Exclusive Salvation -- An EVIL Belief

For God so hated the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever disbelieveth in him shall burn in hell in everlasting torment.

John 3:16

That's not quite what the Bible says (here's the real verse) but it's how a lot of Christians interpret it.

The concept of salvation and damnation is not exclusive to Christianity. Most religions believe in some form of "salvation," which is to say, some means by which your state of existence after death will be improved by the manner in which you live your life. Buddhists believe in nirvana, Hindus believe in reincarnating as a higher life form, and Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe in Heaven.

Damnation is also a fairly common belief -- Christians didn't invent hell, though they certainly made it more colorful and added a lot of geography to the place. Humans hate suffering injustice, especially when (as is often the case) we witness people who behave despicably and yet never suffer for their crimes. So it makes people feel better to think that cosmic justice will be delivered in the end: "Even if my life now is miserable, and some lousy spammer is making millions off of Internet pyramid schemes, at least I know I'll go to heaven and that spammer will burn in hell."

By themselves, these concepts of salvation and damnation aren't inherently evil -- although I question whether any human being could possibly deserve eternal torment for anything he did in life.*

But some Christians believe in exclusive salvation. This is the belief that only those who accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior will go to heaven, and everyone else will go to hell. And hell is a place of eternal, unending suffering.

(It used to be that almost all Christians believed this. However, the Catholic Church and many mainstream protestant denominations have abandoned the doctrine of exclusive salvation. Evangelicals and fundamentalists still preach it vigorously. And it should be noted that some Muslims believe similarly, that only Muslims will go to heaven and everyone else will fry. But this is not a universal Muslim belief.)

Exclusive salvation is an evil belief, and those who believe in it worship a cruel and malicious deity.

The doctrine of exclusive salvation explicitly says that man is admitted into heaven by grace, not by works. What you do in life has no affect on your afterlife; the only factor is whether or not you accepted Jesus. If you accepted him, you are permitted into heaven, no matter what you did before and after being "born again." A serial rapist-murderer who accepts Jesus will go to heaven, but Ghandi is now in hell because he wasn't a Christian.

Christians will argue, of course, that someone who has truly accepted Jesus into his heart will thereafter behave morally. But the real crux of their argument is that everyone is a sinner, and is therefore equally flawed before God. God cannot accept imperfection into His presence, and therefore cannot allow sinners into heaven. The blood of Jesus Christ washes away sin and permits a Christian to enter heaven through his grace.

Fine and dandy. Everyone is a sinner, true enough. Human beings are imperfect, and no one has led a blameless life. But God really doesn't distinguish between someone who tortures children to death and someone whose most heinous act was to spit on the sidewalk?

The argument that God cannot allow imperfection in his presence is particularly specious. First of all, isn't God omnipotent? If so, how can you say he "cannot" do anything? By definition, he can do anything. What the exclusive salvationist is really saying is that God will not allow imperfection in his presence. Which seems reasonable; if you're the almighty creator of the universe, you should get to choose your own company.

But let's say all of the above is true. So God sent Jesus to be sacrificed so that he could take the sins of mankind upon himself and thus cleanse us all.

But not everyone. Only those who believe in him. Only Christians.

Exclusive salvationists base their doctrine primarily on the above-mentioned verse, and on John 14:6:

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.

Based on a couple of snatches of Bible verse, they maintain that Christians will go to heaven, and everyone else will burn in hell.

So by sending Jesus, God has condemned the vast majority of the human race to eternal damnation. (Presumably, before Jesus, everyone went to hell. I've heard various waffling answers on this from Christians. Some say that the Old Covenant between the Hebrews and God was what admitted people into heaven previously, whereas Jesus' martyrdom established a New Covenant. This, of course, both betrays a gross misunderstanding of the meaning of the original Mosaic laws, and is morally no better, since it's still saying that only a small group of followers of one particular religion escaped hell, even before Christ.)

Now, think about this for a moment. If you're not a Christian, you're going to burn in hell. Forever. No respite, no appeal, no mitigating circumstances, and it doesn't matter what kind of a life you lived.

If you were a kind and decent person who did your best to live a virtuous life and help other people and be a good and loving mother/father/whatever, it doesn't matter. If you were a saint, it doesn't matter. Think of all the people in your life, or in history, whom you respect and admire. Whom you consider good people. Are any of them non-Christians? Then they're burning in hell (or will).

And if you know any Christians who are real jerks, or worse, truly malicious people, that doesn't matter either. As long as they sincerely accepted Jesus, they'll be forgiven for their sins and admitted into heaven.

Eternal damnation. What a concept.

It means burning forever and ever and ever and ever. It means an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering. It means inflicting upon every single non-Christian person a level of suffering that no human being can inflict or experience in life. Imagine someone strapping you into a medieval torture device and torturing you for days. Weeks. Months. Imagine the worst atrocities committed by the Nazis in the concentration camps. Imagine being chained in a dungeon and being repeatedly beaten and raped and starved, but being just barely kept alive, for your entire life.

That's nothing compared to the eternal damnation some Christians believe is in store for non-believers. Do they really think about the ramifications of their doctrine? Do they actually consider what it means, for God to declare that most of the world will burn in hell forever?

First of all, he has condemned everyone who's not a Christian. Even if Christianity is the "true" religion, people have lots of reasons not to become Christian. People who grew up in another religion will believe as strongly as Christians do in the rightness of their religion. People who (like me) adopt a rationalist worldview find themselves unable to accept Christianity because it simply doesn't make sense to them. The exclusive salvationist says that for failing to be persuaded of the superiority of Christianity, for making a very human "error in judgment," we all deserve to be tortured for eternity. Even if Christianity is correct, do you really believe it's evil to choose something other than Christianity? So evil that you deserve to be punished with eternal torment?

For eternity. God doesn't just condemn the unsaved to some limited period of punishment. He sends them to hell (the Christian would say "Allows them to send themselves to hell," but it amounts to the same thing -- God is all-powerful, remember?) and then leaves them there, forever. Supposing that Christianity is true and Jesus really did die for our sins, does that mean that those who failed to accept him deserve no mercy, no compassion, once they die? If God is omnipotent, he could at least end the suffering of the poor damned souls, even if he doesn't ever admit them to heaven. But no, he won't even grant them the mercy of ending their existence. He will sit on his heavenly throne and allow everyone who didn't subscribe to one particular belief system to burn forever.

On Earth, even the most heinous, despicable criminals don't get sentenced to be kept alive but continuously tortured for the rest of their lives. And no one but a few whacked-out extremists could fail to be repulsed by any justice system that advocated doing such a thing. Life imprisonment, sure. Execution, maybe. And we might not mind seeing some of the worst child-rapists and serial killers and the like suffer a little. But what sane society could stomach instituting lifelong torture as a punishment?

And that's only lifelong. The worst anyone on Earth can do can only last for a human lifetime. God's punishment, which is more terrible and cruel than anything humans could do even if they wanted to, will last for eternity. There will be no death to finally put the guilty out of their misery. There will be no mercy for making a mistake, however well-intentioned they may have been. They will suffer many times longer in hell than they lived on Earth, and God won't do a thing to relieve their pain, to grant them respite, to show them compassion. Because they are "not clean," he not only won't allow them into his presence, he won't even look at them or grant them the smallest mercy.

It boggles my mind that some Christians actually believe this, and then believe that their God is a merciful, loving god.

How can someone who believes this be happy if they believe that all their non-Christian friends and family members are going to burn in hell? What kind of heaven would it be if you know that even while you are enjoying the Hereafter, everyone you knew who didn't accept Jesus is even now (and for the rest of eternity) being tortured? Does God erase your memories of all your non-Christian associates when you get to heaven?

The fact is, the concept of hell as a place of eternal suffering and damnation for non-believers is something Christians contrived in later centuries. There's no clear authority for such a belief in the Bible, and Christ certainly never said it. Yes, there is that "no one comes to the Father, but by me" verse. Even if we accept the Bible as literally true -- which of course, only Christians do (and not all Christians) -- it's a lot of interpolation on the part of exclusive salvationists to conclude that what Christ meant was "Unless you accept me as your lord and savior and become a Christian, you will burn in hell for all eternity." Most Christians, for example, believe that Christ's intercession can admit anyone into heaven, even non-believers, and that verse certainly isn't incompatible with such an interpretation. Exclusive salvationists rely on the fear of hellfire to coerce people into becoming "saved." It's an evil belief predicated upon ignorance at best, and a spiteful, inhumanly cruel deity at worst. And I cannot regard an exclusive salvationist as my friend.

If you're an exclusive salvationist, please think about what it is you believe in. And if you feel like trying to explain to me how it is that you adhere to this belief even while claiming that your god is just and merciful and loving and omnipotent, go ahead and send me e-mail. (But I warn you: there is exactly zero chance of your "saving" me, and if you send me exceptionally silly/stupid e-mail, I may post it on my site and make fun of you.)

* Except spammers.