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We’re in the third week of a series I’m calling “Why Believe?”, and in this series we’re dealing with some of the biggest objections people have to faith in the God of the Bible.  This morning we’re up to the objection that was my biggest when I was in high school.  It goes like this:  how can a loving God send people to Hell?  When I was in high school, I could appreciate the fact that God was a God of love, who smiled down on people and wanted the best for them, but I could not understand how Hell fit into that definition of God, why any God would send someone to Hell just for believing the wrong thing.  As I’ve been reading books and listening to testimonies by people who do not believe in the God of the Bible, I’ve heard three main objections concerning Hell, and this morning I’d like to examine them so that we can understand how Hell fits with the concept of a loving God.  The first objection was the one I had in high school:

1) A loving God would not judge people and send them to Hell. 

Let me put it this way:  Maybe you’ve heard the line used in evangelism that goes like this:  “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”  Really positive, true, nice and happy line; but often the full truth of what evangelists really seem to mean is this:  “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you life, and if you don’t love God back and cooperate with God’s plans in exactly the prescribed way, God will torture you with unimaginable abuse, forever.”  Something just seems dysfunctional in that – after all, if any parent treated his child like that, they would be locked up for child abuse.  And there is the objection many people have – they like the idea of a God of love, who accepts people no matter what, who forgives, who extends grace and mercy to everyone.  But to judge people and consign some to eternal torment does not seem loving in the slightest way.  How can you justify a God who would cast people into eternal torment just because they didn’t believe the right thing?

So, the first objection is just that Hell and judgment seem incompatible with a God of love.  The second objections it this:

2) Someone who is a sincere believer and a good person should not end up in Hell just because they picked the wrong religion or were born in a place where they never heard of Jesus

The second objection goes like this:  Okay, fine, I’ll grant you that if there is a Hell, that some deserve it – child molesters, murderers, rapists.  But what about Gandhi?  The Dalai Lama?  What about someone who does not believe in Jesus but is still a good person?  What about a sincere believer who practices a different religion?  Would God punish someone for a sincerely held belief just because they picked the wrong religion?  What about someone born in the jungles of Africa who has never heard of Jesus?  What about people who lived thousands of years before Jesus?  Are you telling me that they are all in Hell forever, while someone in America, who has had every opportunity to hear the gospel, is headed to heaven?  I’m sorry, I can’t worship that kind of God.  

The third objection is this:

3) Believing in Hell and a God of judgment leads Christians to feel superior and treat others with contempt, or worse, become violent themselves
 
The third objection is that believing in Hell and a God of judgment, specifically that you are going to heaven and that others are going to Hell, leads to feelings of superiority and leads Christians to treat others with contempt, or worse, become violent themselves.  Now, I know this picture of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church is the exception and not the rule, but this is the objection many people have:  Hell is used as a weapon against those who do not believe, who do not agree with Christian standards of morality, etc.  People are threatened with Hell by Christians, told that they will be judged for their sins and sent to Hell, but it is not done with any compassion or love but with a smug superiority and disdain, like “go ahead and live it up, but you’ll pay one day for all your immorality – you’ll burn in Hell forever, hahaha!”  There are few things uglier than a Christian threatening someone with Hell; for that reason, many people believe that the doctrine of Hell is a horrible one that should be done away with.