Atheist Question #2: Why would a loving God send people to hell forever?

Another common objection to Christianity.

This is Part 2 of our series on common objections to Christianity. You can find Part 1, here.

Months ago, I wrote about a college friend who once told me, “My god loves people and wouldn’t send them to hell. I couldn’t believe in a god that would do that.”

It turns out that this is a common issue with Christianity for atheists. “If your god is so loving,” an atheist might say, “why does he punish people by sending them to hell for eternity? That doesn’t sound very loving.”

That’s a reasonable question for an atheist to ask. Ironically, my friend had been raised as a Methodist and was still struggling with this issue (possibly as a result of the Methodists going off the rails in the last half of the 20th century).

Photo by Jack B on Unsplash

Let’s unpack that question today.

Understanding God

Let’s start by getting a proper understanding of God, who he is and the important aspects of his character. This is key to understanding why hell exists and why God sends people to it. Most non-Christians and even many Cultural Christians have a flawed view of God. To them it seems like God is arbitrary and mean, cracking down on every violation of the rules and sending well-meaning people to hell.

First, we need to understand that God is infinitely holy. You must, must, must understand this point. Many Christians use the word all the time, but they don’t understand it. When used to describe objects here on earth, holy means consecrated or set apart for a religious purpose. When using the word to describe God, a better synonym might be “pure.” So, when we say that God is holy, we mean that he and his character are infinitely pure, with no flaws.

One consequence of his holiness is that God cannot “mix” with impurity. Specifically, he cannot exist in proximity to sin. He must ultimately separate sin from himself. One consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden was that they, and humanity, were tainted with sin and so God had to separate himself from them. Consequently, we lost the special, tremendously intimate relationship that we shared with God in the Garden. In heaven, we will have that relationship restored.

Secondly, God is infinitely loving. He created us in his image, with the free will to make our own choices, so that we could be in a loving relationship with him for eternity. One consequence of freewill is the opportunity to make bad choices, which humanity did. Given the choice to obey God or sin, we chose sin.

Thirdly, God is infinitely just. All actions and decisions have consequences, whether merely physical or deeply spiritual. God is not capricious. He doesn’t randomly punish someone for fun. Similarly, he doesn’t let the guilty go free. Rather, he must judge us according to our thoughts and actions. Think about people like Hitler or Stalin. After killing millions and millions of people, how would you feel if God let an unrepentant Hitler or Stalin into heaven? That would not be just. But similarly, God must judge every action, whether big or small. Sure, you didn’t kill millions of people, but you stole that candy bar from the store when you were a middle-schooler. You told a lie. You dishonored your parents. You had an affair. All of that must be judged.

But the good news is that God is also infinitely merciful. In giving us free will, God allowed everyone to choose sin or holiness. And so we all chose sin. Other than Jesus, there is not another sinless human. Because of God’s demand for justice, we would all perish if we were judged for our own sins. God doesn’t want that. He wants us to live with him in an infinite intimate relationship. And so he devised a plan to rescue us from our sin: Jesus. We’ll talk more about that later.

What is Hell?

Now, let’s talk about hell. In the same way that most non-Christians and Cultural Christians don’t really understand God or his character, most people don’t understand hell.

Billy Joel expressed the popular theology in 1977, with his song, Only the Good Die Young.

Only the Good Die Young
Billy Joel, 1977

Come out, Virginia, don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late
Aw, but sooner or later, it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one

Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray
They built you a temple and locked you away
Aw, but they never told you the price that you'd pay
For things that you might have done

Only the good die young
That's what I said
Only the good die young
Only the good die young

You might-a heard I run with a dangerous crowd
We ain't too pretty, we ain't too proud
We might be laughing a bit too loud
Aw, but that never hurt no one

So come on, Virginia, show me the sign
Send up a signal, I'll throw you the line
The stained-glass curtain you're hiding behind
Never lets in the sun

Darlin', only the good die young
Ooh-whoa, whoa, whoa-oh
I tell you only the good die young
Only the good die young

You've got a nice white dress and a party on your confirmation
You've got a brand-new soul, mm, and a cross of gold
But, Virginia, they didn't give you quite enough information
You didn't count on me
When you were countin' on your rosary, oh, whoa, whoa

And they say there's a heaven for those who will wait
Some say it's better, but I say it ain't
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
The sinners are much more fun

You know that only the good die young
Oh-oh, oh, baby
I tell ya, only the good die young
Only the good die young

You said your mother told you all that I could give you was a reputation
Aw, she never cared for me
But did she ever say a prayer for me?
Oh-whoa, whoa

Come out, come out, come out Virginia, don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late
But sooner or later, it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one

You know that only the good die young
Tell ya, baby
You know that only the good die young
Only the good die young

Only the good
Only the good die young
Ooh-hoo, hoo, ooh-hoo
Ooh-ooh, hoo, ooh
Ooh-hoo, hoo, ooh-hoo
Ooh-ooh, hoo, ooh

Ooh-hoo, hoo, ooh-hoo
Ooh-ooh, hoo, ooh
Only the good die young
Only the good die young
Ooh-ooh, hoo, ooh-hoo

Contrary to the image of hell propagated through popular culture, hell is not a party where you get to smoke, drink, and fulfill the desires of the flesh. It’s not a dive bar on the wrong side of tracks where you can “laugh with the sinners” rather than “cry with the saints,” the sinners being “much more fun.” You see, God is still with you in the earthly dive bar. In hell, God is nowhere to be found.

In part 1, we talked about the cost of removing evil and suffering from the world. God can and will do it, but it requires removing all the sin from the world, too. So, a logical question is, where do all the remaining sinful people go? They can’t stay in heaven. If they did, they would pollute heaven’s perfect holiness and goodness. Evil and sin would infect heaven just as they did the world we live in now. If you really want to solve the problem of evil and suffering, you must banish sin and sinful creatures, including people.

So, God sends evil and sinful people to hell. That’s where all the bad stuff goes. That’s how heaven is kept pure. If heaven is pure, concentrated goodness and light, hell is the opposite — pure, concentrated evil and darkness. Nothing bad gets into heaven. Nothing good gets into hell. Complete, utter, binary separation. If heaven is a close, intimate relationship with God, hell is as far away as you can be from God, with zero relationship with him. If you’re in hell and you cry out to God, he will not hear you.

In short, hell is like nothing anybody has ever experienced on earth. Here on earth, God is restraining evil and suffering in the world today. Yes, it exists, but it could be so much worse. The only reason it isn’t is because God actively limits what Satan can do. And here on earth, God is always close to all people, just waiting for them to recognize him, turn to him, and call on him to help them. He hasn’t completely left any of us, even the most sinful. In hell, none of this is true. God is nowhere to be found. He has turned his face entirely from the damned. Further, there is no more restraint. Satan and his demons will have a free hand. Evil and suffering will be ramped up to 11.

So, with all due respect to Billy Joel, whose many other songs I really like, the Piano Man doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to heaven and hell. Don’t be fooled by a catchy melody and a false image of partying with the sinners. Hell is real and it’s not at all fun.

The Free Gift

Okay, so where does that leave us? Maybe we should summarize all the key points:

1. God created us to live with him forever in a perfect, loving relationship. There would be no evil, no suffering, no disease.

2. But love requires freewill, and we used our freewill to sin.

3. God is holy and cannot exist with sin. Further, God’s character demands justice for sin.

4. In order to create a heaven that doesn’t contain evil or suffering, God must remove all sin from it.

5. All this evil, suffering, and sin goes to a place called hell.

If that was the end of the story, it would be pretty bleak: God is holy and can’t live with sin, everything sinful must be separated, humans are sinful, everybody goes to hell, the end.

Fortunately, being eternal and outside time, God had a full understanding of what would happen when humanity sinned. So, he devised a rescue plan that was both merciful and fully satisfies his need for justice.

The rescue plan was to have Jesus come to earth as a human, live a sinless life, and then sacrifice himself for humanity’s sins so that he could pay our debt for us. And God offers this rescue plan to everybody, free of charge. You don’t have to do anything to receive it other than claim it. You can’t get it by going to church. You can’t get it by suffering. You can’t get it by genuflecting, kneeling, or lighting candles. You can’t get it by being baptized or taking communion. The only way you can get it is by accepting it as a free gift and believing that Jesus died for your sins. That’s it. That’s the essence of Simple Christianity. Everybody can afford it. Nobody who wants it will be turned away.

Now, here’s the thing, when you have accepted the free gift of Jesus, whenever God looks at you, he doesn’t see sin. Rather, he sees Jesus’s righteousness that was given to you as part of the free gift. The cleansing has happened. You are holy and pure and fit for heaven. All your sins were placed on Jesus and he deposited them in hell where they belong.

The Answer

Now, knowing all that, let’s go back to the original question: Why would a loving God send people to hell forever?

Firstly, because in order to create an environment with no evil and suffering, a thing that atheists claim to want, God needs to separate the holy things from the sinful things. Any taint of sin would introduce evil and suffering back into heaven, so everything must be holy and pure. Unfortunately, that means that every sinful human would have to go to hell (“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…,” Romans 3:23, ESV).

But God in his mercy, made the free gift rescue plan available to all people. All you have to do is accept it.

In this sense, it really isn’t God “sending you to hell.” It’s really you choosing what you want. If you want to go to heaven, you can. It’s as easy as accepting the free gift. Everybody can afford it; nobody who earnestly wants it is turned away. But you are free to reject the gift as well. You have freewill; you get to choose. Once you’ve chosen, God will give you want you want. If, like Billy Joel, you’d rather “laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints,” he’ll give you what you want. But I’ll warn you, there won’t be any laughing in hell.

For Eternity?

At this point, facing the stark choice of accepting Jesus or going to hell, many people start looking for loopholes. “To hell for eternity?” they ask. “Once I’ve been punished enough, don’t I ‘get out of jail’ at some point? And what about purgatory?”

Sorry, none of those help. There is no parole in hell. And the penalty for sin is eternal in any case. No amount of suffering will make you pure. The free gift is a free gift and requires nothing from you other than your choosing to receive it. Purgatory doesn’t exist. Yes, I know it’s part of Catholic doctrine, but Catholic doctrine is wrong on this point. Other scripture is clear that we have been sanctified through Jesus’s sacrifice “once and for all” (Hebrews 10:8-10, for instance). There is no need of purgatory. Those who receive the free gift are fit for heaven. Those that do not are not.

(Catholic friends, know this: I love you. I’m not trying to pick on you with this issue, so don’t fill the comments with angry citations from 2 Maccabees or other apocrypha. And I know that many of you love Jesus deeply and you’ve accepted the free gift. Because of this, I’m quite sure that I will see you in heaven. But you will be there in spite of Catholic doctrine like purgatory, not because of it.)

In short, if you accept the free gift, you’re heaven bound. If you reject it, you’re doomed to an eternity of evil and suffering. It’s that simple.

So, I urge you, make the right choice.

If you don’t know what to do to receive it or want to talk to somebody about it, I’m always here. Feel free to send me a private message and I’ll walk you through it. It’s super simple.

Conclusion

Ultimately, hell is a choice. God must separate sin from holiness in order to create the pure heaven, free from sin, evil, and suffering. To do that he puts every sinful thing in hell, completely separated from him. All humans are born with sin and destined for hell. Except that God is also merciful and provided a free gift that allows us to have Jesus’s righteousness and holiness credited to our account. The gift is simple to receive, free, and available to everybody. Nobody who is sincerely interested in receiving it is turned down. Once you have made your choice to receive it or not, God will honor your wishes. If you’re pure and holy, you can go to heaven; if not, hell.

It’s that simple.

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