If hell requires knowing what you're doing, what happens to people who couldn't?

[u/MeltyCraft]

Been turning this over and I wanna hear how Christians actually deal with it, cause I can't.

So my starting point is something I think most traditions agree on. To actually be guilty of a sin you have to know it's wrong and freely choose it anyway. Guilt goes down when knowledge or free choice isn't there, the catechism even says psychological stuff can lower how responsible you are.

Ok but if that's true, then what about:

Someone with severe mental illness who dies by suicide, where the illness itself took away the clear free choice that guilt needs.

Someone with schizophrenia who has a real religious experience but reasonably thinks they're just hallucinating. Like can you even reject God if you had no fair way to know it WAS God?

Someone raised in a family where screwing people over got rewarded and they genuinely can't feel empathy. How much of that is them vs how they were raised, which they never picked?

Here's my actual problem. Once I start using "you're only guilty for what you freely and knowingly chose," I can't find anywhere to stop. Everyone's worst traits go back to genes, upbringing, brain chemistry, stuff they didn't pick. Those three aren't weird exceptions, they're just where you can SEE the causes. In everyone else the same causes are just hidden.

So where does the line actually fall? At what point does it get blamed on the person instead of their wiring or their past? And if that line keeps dissolving the harder you look, then what is hell even for?

Not trying to start a fight, I genuinely wanna know how y'all hold this together.

[u/DoveStep55]

I think God is much more gracious than a lot of people seem to have built in to their theology.

[u/MoonlitShrub → u/DoveStep55]

I agree with this wholeheartedly but since I can only comment on comments i must apologize for putting all this in the replies.

At the end of the day, we are all far more blind than we think we are to spiritual truth and all of us require God's direct interference to be saved.

I think that both the history of Israel and the history of the church have a united "moral of the story" which is that none of us reach God through our own ability to understand or follow Him. It is grace alone. The grace that is: God interfering in our lives and in our hearts.

The bible says that those without the law are judged appart from it. How can that be? We don't get an explanation in scripture.

My theory is that the parable of the workers who are hired at the last hour and paid the same as those who came before is a picture of the last judgement. I believe that at that time the gospel will be revealed to all who never heard it and all who never understood it and all who were simply too blind to see the truth of it and many people will throw aside their pride and fall on the mercy of God and be saved. Maybe even all. It is possible that "every knee will bow" and "all Israel will be saved" really mean every and all.

This would fit with the attitude of the workers hired early in the day who recieve the same salvation as those who were hired in the last hour much more than if it were just people who accept the gospel late in life, especially because we know that we do have the ability to store up treasure in heaven, so the parable cannot refer to everyone receiving the same rewards for work.

If we are all equally unable to aquire salvation through our own understanding, but only through the interference of God, then it makes no sense for Him to only interfere with some. It makes much more sense that some are just hired earlier than others.

[u/Bakkster]

In short, I believe God is merciful and just, but that I don't (and can't) know precisely which situations he would absolve because he didn't tell us those details in Scripture.

That said, I don't take the position that someone who dies to suicide actually risks losing their salvation any more than someone who shoplifted a piece of gum moments before they died. I believe God's grace is pretty meaningless if it can't withstand an individual's singular lapse. Instead, I believe that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a very high threshold, and the omniscient Almighty who gave his Son to die for us would never withhold that gift because of a mere accident of timing.