Imagine, no hell below us....

In the Narnia series of books by Christian writer C. S. Lewis, the final gathering at the end of time makes some generous allowances for those who haven't embraced the Christian creed, and allows them into heaven based on their honest search for God, the infinite, the Source, the ground of all being, call it what you will.  There are many difficulties in representing theology in fictional formats, but here it seems that Lewis gets things tolerably right.

Of course, he'd rather we all believed the same as he did, but he isn't unusual in this; we all believe that the world would be a better place if more people agreed with us. His idea is that whoever is making an honest, heartfelt search for the divine will very likely make the cut.  And this has the ring of common sense and truth about it, in my view.

The problem of the cut itself is more problematic. Can God really punish people infinitely for a finite crime? This seems immoral. To set aside good character, honesty, faithfulness, kindness, mercy and justice, love, sacrifice, all the human virtues, in favour of an obscure and debatable theological argument about the divinity of Christ and one's response to it seems to be whimsical in the extreme. In fact it's guaranteed to fail most people's test of reasonableness, people who are also made in the image of God.

And if we become able to free ourselves from the fear of an eternally angry sadist, then much of what seems most objectionable in fundamentalist Christianity falls by the wayside too. No need to exclude anyone, no need to go door-knocking to drum everyone into the fold, no need to threaten or cajole, no need to defend questionable stories against the light of intelligence, reasonableness and scholarship, no need to foster an us-and-them mentality.

We can go about our lives both teaching and learning from others, as the moment delivers opportunity, "doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God."

Comments

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thanks a lot dear, im very interesting for your article. im very impresing for this :)

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