuries the decline in the churches of the western world of a belief in everlasting punishment has been one of the most notable of transformations of Christian belief.”

It is encouraging to see more churches getting back to the original message of the Bible, back to the roots of truth and the actual Good News. The more people THINK and use their minds to process the original and common-sense message of the gospels and the directions of God, the more the truth is so OBVIOUS. I know I've found a much-needed peace in being able to reconcile a loving God with a loving outcome. Those who cannot reconcile in their minds that a loving God would damn any of their loved ones truly experience mental hell on earth, which is sad because that is the message the Catholic church still peddles.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” (Tit. 2:11 NSRV)

Notice the word ALL.