by Pastor Gerry Miller
As part of this View from the Pew, I thought it valuable to briefly address some of the objections people raise because of biblical teaching on Hell as a place of eternal punishment for those who reject Christ. Some questions are as follows:
How can a loving God even conceive of a place like Hell much less send people there after death for all of eternity? God could have made us moral robots, forcing us all to follow Him, but this would not have fostered the meaningful voluntary love interactions that He desires with His human creatures. God will not force a human to unwillingly relate to Himself. Far more loving is God’s giving us a choice to either freely accept or reject his loving overtures with the knowledge that rejecting these overtures will have dire eternal consequences. Furthermore, the existence of a Hell has forced humans who otherwise would have been indifferent, to take seriously God’s desire of a loving, authentic relationship.
How can God unfairly punish a human for all of eternity in Hell for sins committed during a short period of a human lifespan? The fairness of punishment for a crime is never determined by how long it took to commit the crime but rather on the enormity of the consequences of a crime. For example, a split second burst of gunfire that results in the death of a victim can deprive a victim of life for (possibly) many years. In the case of Hell, we are talking about a sin which rejects the infinite goodness of an all-powerful, all-loving God for all of eternity that is appropriately punished with eternal consequences.
Why does punishment in Hell have to be so extreme? Couldn’t God lighten up a bit? Even a “nice” place that a conscious, thinking human would spend in eternity without God would become (eventually) so boring because of lack of infinite intellectual stimulation that even that would become tortuous and unbearable. Given this, it may even be that Hell as described in the Bible may be the most merciful place a person without God could spend for all of eternity.
Why does God send sincere practitioners of non-Christian religions to Hell? Why would God send those who never heard about Jesus Christ to Hell when they never had a chance to become believers? The Bible teaches that no one goes to Hell in ignorance. Scripture teaches that all have some knowledge of truth (Romans 1:18-21) and the Holy Spirit will convict the world of their sin, righteousness and eternal judgment (John 16:7-11). The issue is not that humans don’t have the truth but rather what they do with the truth they have. As we have seen in Muslim countries, lack of Bibles or missionaries does not keep God from supernaturally revealing Himself to those who are open to accepting the truth.
The real question that must be answered is this: Why do humans ignore the offer of eternal fellowship with God by rejecting the pardon for sin that Jesus Christ freely offers all of humanity? I challenge you to think about THIS question!
