We Must Do Away with Sin and Sinners Before Hell is Emptied!

If that doesn't make the case, let's not imagine a whole society. Let's imagine a school. Would you send your child to a school in which students who routinely disturbed their classes and flunked all their subjects were never punished and students who excelled behaviorally and academically were never rewarded?

I assume not. So why, then, would anyone want such a scenario for all of life? Why would anyone want people who committed terrible evils not to be punished and people who committed heroic, self-sacrificing good acts not to be rewarded?

This is why I wrote that there is an absence of serious thought on this issue. What people would find utterly objectionable in their society or even just in their child's school, they are at peace with regarding life.

But there is more to this issue. People are in fact increasingly at peace with no reward or punishment in this life. This is the egalitarian impulse that is coming to dominate intellectual life. More and more people are in fact advocating such a society. No more "retributive justice." No more merit-based standards. No more valedictorians. No more failing grades. No more SATs. Indeed, no more standards. No more bail. No more punishment if you are caught stealing less than a thousand dollars' worth of goods. No more prosecutors who prosecute. Only "equity."

I am convinced that is what animated Pope Francis' words. Note that he said he was stating his opinion, not church dogma. And as a man of the Left, he's uncomfortable with reward and especially punishment. As an egalitarian, the thought that anyone is in hell disturbs him.

So, why do people who think like the Pope oppose rewards and punishments?

Because rewards and punishments mean that one must make judgments about better and worse -- morally, academically and in most other spheres of life. It's better to just assume no one is better than anyone else. That is what has animated participation trophies -- no one, not even a team, is better or worse. In much of the contemporary intellectual world, the greatest sin is judging sin. And when you do away with sin, you do away with hell.

========

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His commentary on Numbers, the fourth volume of "The Rational Bible," his five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible, will be released in November 2024 and is available now for presale. He is the co-founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.