A Loving God Would Not Send Billions of People to Hell, Would He?
Atheists often claim that Christianity could not be true because a loving God would not send billions of people to hell. Although this seems logically valid at first glance, it makes some assumptions that are not true for the God of the Bible. Many atheists claim that those who have never heard of Jesus Christ should not be forced to go to hell. This issue is dealt with in depth on another page.
True love is not permissive
The first false assumption is that love allows the object of that love to do whatever he or she wants. However, this permissive kind of "love" isn't really love at all. Any of you who are parents will recognize that allowing your children to do whatever they want to do is not loving at all. If you were to do this, your children would grow up to be spoiled selfish brats, incapable of loving other people.Permissive gods, who are caught up in their own intrigues, and so allow humans to do whatever they want without repercussions, are found in the pagan religions. However, the God of the Bible wants us to love Him and other people above everything else we do.
God's moral laws have a purpose
The Creator God of the universe is obviously a God of order. The laws that govern the physical universe are so precise that we can calculate the positions of planets, stars, and galaxies thousands to millions of years into the future.Would a God of this kind of precision design moral laws that are random or changing? It doesn't seem likely or consistent with the character of the Creator that we know from the reality of the creation. Therefore, it seems likely that unchanging moral laws are consistent with the God of creation. The Bible says that the moral laws are consistent with the character of God.
Therefore, the main purpose of the moral laws are to teach us what God requires for us to enter into His kingdom. The moral laws also allow us to live with each other on earth without hurting each other. In fact, if we all perfectly fulfilled the moral laws of God, we would be in perfect harmony with each other. Our failure to fulfill God's moral laws leads us to seek Him as the source of our salvation.
God's creation of free will beings must allow for the possibility of rejecting God completely
Since God created spiritual beings for the purpose of expressing love, those beings must have complete free will in order to express that love. Of course, free will allows for the possibility of those beings rejecting God and His plans.Unfortunately, most people do not agree that God's rules are good and do not want to live by them. In fact, the vast majority of people want to run their own lives without submitting to God at all. Somehow, they feel that God will just let them into heaven because they have behaved about as good, and maybe even better, compared to the rest of the people on earth.
The problem with this idea is that God does not grade on the curve. All who enter God's kingdom must be absolutely holy, since no sin is allowed in God's presence. In addition, people must be willing to allow God to prevent them from sinning ever again, since there is no sin in heaven.
This means that people must be willing to submit fully to God's will in order to get into heaven. Of course, all humans fall short of God's moral requirements. Therefore, God has made a provision to erase all sins that we have committed in this life and to perfect us so that we cannot sin in the next life. That provision for sin is through the sacrifice of God's son, Jesus Christ. Jesus took the punishment that we deserve and gives us the reward that we do not deserve - eternal life. In accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, all our sins are erased, (Sacrament of penance for catholics), and Jesus works to change us into His image (if we allow Him to do so).
People prefer hell over complete submission to God
So why doesn't God make everyone into perfect beings and allow them all into heaven? It would actually be more cruel if God were to do this, since many people prefer hell to the alternative (complete submission to God). All the people who end up going to hell will have done so because they actually prefer hell to being forced into the presence of God for all eternity.People like to live in their favorite sins and answer to no one else. They know that if they accept Jesus as Lord and Savior that God will want them to change their lives and they might have to give up some of their autonomy.
