ANSWERS TO HARD QUESTIONS - HOW CAN GOD SEND GOOD PEOPLE TO HELL

You might know some of the same kind of people I do. Kind, caring, generous with their money, loving towards other people, their kids and their spouse but lacking a living, growing relationship with God. Christianity claims and the Bible says, that people like this, because they don't "know" God, will not go to heaven. How can this be?

Things get especially confusing when you throw into the mix people who claim to be know God but live like they don't. These people are selfish rather than caring, not generous with their things and lovers of themselves more than anything. Will they really go to heaven when they die?

To answer this we must start with a question that all people have in common - how did we get here? Some say by divine creation in seven days, others say by coincidence through evolution and some think it's a combination of the two. Whatever the case may be, and I certainly don't know the answer, there is a second question, deeper and more important than the first and that it who is behind the creation or evolution that brought you and I about? See it is impossible for something to come from nothing which means that even in the case of evolution there had to have been a something to bring about the original thing(s) from which everything else evolved.

So creation or evolution aside it seems that there had to have been an original creator being. That being, because of his actions in creating the world and doing something you and I are unable to do, must be greater than we are and deserving of thanks and recognition for bringing us about and making the lives we live possible.

Now to address the two groups of people we spoke of earlier. Let me first say before we start that I want to be very careful in assigning who will go to heaven and who won't because the reality is that I'm not the judge and I don't really know. What I do know though is that the Bible has a great deal to say about the "kingdom of heaven" and so I will just share that.

To address the second group (the Christians who don't act like it) - Jesus says the following in Matthew 7:21:

"Not everyone who calls me 'Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of the Father."

There are two other verses that I find helpful in making sense of the one I just gave you. They are John 6:29 which says "The will of the Father is to believe in the one God sent" and John 1:12 which says, "To all who received him, to those who believed in his(Jesus) name, he gave the right to be called children of God." These last two verses introduce the idea that God not only created the world but sent his son Jesus into it. But why did Jesus need to come?

The short of it is that when God made the world and put us in it, he gave us free will. Because of that free will, every human who has ever lived chooses to make decisions as though they are the center of the universe. In making decisions this way, based on the belief that we're the center and reason for things, when in reality God is since he created it all, all people have chosen to live a life that's a lie. We have stolen God's glory for what he has done by living the life he gave us however we want and it's just not right. It's comparable to using the desk space in a company's office when all the while you are working for yourself. In all this, since God is perfect and just, there had to be a penalty for hijacking God's world the way we have, and living self-centered like we do. But because God is also gracious and the epitome of truth, he wants the best for us and for us to not go on believing the false lie that we do. To maintain all these things, perfection, justice, truth and grace, God sent his son (who was also God) to live a perfect life and show us how far off base we really are. God's perfect son was the only one who was good and right enough to not only show us the right way to live, but also to pay for how wrong we have been. The amount that we have wronged God and the debt that we owe for the self centered way we have lived is so large that it took the perfect life of Jesus to make up the difference.

This is way it is important to not only believe in God as "Lord" but to "believe in the one he was sent." (John 6:29 from earlier) And this is why there is a difference between "receiving" the idea that there is a God and "believing" that Jesus is the only one and and only way to make things right. (John 1:12)

The second group of people who claim to be Christians but don't live like it are most times stuck in between being receptive to the idea that there's a God and believing that Jesus is the only way to be forgiven for how we have lived. Jesus said in Matthew 7:21 that people like this will not go to heaven. If a person truly understands and believes that what Jesus did for humankind in dying in our place is essential and real, it will be virtually impossible for them to not live a transformed and different life. However, transformation takes time. The process of becoming God-centered instead of self-centered involves the stripping away of sometimes years of bad junk and nasty habits that are often not easy to get rid of. That's why nobody, not even "true" Christians are perfect. The best way to tell a difference between a true Christian and an impostor is to look for evidence of growth in their lives.

In regards to the first group (those that are morally good but not interested in God), I hope you can see now that no number of good works or kind hearted actions can make up for the massive wrong of living like you are God and God doesn't exist. Even the most generous actions of "good" people are usually selfish. They have discovered and perhaps you have too that life is more enjoyable when you are kind and give stuff away to other people. This should come as no surprise because God made us this way, to get joy out of living for others, but when our sole motivation for living this way is because it makes us feel good, we are really just being selfish deep down and not selfless at all. Good people like this have chosen a morally better way to live for themselves that the pagan or hooker on the street, but they're still living for themselves. This is way a belief in God and the sacrifice of his son, and not just good actions are essential for a person to go to heaven.