The belief that God doesn’t send people to hell, but that we send ourselves there, is exactly what mainstream Christianity believes (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and many varieties of Protestantism). It’s mostly just Calvinists and fundamentalists who don’t believe that.
God created hell for the devil and his angels, “Then he will also say to those on the left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” (Matthew 25:41) and He does send people there who refuse to believe (John 3:18), “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell,” (Matthew 10:28), “And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:15). In those cases yes the unbeliever paves there way to hell, but God does the sending / sentencing or casting into lake of fire at judgement.
Thank you for your reply. I think the verses you cited make a compelling point at first glance, but what was said in the above-posted article about prooftexting applies here.
There are countless ways in which the Bible attributes direct agency to God to emphasize His authority over all things. Another example is when Exodus alternately says that “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh” and “Pharaoh hardened his heart.” I don’t think there’s any reason to see those passages as saying different things–that sometimes it was God, and sometimes it was Pharaoh. Rather, Pharaoh’s heart hardened in response to God because of his own inner state and choices, just like some materials harden when exposed to the sun, while others melt (and it isn’t that the sun acts differently in the different cases).
Similarly, I interpret all of the passages you cite as figurative imagery, reflecting how the sinful soul is unable to endure the presence of God. It is almost impossible for us human beings to imagine condemning ourselves to eternal torment, so Jesus and Revelation speak of it in juridical terms, which would have been better understood by the people of that time.
The position of the Catholic Church is twofold: (1) we condemn ourselves to hell through our own actions, (2) God is our supreme judge.
My preferred theological interpretation of this (among several possible ones) is that in deliberately rejecting what is good (which is what a mortal sin is), we implicitly reject the source of goodness and the supreme Good (i.e., God). If we do not repent of that sin–in other words, if we do not come to see it as evil–we will hate whatever is incompatible with that sin. In coming face-to-face with God at our judgement, we will be unable to stand God’s presence and God will cut us off from that presence in accordance with our own choosing, so as not to override our decisions. Were God to simply change who we were or force us to be in His presence anyway, it would be an annihilation of ourselves–one might even say a kind of divine rape. That’s the summary version of it, anyway.