I remember a
time in college when my roommate was handing out copies of C.S. Lewis’ Mere
Christianity. Another student approached her and said, “I’m Jewish. I don’t
believe in Jesus. I don’t even believe in God. Am I going to hell?

 

My roommate
stammered something, but she didn’t really know what to say. She knew the
typical evangelical reply: “Unless you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and
Savior, you are going to hell,” and yet, face-to-face with a peer, she didn’t
feel so definitive. She knew that Jesus talked a lot about hell (more than
anyone else in the Bible, and more on that in a later post). She also knew that
other Biblical writers made claims that implied all people will be saved.

 

We talked
about it that night, and we decided that she should have said, “Thankfully, I’m
not the judge of anyone’s eternal destiny. That’s God’s job.”

 

Yesterday, I
wrote about the recent controversy
over Rob Bell’s new book, which centers upon concern that Rob Bell is
advocating universal salvation. 

 

As a few of
you pointed out, the book isn’t even out yet, so the controversy is somewhat
contrived, presumably both by Bell’s publisher–he’s generated a lot of
interest–but also by the Christians who are responding to it without reading
its contents. I don’t want to weigh in on Rob Bell’s views, but I would like to
address some of the questions this debate has raised.

 

As I wrote
above, God is the ultimate judge, and as Ellen Painter Dollar commented
yesterday, “What happens after we die isn’t up to us. It’s up
to God. There is no possible way for us to know what will happen, and
speculating on it, trying to figure it out, just tempts us to believe we have
some control over something that we don’t.”

And yet it seems to me that these questions matter. For one, if God, through Jesus, is inviting all human beings to live a full and eternal life with Him, then I not only want to be a part of it, but I also want everyone I know and love to be a part of it with me. Christians have often differentiated between life on earth and life after death, but Jesus talked about the kingdom of heaven “among us,” as if heaven was available today, here, now. He also said that he had come that his followers might have “life, and life to the full.”

 

One reader asked yesterday, “what if people who never got preached at get a free ride? That would only seem fair. But that would mean you were doing a disservice to anyone you preached at.”

 

If following Jesus is the beginning of life with God, then it is also the beginning of life in heaven forevermore. Just as I will tell my friends and family about a book I’ve loved, so too I want to tell them about this God I love. “Getting preached at” should be a positive thing, not a punitive one. The idea that Jesus opens the door to heaven through his grace should also be an assurance, a reason for hope, for faith that what is good in this world remains, even after death.

 

Christianity centers around the person of Jesus, and Christians believe that Jesus has “saved” us from sin. In other words, whether or not we go to heaven has nothing to do with our moral uprightness or moral failings. It depends entirely upon Jesus.

 

Of course, any question of eternal life and salvation brings up the question of free will. If human beings have the option of rejecting God, then hell (or annihilation of the body and soul) is a possibility. If God’s love overwhelms human decision making, then there is good reason to suspect that everyone goes to heaven. And there are Biblical texts to support both views.

 

There is much more that I could say, but I’ll leave it here for now: God is the judge, and it is up to God to determine what happens after we die. I believe that Jesus offers eternal life, starting here and now, to all of us. Heaven is an invitation, and an affirmation of all that is good and true and beautiful in this world, and it is offered to us not on the basis of the good things we’ve done or the background we come from. It is offered to us by God’s grace.