Universalism & The Pain of God

If there is no eternal punishment for our sins, if Hell is at most temporary and possibly closed for business, does this not mean that there is no ultimate judgment for our sins? Does it not mean there is no justice in the universe? How can we make sense of our intuition that our moral choices have ultimate significance, one of the very grounds for our belief in God?

I found my answers to many of these questions in the book THE THEOLOGY OF THE PAIN OF GOD by Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori. Sin hurts God. If the Cross reveals anything, it is this. It is, in my opinion, one of the most shocking and indeed important aspects of Christianity. No doubt there is some shadow of this truth in the Old Testament. But it is the central Divine Revelation in the New. The Pain of God swallows up divine justice and mercy. Let me explain what I mean by this.

The "punishment" for sin, is knowing that our sins hurt God. If every time you lied it caused your closest loved one pain, you would naturally try to stop lying. In a real sense, the pain they experience is a punishment upon you. A parent would no doubt prefer that they experience physical pain over their child, as their spiritual pain resulting from the knowledge of their child's physical pain is in some sense greater. No doubt, every child would choose to suffer for their parent for the same reason.

This makes more sense of faith and virtue. For if the Christian believes and seeks to do good out of a fear of punishment, and the atheist seeks the good out of love and believes due to a commitment to reason, then the atheist seems to be in a superior moral position. Yet the atheist has no way to make sense of the significance of our moral decisions. In the Theology of the Pain of God, God's very being is the substance of judgment, shining a terrible light on all we do wrong. It is not that God judges, it is that His pain reflects our sin back to us.

Yet that pain, that judgment, derives from God's ridiculous love and mercy, which desires that not one of His creations should be lost. His pain is both His just judgment, and his own door to Heaven. In the end, the pain of God should be anyone's top priority when thinking about how one should act. For one moment of pain for God is infinitely more important than any possible eternal punishment that might threaten me. Alleviating the suffering of Christ must be the top priority for any who love Him. Their can be no other motivation for moral action or faith than this, for the Christian. Of course one may not love God, and so sin without care for His pain. But in such a case it matters not whether one believes in an eternal Hell or not. For if there is such a punishment for our sins, what could earn it but disregard for God's pain?