I've been debating with someone who is one of the most diehard Christians I've ever known, and she believes (like nearly all Christians) that you must accept Christ and repent to enter heaven. Now, even as an atheist, I could sort of... almost... strangely accept that. However, she also believes that those who don't believe, even if they are neutral or good people, will suffer eternal hell. She thinks that only the blood of Christ can get you to heaven, and that's it. Nothing else. No exceptions.
Here's the problem, some of this seems extremely one-sided and unfair. I get we're all sinners/imperfect/etc., but condemning someone to an eternity of agony is just too much. That doesn't seem like a balanced punishment. I'm sure this is an easy topic for many Christians, because they believe that they're "set" and got the "hook up" to the good afterlife, while everyone else is on the fast track to hell. What if someone is raised under a different religion? What if someone never heard of Christ at all, or at least doesn't understand him? There are a lot of variables in the world, and it doesn't seem fair to a lot of people that they suffer forever just for not following some strict guidelines.
If someone has lived a disgusting, thieving and pain-spreading lifestyle, abusing his wife and kids until age 60, then repents and lives a "sin-free" life and dies at 70. He just gets to enter paradise? But if someone's raised Jewish, hardly done anything wrong but simply doesn't believe in Christ, that person just gets dropped in hell? Well gee, that doesn't sound very fair. See, if hell was for a limited time for some people, that would make sense, but eternity seems like too much.
I think there are several things here that deserve being unpacked and addressed.
Firstly, one difficulty here is that because of differences in theology between different Christian traditions/denominations, and that means not all Christians are of the same mind. And very often the differences can be very nuanced--but those nuances can have major implications, which fosters continued debate among Christians. To make matters more difficult, not all Christians necessarily even understand their denomination/tradition's theology in such a way as to be able to explain it well to someone entirely outside of the Christian religion. That means that sometimes well-meaning Christians don't do a great job expressing their faith; that isn't their fault, so it's not about casting blame on them, if anything it speaks of how churches sometimes fail their people in properly informing and teaching on important theological matters. But before I digress, let's keep going.
Secondly, I'd say one of the more misunderstood ideas in Christianity, including by many well-meaning Christians, is the idea of "Heaven and Hell". There's just a lot of problems with the way we often talk about and think about "Heaven and Hell" in the modern world.
There is this idea that Heaven is this place where some people go and they get to hang out on clouds, strum harps all day long, in a realm of pure bliss forever and ever. It's where "good people" go and enjoy the benefits of enjoying a good afterlife as a reward. On the other hand, we often talk about and think about Hell is this other place where some people go, and they get punished and are forced to experience endless tortures forever in a realm of fire, smoke, brimstone, with pitchfork-wielding devils for all eternity. It's where "bad people" go, and suffer the recompense of a bad life.
When that idea then gets placed over, like a template, onto Christians talking about how salvation is found only in Jesus Christ, what often happens is that it looks like Heaven is an exclusive club only for the few people who managed to choose the right religion, and that God is going to punish people by sending them to Hell for not having won the religious lottery. That looks pretty bad, and rather gross; because it is pretty bad and it is pretty gross. And Christians don't do ourselves any favors when we think about and talk about Heaven and Hell that way.
I hope to be able to explore this more with you in further posts, but to keep things brief for now, I want to offer an alternative way of thinking about "Heaven and Hell" that I think is more accurate to historic Christian views on the subject, and in particularly, more accurate to biblical themes in general.
In an historically Christian reading of the Bible there is the unfolding narrative of how the Good Creator God who made everything, and yet some of His creations made a mess of things, is going to remain faithful toward His creation and make it whole again, to heal, restore, redeem, to save what He has made. And the way God does that is Jesus. Because we are, ourselves, broken and part of a broken creation we need to be restored, healed, and saved. To that end our sinfulness--our ways of being broken toward each other and toward the rest of God's creation and being estranged and out of communion with God--needs to be addressed, it needs to be forgiven, we need to be set free from it, to be healed of it, and ultimately brought into a place of full restoration and communion with God. If we compare the idea of human beings being God's image and likeness and the ill-effects of sin on the human being to a painting that has been worn away and distorted; salvation is the work of the original painter restoring the painting.
In Jesus God is restoring, healing, and rescuing His creation; us sinners to be sure, but also all creation. So that, in the end, when history reaches its close, all creation will be healed. We talk about "new heavens new earth" and the resurrection of the dead. Because we are talking about God literally making the whole universe as brand new, because death itself is going to be defeated as even these physical bodies of flesh will be healed of death. The biblical vision of future hope, and the one Christians have confessed belief in for the last two thousand years, is the resurrection of the body and eternal life in that future world of renewed/new creation.
Since God is drawing all things toward this direction, to where everything is going to be made new, healed, restored, rescued. What about someone who doesn't want to be part of that? I mean, truly, deep down rejects that. What does that rejection of the good, the rejection of healing, that rejection of life, that rejection of being human ultimately look like? It is that rejection of the good, that rejection of life, that rejection of healing, that rejection of being human that we can call "Hell".
One of the most well respected Christian thinkers of the 20th century, whose work has been enjoyed and praised by Christians from across many traditions (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant alike) is C.S. Lewis. In a couple of his works we read the way that Lewis thinks about Hell, and I'd argue he's quite right in his thinking, he writes:
"
Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud."
Lewis also famously once said--and again, I'd argue he's right to say this--that the gates of hell are locked from the inside. If one wishes to conceive of hell in prison language, it is the inmates that have locked the doors. The doors are locked not to keep the inmates from escaping, rather the inmates have locked themselves in to keep anyone from coming in to bring them out.
-CryptoLutheran
