All to hell!

Fr. Giorgis Dorbarakis | August 8, 2025

 

Mr. Spyros, who approached me—a well-known parishioner and old friend, a native of Corfu with a special pride in the saint of his island, whose name he also bore—was somewhat upset.
He put the matter to me bluntly from the start: “Father, my daughter came with her children to see us, me and her mother, and she also brought our two little grandchildren with her. The older one, little Spyros, now nine years old, however, put me in a difficult position when he asked me if most people will go to hell. ‘How so, Spyro?’ I said to him, surprised. ‘Who told you such things?’ ‘The priest of our parish, grandpa. Last Sunday, when he came out to speak during the Liturgy, he told us that if we are not people of God, if we do not pray constantly and do not come to Church, God will punish us and will send us to hell!’”

I paused. “Did the child understand well what the priest said?” I asked my friend Spyridon. “He is at an age where he may hear something and not comprehend it as he should. Could it be, then, that he misunderstood?” “What can I tell you, my dear Father?” said Mr. Spyros. “I am just repeating to you what he told me. But it doesn’t seem that the child misunderstood, because he said the priest repeated it, he says, many times in his sermon.” “And how did you answer him? Did you not explain to him how things really are? After so many years in the Church, I think you are in a position to give your grandson the proper framework for the speaker’s words. Although, I say it again, I have many doubts as to whether the child actually heard the whole sequence of the priest’s thoughts. Because he may have said something like that, but placed it within a broader context and emphasized the necessary parameters. Or perhaps—because I do not easily accept that the speaker said things exactly in that way—he may have pointed out that there are those who say God is punitive and ‘delights’ in sending people to hell, precisely so as to refute such a position.” “I don’t know, Father,” said Spyridon, shaking his head. “It may be as you say. Nevertheless, I tried to explain it to him. I told my grandson that God is not a punitive being who delights in sending people who do not pray constantly to hell. And this is because, as all Christians by now know, God is a Father full of love toward people and all His creatures. But the child continued to be troubled, precisely because the priest had said it. And that is why I want your help.”

“You spoke very well to the child, my dear Spyros. For here we do not have perhaps some slight deviation from the word of God, but the very deviation itself—the one that erases the very revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. What did Christ, our God who became man, bring to us? Precisely that God is our Father, our friend, our brother, the One whose joy is to be always with us, whose being distanced from Him makes Him ‘hurt,’ which means that He regards even those who deny Him not as adversaries and enemies—far be it from us to utter such blasphemy!—but as His children, whom He sees being wounded by their choices. Thus, their sorrow and grief from the wounds of their sins also become His own—He suffers together with them. Do you remember, my dear Spyros, the word of the apostle Paul exactly on this subject? ‘While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ That is, God loved us not because we were lovable—which even a sinful person can do—but when we were in the ruin and the Hades of sin. While we were in the mire, we received the infinite love of our God, which made Him lift up that mire and cleanse it. And, of course, this love of His had never ceased—God does not act with interruptions. From the very beginning and always, He loved us; He simply judged when was the right time to come and reveal this love of His, which we had forgotten because of our passions and our sins, so that we might be able to feel it and, those who wish, to respond to it. ‘When the fullness of the time came, the right season,’ the apostle Paul again notes, ‘God sent forth His Son to be born of a woman, to be born as a Jew under the Mosaic Law, so that He might redeem those who were under that Law, and that we might again become truly His children.’”

“Yes, Father,” said Mr. Spyros. “I know these things, I have believed and accepted them; without this faith of mine, I do not know, at my age, if I could even live. I would always find myself in a void; my life would pass without meaning. And I am grateful to you for so often reminding us of them, constantly showing us our orientation. But although I believe them, I know them, and I want to live them as much as possible, I do not find those words that are needed at the given moment to express them. Just like now with my grandson, for example. I froze, I would say—I could not find the words to tell him what is the truth of our faith. And in the way little Spyros posed the questions to me, seeming as disappointed as he did, I froze even more. I came, in a certain sense, into confusion.”

“Well then, my dear Spyros, my friend,” I said to the troubled grandfather, who, as it seemed, was the one his grandson could mainly talk to—not because the boy’s parents were distant or indifferent, but because, entangled in daily life and their work, they did not ‘have the time’ to concern themselves with their child’s ‘metaphysical’ anxieties. “Well then, my dear Spyros, consider yourself fortunate to have a grandson who goes with his parents to Church, who has questions, and above all who opens up to express them and does not leave them hanging inside him unanswered. Perhaps at a given moment, if the child wishes to talk to you—do not try to ‘burden’ him and make him annoyed—you could tell him that you also spoke with another priest, who assured you that Christ and our God is our Father, as you already told him very well, and that, in fact, for God hell does not exist. God only loves us, and He even suffers more for the people who do not want Him in their lives. And hell is exactly this: what the people of unbelief live, who are unable—because they do not want to—to see God’s love toward all and everything. For God to love you, to offer you everything, and for you to refuse it—that is hell, the punishment of man.

“And that is why this hell begins in this life and then extends after death into the eternity we speak of. And all the bad things that happen in this life—all the misfortunes and the so-called setbacks, all the wars, the hunger and the poverty of many people—are not due to God, who from the beginning desired and still desires the happiness and joy of man, but to us human beings, when we remove God from our lives. For when you take God out of your life, what remains? Your passions, your sins, your egoism, which makes life a hell both for yourself and for others; and upon this egoism the Evil one, the devil, then also works. So then, my dear friend Spyros, find a way to say these things to little Spyros, with simplicity and according to what he can bear. Because most of the time, when children see an elder whom they trust and love giving them answers that he himself believes, they are usually persuaded—their little hearts are comforted. Later, of course, in adolescence and in their youth, they will pose other questions, or perhaps return to the same ones but with a more critical disposition; and from then on God will act, so that they may receive the answers they should, according to their sincerity and their thirst for the truth.”

“Father,” said Spyros, moved, “thank you very much for what you told me—my own soul has been filled once again. I will bring little Spyros very soon, as soon as I have the opportunity, to meet you, and perhaps… to have a talk with you. Your blessing!”

“Go in peace, my dear Spyros,” I said, embracing him. “May God bless you and your whole family.”

 

Greek source: https://pgdorbas.blogspot.com/2025/08/blog-post_8.html