I had an interesting conversation Wednesday with a kind and gentle man who happened to be a part time Christian minister. His full time job was as a health insurance salesman, and I had invited him over to the house to discuss Long Term Health Care.
In our courtesy exchange prior to getting down to business he asked me what I did for a living, and I told him that I did not have “a proper job”, but that I was “an author instead.”
We chuckled and he asked me if I’d been published, and I chucked again. “Yes,” I said, “here and there.”
Finally it came out that I had written Conversations with God and What God Wants and Happier Than God and a few other books, and then the conversation got started in earnest…
We noticed immediately, of course, that we had a gentleman’s disagreement about what God wants. (To put it mildly.) And here is what I found to be interesting. My new friend genuinely cared for me as a person — I could feel that — and, from that place of real concern, he asked me, “But what if you are wrong?”
You see, I had said, “I don’t embrace a God who says that there is only one path to Heaven, only one road back to God, and that everyone who takes a different road is going straight to hell.”
And he replied, “But what if you are wrong?” He was very compassionate in asking me. Yet the approach was the same as that which I have experienced with some other born-again or fundamentalist Christians:
F-E-A-R.
We should love God and love Jesus, and come to God through Jesus, and only through Jesus, out of love and devotion and deep belief…but if we can’t do it that way, at the very least we should do it out of fear. Our eternal life is at stake. We are bringing on eternal damnation if we don’t.
Accept Jesus or accept everlasting damnation and torture in the fires of hell. That’s the choice. That’s What God Wants.
It does not matter how good a person you have been, it does not matter how earnestly or purely you have yearned for God, it does not matter how deeply connected to God and devoted to Godf you feel (and are)…if you do not come to God through Jesus, you will be rejected.
More than rejected. You will be judged, condemned, and punished.
My few friend urgently pressed on me what he said were the words of Christ himself: “No one cometh to the Father except through me.” (I don’t know if I have that quote exactly correct, but that is the essence of it.)
“What about that?” my friend asked.
“I don’t believe it as literally true,” I replied.
“But what if it is?” my friend asked. “What if you are wrong about that?”
The implication was clear. I would then be going to hell.
So now, let me ask you…do you believe all human beings who do not accept Christ as their personal savior — that means all Jews, all Muslims, all Buddhists, all members of any faith tradition other than Christianity — are going to hell and damnation? Let’s take a survey. Let’s discuss this. I need to look at this again. Do I need to be saved?
(I’m going to leave this entry up here for the long Holiday Weekend because I want to get plenty of answers here. Even if you’ve never posted in the Comment Section before, I’d love to hear from you on this. Thanks.)