JAN. 24 - Would a loving God really send people to hell?

Our United Methodist doctrine on eternal judgment is "short, sweet and to the point," but it does not address the many various viewpoints on the exact nature of heaven and hell. Our doctrine says:

We believe all men stand under the righteous judgment of Jesus Christ, both now and in the last day. We believe in the resurrection of the dead; the righteous to life eternal and the wicked to endless condemnation.


Many thinkers have weighed in on this big question. Here are some interesting thoughts worth pondering from several points of view:

LEE STROBEL. The fairness of hell was a major stumbling block for me when I was a spiritual seeker. Ultimately, though, I saw enough of the justice behind "eternal punishment" that I didn't let the doctrine derail my spiritual journey. Especially helpful to me were the comments D. A. Carson made during a talk I had with him. He said "Hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes but they just didn't believe the right stuff. They're consigned there first and foremost because they defied their Maker, and want to be at the center of the universe. Hell is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn't gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It's filled w people who for all eternity still want to be at the center of the universe, and persist in their God-defying rebellion. What is God to do? If he says it doesn't matter to him, then God is no longer a God to be admired. He's either amoral or positively creepy. For him to act in any other way in face of such blatant defiance would be to reduce God himself."
Well to me that made a lot of sense. What about to you?

BRUCE W. DUNN. You jump off a high building, the law of gravity will take care of you. You might say, “God is love,” all the way down, but you're still going to get splattered when you hit the bottom! You break the law of gravity, and it breaks you! You may love your little child, but if he puts his finger up on that hot burner on the gas stove or the electric stove, he's going to get burned! Fire burns. Gravity kills. Water drowns. And you can say, "God is love, God is love, God is love," until you're blue in the face. But water will still drown you, fire will burn you, and gravity will kill you, and sin will damn you no matter how much you say about a loving God. God just set up life that way. He set up the rules. He set up the laws by which we are to live. And if we break those laws, they break us, and we pay the consequences.

C. S. LEWIS. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

CHUCK COLSON. In a sense, the concept of hell gives meaning to our lives. It tells us that the moral choices we make day by day have eternal significance, that our behavior has consequences lasting to eternity, that God Himself takes our choices seriously. The doctrine of hell is not just some dusty theological holdover from the Middle Ages. It has significant social consequences. Without a conviction of ultimate justice, people's sense of moral obligation dissolves, and social bonds are broke.
Of course, these considerations are not the most important reason to believe in hell. Jesus repeatedly issued warnings that if we turn away from God in this life, we will be alienated from God eternally. And yet, although "the wages of sin is death," Paul also says that "the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). While breath remains, it is never too late to turn to God in repentance, and when we ask for forgiveness, God eagerly grants it.

DARYL E. WITMER. The Bible says that God prepared hell for the devil and his demonic cohorts (Matthew 25:41), that he is "...not wishing for any [person] to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9)," and that he has done everything possible to save us from that terrible, terrible place. Yet in the end God will not violate or overrule the deliberate choice of those who consciously and willfully turn away from him.