Huck wrote:Gadianton, I cannot help but feel like you are applying theism to a narrow group of people. I have no doubt you describe some people but most believers expect God to be gracious far beyond what you describe. Well there are limits to their expectations.
I am a theist but expect heaven and Gods grace to extend to people of wide ranges of religious variations. I do not expect to meet Hitler at the door however.
Is that the question? If I am wrong about God does that mean the Nazis are the only God approved religion? It is only chaos to try to ask what if I am wrong about every everthing.
Huck, I think you are a great human being but you're also quite liberal, and I don't think that reflects most of Christianity.
I do think Christianity has "modernized" somewhat in terms of "hell fire" content, but I don't think in general Christians are quite as gracious in the way you may be putting it. Most Christian sects have a "salvation of the heathen" clause (let's call it SOH) for those who didn't have a proper chance to hear the good news, and there is plenty of uncertainty as to what constitutes a "chance". If I'm an Evangelical, I believe that Catholic doctrine is an abomination, and that Catholics are damned to the pit of hell, as everyone is damned to the pit of hell who does not have access to the legitimate good news. However, SOH might kick in and save them anyway. But if a Catholic has had a proper chance to hear the correct sectarian news, and they reject it, then the pit of hell legitimately awaits. Same for Catholic considering protestants. In other words, in general, there is no doctrinal tolerance whatsoever for any other worldview outside the sect's own worldview, but they have their cake and eat it too by playing the SOH clause. Let's be clear: if Baptists are right, and if I have been given the proper chance to hear the good news as presented by the Baptists, and if I say, "You know, that's great, but it's not for me" then I will go to hell to burn with Satan forever. Eternity. I get to experience the equivalent of every Holocaust victim sequentially times 27 million and the fires of hell are barely kindled at that point.
There's a Chick pamphlet called Holy Joe that I think spells out how it is for EVs nicely. Holy Joe is a self-righteous, heroic, heaven-bound Saint. He has a nasty Sargent and a nice non-Christian fellow soldier. All three are together on a helicopter ride to the battlefield. On the way, Joe witnesses to the others. Of course the Sargent laughs at him while his friend politely declines. Through either the Sargent's gross incompetency or diabolicalness, I can't remember, the copter falls into a trap. When joe exists the chopper he's surrounded and killed. The nice friend is also killed, and so is the Sargent. Joe meets God and goes to heaven, of course. But, the plot twist is right before the Sargent is riddled with bullets, he exclaims something like, "maybe I need that Jesus Holy Joe was talking about" and so of course, he's saved also. The nice friend just dies, though, and he's dropped into hell fire. This is essentially what every Evangelical believes, some with greater nuance than others, with most of the nuance coming from the SOH clause but also some uncertainty with regards to "eternal security", which I won't get into right now.
The bottom line is that there are two states, heaven and hell; eternal bliss, and TREE3 x TREE3 x the Holocaust. All you can do as a liberal Christian is invoke uncertainty on the state of the electron, making it sound more fair, but the bottom line is that every wave function will fall into one of two exact states. Somewhere there's a cutoff for those who don't fall under God's grace. Hell awaits with gaping jaws. And the criteria for EVs is NOT how good a person is, but either a) did the person accept Jesus as savior or b) did God elect the person (or both).
The doctrine, mind you, is that the fall of Adam and Eve leaves everyone damned to hell. Break one commandment, you've broke them all. So when you bring up Hitler, it's really a non-starter. Stealing a candy bar leaves you in the same hell earned by Hitler, and relief from that hell is only by the grace of Christ. Here is a typical random resource on Hitler and salvation:
https://forum.evangelicaluniversalist.c ... -saved/129
If Hitler accepted Jesus as his personal savior before he died, then he's saved. No different than if a person whose only sin was stealing a single gummy bear. If Hitler accepted Jesus, he's in heaven, and if the gummy thief didn't, he's in hell.
We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have. They get rid of some of the people who have been there for 25 years and they work great and then you throw them out and they're replaced by criminals.
