How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
By
Michael Lane, Executive Director, Delve Christian Ministries
Hell is the destination which people choose when they hate God and everything good. No one who loves God, seeks Him with all their heart and earnestly desires to be with Him will be turned away.
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There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. - C.S. Lewis (From The Great Divorce)
Our Choice, Not God's
Hell is not a place which God created to punish and torture unbelievers, nor is it true that God delights in banishing unbelievers to suffer there in eternity when they die. The truth is that hell is the natural consequence of the choices we make. We make the decision to spend eternity there when we decide to abandon God and turn our backs on Him. God does not want anyone to perish, yet at the same time He will not force anyone to come to Him.
If someone will not come to God and does not want the love and goodness God is offering, then what choice does God have but to grant their request? A wicked, evil person who hates God simply cannot be in Heaven. It makes no sense. Those who refuse to come to Him have a place where they can spend eternity apart from Him. To us, hell seems like the worst place imaginable and so it would be for us, because God, who is the source of all goodness, love and peace is not in that place. Yet, for those who despise love and goodness and want to be alone in their conceit and self-importance, this empty, lonely and desolate place will be the consequence for their insistence on alienating themselves from God. In a sense, it is where they want to be, as far from God as possible.
Is God Torturing People in Hell?
The Bible describes hell using many different images and metaphors, all of them designed to press home the point that it is a terrible place. Is it really a place where it's inhabitants are tortured and wracked with pain? If so, we can be certain that the pain is self-inflicted. Hell's inhabitants have one thing in common - they want to live for themselves. They will not submit to God and will not call Him Lord. Yet, all good things came from God, so hell's inhabitants could not ever hope to experience love, peace or joy. In the absence of these, we can be certain that Hell is a terrible place, but this does not mean that God is punishing or torturing these lost souls. At their request, He has left them alone and permitted them to experience an everlasting existence without him. In Letters From a Skeptic, Greg Boyd explains,
The alcoholic who loves his bottle above his wife, kids and home has what he wants when they finally "leave him alone." But don't the rest of us, who are not that sick, see this as hell? Indicative of just how low this man has sunk is the fact that he thinks he is happier with his bottle than without it and anything else. So he chooses to drink. But in truth, he is miserable. The drunk gets what he wants, but is in hell with this "privilege." He is tormented, but it is a torment of his own choosing."
How Can God Keep People In Hell Forever?
C.S Lewis wrote that if hell is locked, it is locked from the inside. Anyone who is so alienated from God that they choose Hell has become so entrenched in their separation that they will never change their mind. Their separation from God is no longer a choice they make, it has become their very nature. Greg Boyd elaborates,
"We tend to become the decisions we make. The more we choose something, the more we become that something. We are all in the process of solidifying our identities with the decisions we make. With each decision we make, we pick up momentum in the direction of that decision."
If we reach for God and seek to live for Him with every choice we make, we will develop a holy nature and it will become easier to live for Him. If we push Him away and turn our back on him time and time again, we will wander so far from Him that we can never find our way back. In time, the sum of our decisions will result in a godly nature or an evil nature. We will have gone so far in one direction or another that choice becomes irrelevant. We are "locked" in our nature, and we will find our permanent home either in heaven or in hell.
I Don't Want To Go To Hell!
We need not fear. Heaven can be obtained by all who truly and deeply desire to be there. God will not turn away anyone who loves Him and earnestly seeks to be with Him. If we reach out to God from a place of real love and desire, he will respond with mercy. Those who seek God will learn and accept the truth about Jesus Christ and His message of salvation, and they will be saved. Please read this article to learn how you can be saved.
However, for those who want nothing to do with God, He grants them their wish, now and for eternity.
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Comments
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What happens to people who never had a chance to get to know Jesus, for example, young children, people with a mental handicap, people whose parents taught them another religion, etc...?
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4/3/2007 12:46:25 PM
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marklang, Member of Delve into Jesus since 4/3/2007
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Mark - I've just completed an article on this very topic. The title of the article is "Do People Who Don't Believe in Jesus Go To Hell?" and you can find it under "Related Articles" above.
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4/4/2007 10:47:08 AM
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Michael Lane
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I like this article much better since you revised it last week. Thanks!
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8/18/2007 6:59:47 PM
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anonymous
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Great article helps to understand truth of God's word.
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12/10/2007 2:39:16 PM
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anonymous
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Mark..........
I believe that mentally handicaped people are blessed in the sense that they wont/dont have the capibilties to understand much of anything, and wont be able to understand the sin in this world. If they can barely feed themselves, are they really in a mind frame where they understand they are a sinner and need to repent, and give there life to God? It makes me sad that while they are on earth they don't get to experience God's love, but I like to think that God wont hold them accountable for what they don't know and can't understand, and that one day forever they will be comforted with God's love in heaven.
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1/11/2008 9:09:55 PM
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anonymous
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I have a cousin who is mentally handicapped and autistic. His mother was told to institutionalize him at the age of three. She refused. she and her mother( his grandmother) continued to work with him and pray over him. He has one older brother and sister. By the time he was 6 she put him in school, and again they demanded that she put him away, that he would die soon from the seizures. By this time, he had learned to pray.Long story short, he just turned 26 years old and is one of the most spiritual people I have ever known. And sometimes we call him our Rainman, because he will "go away" from time to time, but recently he went on his Walk to Emmaus, and his testimony had grown men on their knees crying and praising Our Lord! I believe, because of God's word and Cory, that even if a person can't speak or hear, that God is living inside them, and when they get to heaven, they will be the perfection that only God can create.And I believe that Alzhiemers (sp) patients, or dementia, comas,anything of that nature are with God during this long term illness, even when they aren't with us, if they were believers before they became ill because He will never forsake us. I love Him so much. But that is just what I believe, that doesn't make it trueI don't suppose.
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1/25/2008 6:32:16 PM
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vet, Member of Delve into Jesus since 1/25/2008
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What happens to a persons spirit after they die? If they know God, do they immediately go to meet with God. Or, do they stay around the earth plane for a few days before leaving. What does the bible say?
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4/7/2008 11:22:34 PM
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anonymous
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