Introduction: The
Problem Defined
One of the most common questions young people ask goes something like this: "How can a loving God torture through eternity someone who has sinned for only forty years?" Many youthful questioners, failing to find a satisfactory answer, have buried their questions, their doubts, and their seedling faith in a round of frenzied activities, parties, or dollar-chasing, trying to forget a God they can not trust and a hell they fear.
In our judicial system, we expect punishment to have some relationship to the crime: We expect a fair judge to hand down a much more severe sentence for murder than for bicycle theft. Yet, most Christian churches hold to a doctrine that has the Judge of the Universe handing down a sentence of eternal torture to the rebellious teenager who dies in an auto accident without accepting Christ as well as to the hardened serial murder who no longer feels any qualms of conscience. And is it justice, even, to torture eternally someone who sinned for forty years?
Well-meaning Christians point to hell fire to emphasize the seriousness of sin and the consequences of living a life apart from God. They expect to motivate their hearers to holy living. Yet on many, the preaching of eternal-hell-fire seems to have the opposite effect. If the punishment is so horrendous, they seem to reason, it can't possibly be meted out for such ordinary sins as cheating on income tax, gossip, covetousness, adultery, or bowing down to the god of money. Thus the teaching does not necessarily inspire more holy living but may lead to careless sinning. And in some it inspires rebellion.
Since the doctrine of eternal torture offends humanity's inherent sense of justice, most funerary sermons preach the deceased straight into heaven. Even if everyone knows that good ole Uncle Abe hadn't much use for the church, the Bible, or Christ, somehow the bereaved are comforted by the preaching of eternal bliss in heaven. The young see through the travesty. Their elders, being more used to compromise and hypocrisy, try not to think about it. But is the teaching of the "immortal soul" on which the doctrine of eternal torture is based truly biblical, even if long-cherished and firmly believed by millions?
Although the majority of Christians hold to the view that at conception each human being is endowed with a soul inherently immortal, a minority, in various denominations, hold to a different view. These take literally the familiar text stating that "the gift of God is eternal life." If this part of the text is meaningful at all, its corollary would be that, without this gracious gift costing the death of Christ on Calvary, no member of the human race would live eternally -- in heaven or in hell. Each person, according to this view, is given life at birth, rests in the grave till the resurrection, and then receives God's gift of eternal life or the wages of his sin -- eternal death brought about by a hell fire which is effective to annihilates sin and sinners.
The consequences of these differences in belief are profound. The doctrine of eternal torture follows naturally on the heels of belief in an "immortal soul." Furthermore, this teaching opens the door to spiritualism, the assumption that the living can communicate with the dead, and purgatory, the place from which the dammed may yet escape to heaven. Since evangelical Christians unanimously abhor these two teachings, it might be well to examine the basis of the doctrine that, to many intelligent minds, logically allows such aberrations in belief. (If my mother is floating around somewhere in the vicinity, wouldn't she want to talk to me? If my intercessory prayer can "move mountains" on this earth, why can't it move the heart of my son -- and the heart of God -- when that son is conscious and suffering in hell? After all, he was so close to giving his heart to the Lord. If he'd just lived a little longer. ... )
I beg you, dear reader, to examine, with an open mind, the biblical evidence, beginning in Genesis.
This paper is dedicated to Blair McHenry, whose absolute and active faith in our sovereign Lord has been an inspiration to me.