Hitler, Colombine, Kony, etc. - how it's NOT just THEIR fault

What the Hell?

Must be hot in there.

The notion of sin, hell, and fear, has never made sense to me. I mean, if God really loves you infinitely, and knew about the imperfections that human beings have, why will God's patience be finite in that he can send you forever to eternal damnation?

There are three conditions for a sin to be a moral (or very serious sin). The Roman Catholic Church's CFC 1857 states, 
"Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."¹³¹ 

The definitions of grave matter, full knowledge and complete consent, are found below:

1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother."¹³² The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart¹³³ do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

Who's Going to Hell?

^{Okay, let's say that the serial killers and men who have murdered innocent people, the cult leaders responsible for the mass suicides of their cult followers, all the heinous and evil men in the world, and all besides, have done all to fulfill the three conditions stated above. Will that mean that they're going to hell?}

The immediate answer of a lot of people might be, yes.

But do we really take into account the childhood and the early lives of these people? Well, if you really look into the lives of these people whom we condemn You can read about more of it here:

http://www.screamsfromchildhood.com/child-abuse-murder.html (A very enlightening perspective into the minds of murderers by Ms Barbara Rogers)

Of course, we all know about Adolf Hitler. He killed millions of Jews quite mercilessly. People might off the bat say that "fuck him!" "damn that fucking bastard!" or "may he burn and rot in the pits of hell!" But that's just looking at the tip of the iceberg. Have you ever wondered what his childhood was like? Basically, he had a very seriously troubling childhood. If God had a plan, and that each and every thing happened for a purpose, can we really hold Adolf Hitler accountable for his actions if he had a... shitty (for want of a better term) childhood?
That's something to think about. You can read up on it more here: 
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-psychological-development-adolf-hitler-10161873.html?cat=72

For a more contemporary event that we could relate to, let's take the case of these two people: These are (from above) Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. They committed the Colombine High School Massacre on April 20, 1999 (which is Adolf Hitler's birthday. They're big fans). They "killed 13 people and injured 24 others." Now, these people are just teenagers, and they look normal, right? They also look well-adjusted, at least through these pictures, right? Well, it seems that they aren't. They had serious psychological disorders, which were probably made worse by the bullying they received in the school. 

You can look it up more below, I listed the sources for more research.With these findings on the psychological disorders and make-ups of these people who fulfil three conditions of a mortal sin, do we really say that they're going to hell?

So What?

The most important statements in this article are the following four paragaphs in bold:
I question the idea that a person who commits murder and other acts of atrocity is in full knowledge and complete consent. It seems unfair to me that a person will be subjected to abuse which will cause maladjustments at critical period of the formative years, and be held accountable for something that is caused by the psychological disorders that person has developed because of that abuse.

Plus, if you'll see the picture below, children are brainwashed in Africa from an early age to thinking that killing is good. We all know about Joseph Kony who raids villages and takes the children to be soldiers. If you were a child and were taken by force and brainwashed into thinking that the government was bad and that you had to use force to kill them, wouldn't you have done the same?

Child soldier in Africa.

Joseph Kony. African rebel group leader (Lord's Resistance Army)

Now, you might be saying, it's not the fault of the children, it's the fault of Joseph Kony. But who are we to judge this person? How much do we actually know about his childhood? Maybe what made him do the things he did that led to mass killings, rape, and brainwashing of children had to do with his childhood as well.

If God made the minds of men and made our lives and all that happens in it, what makes these people who grew up to be committers of acts of atrocity accountable for a psychological disorder that was caused by the very negative things that happened in their lives (esp. childhood)? 

What if we all had mal-adjustments in our childhood too, and we committed atrocities because of those psychological disorders?
Do you really think that a person with a serious psychological disorder will be able to commit an act of grave matter, with full knowledge and complete consent? 

I don't think so.

On Responsibility and Accountability

Okay, now a lot of you might be asking, "who's fault is it then, if it's not their fault?"What I propose is not just an form of personal responsibility and accountability, but an interpersonal one. If for example the parents of these children were more vigilant, caring, and loving to their child to become a more socially integrated and morally aware person, then the story might have been different. If the friends and the society in which these people lived in might have been kinder to them, then the story might have been different.

We have to consider that some people are more sensitive than others, and some stimulus like an insult might be nothing for some, but for others, it might mean a direct and damaging attack to their identity.

If one falls, everyone is affected and falls as well.

As I see it, it's ALL of OUR fault/ responsibility that we're disconnected from other people and that there are people in society which turn out to be less than socially integrated and less than kind.

To Conclude for now...

To close this article, let me just say, I don't believe that eternal damnation is real, simply because I don't think there is a sin that's unforgivable. 

If there were some sort of experience that these people had to go through because of their acts. first, i believe it won't be forever. When parents reprimand their children for doing something wrong, they don't lock them up in a dungeon until they die, right? How much more loving is God supposed to be to us?

Second, the experience would be a reformative one. Have you ever had an experience that you were just punished and the explanation for why you were punished wasn't given? How has that experience helped you, then? I don't think it does. Punishing a child by putting them in dungeons doesn't teach much about how to become better through learning to reform the fault through understanding, it rather teaches you to avoid doing it because of fear and ignorance, which is an entirely different thing. How much more wise is God supposed to be in teachings us to become better than any earthly parent?

What I Believe

God is infinite love.

Maybe I'll expound more on my take on what I believe in another article, but for now, suffice it to say that it doesn't make sense to me because it is simply not in line with a God of Infinite Love, because the Love he has is finite and has a limit when you say that there are sins that aren't forgivable.

I believe in God or a higher spiritual power, an ultimate Reality, but it is not the Christian paradigm. More on this later.

Thoughts, comments, ideas? Agree or disagree? Opinion? Please engage me. I don't want you to just agree or believe me. I want to encourage discourse about these things.

Further Research and Sources:

More on psychological disorders about serial killers here:
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/serialkillers/psychological_assoc.html
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/tick/abuse_3.html

More on the Colombine shooting here:
http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/shooting/0822fata1.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold#cite_note-FatalFriendship-3

Pictures:
http://www.biography.com/imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/H/Adolf-Hitler-9340144-2-402.jpg
http://broadcasturantia.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/infinite-love-mrleqcfxx-98454-475-475.jpg
http://thomasfortenberry.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/figure-14.jpg
http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/3876048-3x2-700x467.jpg
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/orgVLE/images/VLE0107-3-04.jpg