“When an evil masochist dies, does he go to hell, or would heaven be a better punishment?”
“No words used in the Gospels can legitimately be twisted to mean unending punishment, and indeed, such an expression is self-contradictory. The main motive of punishment surely is to reform the sufferer; in school, to make a better scholar; in the State, to make a better citizen. If the punishment goes on forever when does the sufferer benefit by the punishment or use the lesson he has learned so painfully? If Hell were endless it would be valueless.”
Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.286
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Leslie Weatherhead 81
English theologian 1893–1976Related quotes
“It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.”
Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1011
Sunni Hadith
Rolling Stone (November 1989), as cited in The Yale Book of Quotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0300107986, ed. Fred Shapiro, Yale University Press (2006), p. 567
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 75.
“Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.”