You Can’t Love Jesus and Believe in Hell
How the threat of eternal damnation does not create lovers of God
I know, I know.
It’s a controversial headline.
Some of you have come to this article with rocks in your hands, ready to drag me outside the village and stone me to death for my heresy. But hear me out.
I’ve had a hell of a time wrestling with the notion of Hell recently. It is the dark shadow of my evangelical upbringing that rears its ugly head from time to time, doing its best to make me afraid.
“What if you’re not really ‘saved,’ Dan?”
“What if you’ve got this all wrong?
“What’s going to happen to you when you die and meet Jesus face-to-face?”
These are the questions that have been rolling around inside my head from pretty much the first time I remember hearing about Hell… which would have been when I was 2 or 3 years old. It sure seemed scary back then. When my ‘favorite’ fundamentalist preacher, Joel Ramsey, posted about Hell on his Instagram feed, it triggered me again.
