Charles Darwin put to words his feelings about hell and judgment:
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the [biblical] text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. Judgments value to the suffering. Christ will come to judge the living and the dead. That he will separate sheep from goats and wheat from weeds. That there is an everlasting torment, a lake of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and (gulp) a great many will spend eternity there. And the lover in us asks, why can’t everyone escape this horror?
The primary reason for Christ coming into the world was to save sinners. For those who reject him his coming carries another side, that is, to judge sinners for their sins which they failed to repent of and seek Christ for forgiveness. This would appear for many to be the dark, inevitable side of the gospel of Christ. However, if there is no judgment, what do we have to say and do about injustices and the amount of evil that goes ultimately unaccounted for in our current system of justice, where injustices occur regularly, and many receive light sentences and get off on technicalities. Recently on the 1st Nov issue of the Ottawa Citizen , it had reported that a judge thought that a maximum five year mandatory term was unwarranted for one of two individuals who had groomed young girls ages 14 and 15 years of age for prostitution. The judge decided that to pick up teens, ply them with booze then find customers to sell them to as sex objects that a five year term was cruel and unusual punishment, even though if these perpetrators were to do what they had planned, it could very well have ruined the lives of these teenagers. Both guilty parties were let go after what the judge felt was sufficient time already served: 18 months for one and 175 days for the other. Now step back and imagine how incensed you would be if you were the parents of these girls, having sat in the courtroom and watched this trial unfold before your eyes where your own daughters were a step away from becoming sexual objects to be sold like merchandise. You may wonder along with me where is the justice these days and protection for our youth?
Let me begin to answer this by returning to Darwin`s own comments on justice, and consider jointly the place of God`s Judgment (Darwin infers that God is cruel), and how poorly our world deals with injustices? First, what do you say to the oppress and victimized today, when abuses such as rape, a child’s innocence ripped from him, elderly robed of their life savings, innocents murdered where these and many more never see real justice. What do you say to these fallen victims of crime and moral indignities that only by a herculean self-effort could they get back on their feet, are their lives ruin. The Darwinian chaos where the strong eat the weak and only the powerful survive is what you are left with ultimately once you buy into the Darwin`s natural law.
To be sure, more problems are created than solved if all we do is to loosen our morals and put the gavel down, because our law institutions are unable or unwilling to keep up with an ever-increasing load of corruption all around us — truth is it will probably get worse. What do we say to victims who have been violated and have experienced loss of self-worth? Our justice system though better than most countries, has failed in many ways, so the idea that justice is impartial and objective may once have been a comforting concept but far from what is actually happening in our system of justice, sadly to say. That justice is blind is an allusion to the Greek statue for justice, wearing a blindfold so as not to treat friends differently from strangers, or rich people better than the poor ones. But it can be just as true that justice is blind but not in the way it is idealized to be. What actually occurs in our courts of law often leaves its victims broken and despairing, with little hope of ever seeing their perpetrators get what they deserve. You see that in Darwinism thought and while it may be argued that Charles Darwin never intended for his philosophy to redefine what evil is, this is what it has become. Social Darwinism is where its proponents treat societies similar to the way Darwin treated biological species; the strong adapt to their environment in order to survive while the weak fall away: a instance of this is where Nazi Germany saw themselves as superior to everyone else, the strongest naturally prosper at the expense of the weak This “natural law” Darwin promoted is very much in evidence today and underscores our own legislation for euthanasia and abortion. Our politicians have put aside the moral code of God to purge out the weak and vulnerable people from our social system. People rise to the top any way they can and condemn kind behaviour if it gets in the way of their cause, and while they offer alternative reasons for doing so, they present a fallacious sense of doing good. In truth, “what evil is” becomes less of a concern for them.
We can say safely, that God will Judge all men, and will do so with a righteous thud of His gavel! He provides hope for the wrongs and sin`s of man where each are called into account. Unless, offenders have sought forgiveness and repented of their sinful acts, they will be punished in hell. Darwin may have hated the thought of hell, but hell will continue to be a place reserved for the unrepentant and disbelieving. Whatever you may think of hell, no one will be given a light term, or dismissed due to a technicality, the judgment of God is final and will happen in the Last Day. Maybe this truth might help some out there who need reassurance that justice will not be neglected forever.
If you have been victimized, then rest assured that God is Judge over all the earth and none will escape Him. Another point we must think over, is that God judges all sins, that means ours as well, regardless of their nature, against man and God. The Bible tells us that we all have sinned against Him. All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) All offensives criminal or moral, are considered law-breaking before God and will be judged in the Last Day. Darwin saw God`s Judgment as unfair and unloving. The truth is that you cannot have a compassionate God without Divine Justice. For love to be truly loving, there must be judgment. If there is no Divine Judgment, then there is no hope for people who have been exploited. If no one is called into account before a Divine Judge, then evil wins the day. We are thankful to God that this is not the case. We have a righteous God who can get angry at sin! We need a God who will protect righteous standards and in so doing gives us all hope, that once and for all evil will be dealt with and justice served. Therefore, one of the most loving things we can do is compassionately voice the truth that hell, just like heaven, is for real. We who love God and believe in His Son, if we are to really care for the people God has placed around us, then we must be willing to risk social awkwardness and tell the truth about evil and its consequences. We do so out of a spirit of gentleness, respect, and Christina love.
