What if Avoiding Hell Is Not the Point of Christianity?
Would your burden be finally lifted?
I still call myself a Christian, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I was born in another country to missionary parents who gave their life to the Christian message. It feels like a kind of betrayal to let it go.
Right now, though, like a forensic scientist searching for truth, I am on a different kind of mission. Dusting for fingerprints, peering through a microscope, and peeling back thick layers of theology, I am looking for clues to the heart of my faith.
My view of hell, among other beliefs, is getting dissected and sifted to see if evidence for it stacks up. Why would God send people to hell? Does fear of it create moral people? If people stopped believing in eternal damnation, would we be overrun by evil? If news is to be believed, aren’t we already?
Also, what happened to the people who died before missionaries arrived? Waiting for them to show up, was God forced to send people to hell, painted into a corner of his own making? After all, God relied solely on us to spread the news of salvation.
As a kid, I took the notion of hell quite seriously. At ten, I was already a budding evangelist. We had just moved into a new neighborhood, and used to many moves, I was out first…
