Amazing(ly unfair) Grace.
I've long been bothered by the version of Evangelical Christianity (which I understand is not the only one) that holds that if you accept Jesus it's all good and if you don't accept Jesus it's all bad. Heaven for believers, Hell for unbelievers, a born-again child molester gets a harp and Ghandi gets a pitchfork. Even when it's not just about belief, the idea of such extreme judgement bothers me; I'd rather see murderers in Heaven than petty thieves in Hell.
But I'm not God. Deciding the afterlife I'd "rather" have has about as much bearing on reality as how much traffic I'd "rather" have on my morning commute. The world's not fair, and good people certainly suffer in this one--who promised me the next world would be different?
Still, two issues keep me from just taking Pascal's Wager and falling to my knees right here. (Well, three, if you count "oy vey, you'd break your poor bubbe's heart with such a shandah.")
1) Maybe God is unfair, but I can't take a human's word for that. I'd need to reach some very personal understanding of God as valuing faith over works before I accepted it as truth.
2) If God is that way, I don't know if I can sincerely love God. Believe, maybe, but it's hard to give trust and praise to a force that condemns some souls to eternal suffering. A storm may bring needed water to some and floods to others, but neither worships the rain. Either way it's something to be dealt with, but not something to be loved.
The closest thing to the stereotypical evangelical viewpoint that I can understand right now is that Heaven is God, and Hell is nothing but the absence of God, so coming to God isn't some prerequisite--it is coming to Heaven. I'm still not totally sure that makes sense though.
But I'm not God. Deciding the afterlife I'd "rather" have has about as much bearing on reality as how much traffic I'd "rather" have on my morning commute. The world's not fair, and good people certainly suffer in this one--who promised me the next world would be different?
Still, two issues keep me from just taking Pascal's Wager and falling to my knees right here. (Well, three, if you count "oy vey, you'd break your poor bubbe's heart with such a shandah.")
1) Maybe God is unfair, but I can't take a human's word for that. I'd need to reach some very personal understanding of God as valuing faith over works before I accepted it as truth.
2) If God is that way, I don't know if I can sincerely love God. Believe, maybe, but it's hard to give trust and praise to a force that condemns some souls to eternal suffering. A storm may bring needed water to some and floods to others, but neither worships the rain. Either way it's something to be dealt with, but not something to be loved.
The closest thing to the stereotypical evangelical viewpoint that I can understand right now is that Heaven is God, and Hell is nothing but the absence of God, so coming to God isn't some prerequisite--it is coming to Heaven. I'm still not totally sure that makes sense though.