Here are my last 3 episodes that haven’t been posted to my website. Remember that you can visit each one on Apple or Google Podcasts to see the show notes.
What Happens to People Who Never Hear the Gospel?
Listen on Apple and Google podcast apps
The Sunk-Cost Fallacy
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Church and Our Consumer Mentality
Listen on Apple and Google podcast apps
Ray, I understand that you’re trying to give a clear, logical, Bible-based explanation about why decent people who do not accept Jesus go to hell. Unfortunately your idea does not square with the Bible.
Only an evil monster could create a universe in which billions of conscious beings suffer eternal torture because they lack the capacity to be perfect, and because their life experience did not make Christianity to be a good option. This is the polar opposite of the Bible’s definition of love, and does not adhere to any biblical idea of justice.
If the only way for people to avoid hell is through accepting Christ as Lord and Savior, then God can give people that message much, much more easily and effectively than sinful humans. It is not logical or reasonable to insist that the eternal fate of human beings rests in the actions of humans, with God having zero responsibility in seeing that non-Christians get a genuinely legitimate chance.
Paradoxically, your thinking is a major reason that people reject Christ today. Very few people today are willing to worship the cruel monster you’ve described. Personally, I am not alone in stating that my conscience, as per Rom 1-2, demands that I suffer hell rather than worship that kind of being.
The God of the Bible is a god of love. Telling people who you have created, “I don’t care how hard you’ve tried to be a loving, moral person; I don’t care that you lived your entire life in Saudi Arabia. You’re burning in hell forever,” is, per Romans 1 and other passages, an excellent description of evil. Please re-think this.
John, I appreciate the emotional struggle people have in accepting a biblical understanding of salvation and God’s justice. From my experience, your argument is a typical response that most people give to justify either universalism or some form of works-based salvation (which it sounds like you hold to based on your last paragraph). All I can really say is that trying to make the God we see in the Bible conform to an idea that we can find tolerable and tasteful requires a significant amount of retooling of what God’s word says. You made sweeping accusations that what I said doesn’t line up with the Bible, but you have a much more significant hurdle of dealing with specific things like:
-salvation is through grace and not works as discussed in Ephesians 2:8-9
-Christ, not trying to be loving and moral, is the only way to Heaven as seen in places like John 14:6 or Acts 4:12
-How/when names are written in the Lambs Book of Life and the fate of those whose names aren’t written in it from Revelation 17:8 and 20:15
You say you can’t worship a God that chooses whom He will have mercy on. You think salvation should depend on human will or effort, rather than God’s mercy. You seem to think it evil for God to hold people accountable for their sin, and question the goodness of a God who would see justice in the way I discussed.
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? (Romans 9:14-21)
But I don’t think I need to tell you any of this. You’re familiar enough with God’s word that I’m sure you’ve already wrestled with how all of these can be answered without having to worship such an “evil” God. In the end, Christians who struggle with what the Bible says about salvation and God’s justice have 3 options:
1. Accept what the Bible says as truth, but doubt God’s goodness. This requires us to sit in judgment of God and say that He is wrong because He doesn’t conform to what we, as clay vessels, say is acceptable.
2. Insist that we worship a God that we can accept and thus change what God’s word says to make God more tolerable. While none of us can perfectly understand God, at a certain point we compromise God who He is so much that we worship a false being who happens to be named “God.”
3. Accept what the Bible plainly says and still know that God is good, loving, and just. Thus, even if we don’t understand it, we still believe God is everything He says He is and acknowledge that it’s our understanding that is flawed, not God’s character.
I wish you hadn’t said you’d rather go to hell than worship the God described in the Bible. I know you rarely agree with much of what I say, but that broke my heart to read. The God you want to worship is a fantasy – it requires no real change in understanding on our part, and it allows God to fit with our modern understanding of justice and love rather than our worldview changing to line up with God. It allows our thinking to remain conformed by the world rather than having our minds transformed.
Ray, once again you’ve taken the time to read and respond with thought and care. I do appreciate it.
I actually agree with most of what you say. I highlight differences because I want a very good blog to better serve God’s people. Your acceptance of some of my criticisms suggests to me that some of my efforts are fruitful.On
In that vein, I hope that you stick to what I write, and avoid personal evaluations. Some of these concepts are difficult, and the ad hominem approach makes it harder for us to hear each other.
The reality is that what you wrote does not line up with what the Bible says. Your podcast does not adhere to option 3. I agree that we need to confirm our values and ideas to the plain teaching of the Bible. But repeating that point avoids the issue. Much better is to carefully read, distinguishing what it actually says from what we want it to say.
Eph 2:8-9 fits my description of God far better than yours. Letting undeserving people into heaven is about as gracious and loving as it gets.
John 14, Acts 4. Rev 17, and Rev 20 day nothing about the mechanism by which people go to heaven through Christ, and get their names written. That is 100% God’s call, and it’s a little arrogant and inappropriate for flawed humans to insist that we know how it works.
I most certainly do not believe that salvation should depend on human will or effort, or that God should not hold people accountable for sin. I’m not sure where you get that, but it seems that you’re taking some statements to extremes.
Romans 9 (the whole chapter, not just the parts you quote) talks only about the transfer of the covenant from Israel to the church. Ironically, the parts that you highlight make my point: God is free to be merciful to whoever God wants; how God extends grace is not our affair.
The Bible plainly says that God is love, and plainly describes and defines love. The Bible does not describe the mechanics of salvation by grace through faith; you’re describing a man-made interpretation that either takes away God’s omnipotence ( “God HAS to condemn decent people, no matter how hard they’ve tried to do what’s right. God has no choice!” ), or just ignores the plain meaning of 1 Cor 13, 2 Pet 3:9, Micah 6:8, and so on.
As per Rom 1-2, God is the source of the idea that it is horrifically wrong to create feeling beings that will almost certainly end up subject to extended, unbearable torture. There is no passage in the Bible that condones torture, or describes justice like this. The only people who accept the torture of decent humans are those with brain function issues, or those who have undergone a thought process that has taken them away from the general revelation of the Holy Spirit. (Yes, this can and does happen to blood-bought, “Bible-believing” Christians.)
I know that it feels good to think we understand how salvation works. But it is much, much better to leave salvation of others to God, than to devise a system that turns God into a cruel monster.