Why aren't more Christians universalists?

[monstro]

@Skammer

I don’t know what hell is like, but I have the faintest glimmer of what the Kingdom of God is like and I would say the choice is not between ice cream and turds, it is between ice cream and not ice cream. If you really like ice cream, and I offer you some that you are free to decline, do you consider that coercion?

Upthread, you posited that Hitler would eventually want the Kingdom of God because all that love and joy and happiness would be irresistible. That doesn’t sound like “ice cream and no ice cream”. That sounds like “let’s wave a trillion dollars in a poor man’s face and then feign surprise when he grabs the money”. So yes, it sounds coercive. If pretty much everyone will say “yes” once they open the magical door, then you gotta wonder what was the point of all the suffering we did here on this earthly plane.

Who said that was the purpose of life? Or, who said you can’t experience that love in this life? Most of us, believers and non-believers, have experience with love. There is a lot to love in this life and no rush to get through it.

Right! But what you’re saying is that we will all get a chance to experience this love eventually, correct? So if I’m a lonely person with no friends, why not kill myself right now so that I can go right into the Kingdom of God and feel all the love that has eluded me? What do you think the purpose of this life is?

That’s absolutely fair – this is of course speculation and I’m not claiming to know for a fact what the afterlife is like. I think universalism is the most scripturally supportable theory of the afterlife and solves the problem of a monster-god who sends billions of people to hell, but I’m not saying it’s exactly like I imagine by any stretch of the imagination.

I suppose that last part is my big beef with universalism. Let’s put aside the fact that God is still a monster-god even if we all get to go to heaven, since he has spinning our wheels in this cruel simulation for no discernible reason. “Everyone is going to heaven!” sounds exactly like something someone would say if they wanted their religion to be popular and well-respected. It sounds like an obvious marketing slogan. So I don’t blame Evangelicals for being suspicious, cuz it actually does sounds like a gimmick Satan would cook up to lull people into a false sense of security. As I said, I’d have a lot more respect for it if the universalist message was just “We don’t preach that hell stuff 'cuz we don’t pretend we know what’s going to happen in the afterlife.” Seems to me if you trust that God is in control and loves you, you’d be fine with whatever the afterlife has in store for you. Including some punishment.

[begbert2]

@Skammer

Help me understand what you are saying, because I am honestly not understanding this reaction at all. In what way does this “wipe out your identity”? How does it make you a “reprogrammed corpse”? You are fully yourself. God’s not forcing you to do anything, just like he’s not forcing you now. I was making a “love is a drug” pop analogy but maybe you are taking me literally, is all I can think of. Can you be more specific about what you think you would be losing? Why wouldn’t you be able to care for other people? Even in this life I assume you are capable of loving and being loved by more than one person at a time. I’m not trying to argue with you on this, I’m trying to understand your objection.

My identity includes critical thinking and decision making. If something is so appealing that I would literally discard everything for it, then I’m not really thinking anymore - I’m just dazedly following the carrot.

I’m a person with a lot of hobbies - I read, write, watch TV and movies, play video games, collect and play with toys. I have so many hobbies that I don’t have time to do them all - and when I favor one, others don’t happen. For me this works in cycles - I’ll focus on watching TV for a while and pretty much stop writing and playing video games, and then I’ll start playing games and stop watching TV, and then I’ll focus on the toys for a while instead, and then I’ll drop everything and write for a while. I’m accustomed to the idea that one pasttime shuts out another - even if you like them both, you can’t do them all, and the ones you like best wins.

Now let’s talk about this “God’s love” thing. It’s posited as being irresistible. It’s enough to cause the worst racists we can think of to toss aside their prejudices and link arms with their enemies just to have the chance to bask in it. No principle, no moral, no belief, no argument can stand before it. It’s just that appealing.

You shine that spotlight of Godly love on me, and I’ll drop everything. I won’t bother to talk to other people - why waste the time? I won’t watch TV or movies or play games or make friends or do anything at all that could distract me from this amazing light. I’ll just stand in it and drool, my mind completely enveloped in the ecstasy it imparts.

And so will everyone else. If there’s something so appealing that it overrides all, then all else will be overridden. Differences between people will disappear, because they won’t matter. Differences in mind and thought and opinion will disappear - they must, in order for us to all agree and make the exact same choice and join God.

(On the upside, this means I won’t get bored with the TV and movies and games and friends, in the endless tedium of eternity. There’s real merit to the idea that everyone becomes drooling lumps forever.)

If this happens to me, everything that makes me “me” will be destroyed, because my entire “me” will be devoted to basking, and currently none of me is devoted to basking. That’s a huge difference, a complete difference. And, again, it’s part of the model - because you want to destroy all the Hitleryness that makes Hitler Hitler, and replace him with somebody you could stand to stand next to. That’s the goal here, to get everyone on the same page, and have everyone happy about it - even if that means the resulting “everyone” bears no resemblance whatsoever to the current “everyone”.

[begbert2]

Heh, I might as well confess, I find this ‘god’s love as the ultimate attractor’ discussion kind of ironic, because I actually wrote a short story about this very subject several years ago!

The story was about a young woman who died and found her self in an afterlife antechamber of sorts - only to be confronted by the devil, Lucifer, and Satan - who were different people. (The idea of the story was to riff on the widely divergent forms the devil/Lucifer/Satan character has taken throughout history.)

The devil was the standard horrific horned goat-legged demon.
Lucifer was the handsome fallen angel.
Satan was a non-fallen angel, whose job is to debate and ferret out flaws and errors. (Like in the story of Job.)

The devil turned out to be largely inconsequential - he only got to carry off people who believed they deserved hell, which didn’t include the young woman. Lucifer and Satan, on the other hand, each got to try and persuade the girl about what path to take.

Lucifer’s position was that the judgement was unfair - in the story god wasn’t a universalist, and sorted people into different “levels” of heaven based on how good they are by nature. None of the levels are particularly hellish, but they are functionally prisons, since there’s no advancing to a different one after death. Or before death, really - in the story earth isn’t actually a test, but rather a chance to let people act on and see their own natures, so they won’t whine as much when God chucks them eternally in among the other scumbags. Lucifer, on the other hand, was a universalist, and due to this conflict over the system refused to condone it and withdrew himself from it. He sought to persuade our heroine that the system was indeed unfair and she shouldn’t participate in it, and should join his group instead where people weren’t stratified by their nature forever.

Satan, who was rather scornful and dismissive of Lucifer and his concerns, made his argument by briefly exposing the girl to God’s Love. Aside from making her hate herself due to absolute disgust and shame about her sinful nature, it was the best thing she could ever imagine experiencing.

Guess which one she chose.

[Skammer]

@you_with_the_face

Skammer, I am curious how universalists square their belief about universal salvation with humanity’s continued “exile” from God resulting from The Fall of Man.

In traditional Christianity, mankind became separated from God after falling to temptation in the Garden of Eden; it was at that point our existence as free-willed mortals began and we became subject to pain and suffering. When Jesus died, he made a way for people to be saved from original sin and returned to God’s kingdom. However, because this salvation needed to be earned in some way (either through belief in Jesus the savior and/or repentance for one’s sins), it kind of makes sense that this reunification would not occur until a person died. As long as backsliding is possible, the test is not over until it’s over.

But if universal salvation means we no longer need a lifetime to prove we’re worthy of entering the Kingdom, why is humanity still “exiled” from God? Once Jesus died, shouldn’t we have instantly returned to an Eden-like existence? As monstro pointed out, universalism solves one problem (how could a loving God send people to Hell where they will suffer?) but replaces it with another (how could a loving God send people to Earth where they will suffer?) I can’t come up with any satisfactory answer to this based on the Bible.

My answer would be that we’re not any longer exiled. In fact we’ve been adopted as children of God. However, earth is not Eden because there is still sin in the world and as I said above, sin results in all sorts of suffering.

So why does God have us continue to live on earth, instead of taking us immediately into heaven? I could speculate but I’m not sure I have a great answer for that right now. My guess is that there is some value for us living here despite the suffering that exists. That’s a question worth thinking about.

@Czarcasm

Maybe you’ve said it before, but I can’t seem to find it-From what Christian sect do you derive this particular interpretation?

Well, I don’t know if everything I’ve said here represents any particular sect. I myself am and Episcopalian but there is a broad spectrum of theologies in the Episcopal church. I’ve been influenced by writers like NT Wright and various other articles and ideas. I guess what I’m saying is that there are plenty of universalists in TEC but I don’t claim to represent them all.

@monstro

Upthread, you posited that Hitler would eventually want the Kingdom of God because all that love and joy and happiness would be irresistible. That doesn’t sound like “ice cream and no ice cream”. That sounds like “let’s wave a trillion dollars in a poor man’s face and then feign surprise when he grabs the money”. So yes, it sounds coercive. If pretty much everyone will say “yes” once they open the magical door, then you gotta wonder what was the point of all the suffering we did here on this earthly plane.

Explain this further. Note that I did not say that Hitler was being tortured or burned alive - he is standing outside the kingdom and is invited in. No matter how wonderful it is inside the kingdom, I don’t see how that’s coercive.

Right! But what you’re saying is that we will all get a chance to experience this love eventually, correct? So if I’m a lonely person with no friends, why not kill myself right now so that I can go right into the Kingdom of God and feel all the love that has eluded me? What do you think the purpose of this life is?

I suppose you could do that. But this world is not bad. The world is good. God called it very good. So it would be sad if you left prematurely. IMO.

[begbert2]

@Skammer

I suppose you could do that. But this world is not bad. The world is good. God called it very good. So it would be sad if you left prematurely. IMO.

Better than heaven? Sinless heaven? :dubious:

They typical answer to the suicide question is of course that suiciding disqualifies you from the ‘good’ heaven, so you actually end up someplace worse than earth. (So don’t do it!) Universalists don’t have that option, of course, so start handing out the razors!

[you_with_the_face]

It stands to reason that a suicidal person doesn’t see the world as very good, otherwise they wouldn’t want to die. So convincing them that boundless joy awaits in the afterlife but wait, you can’t kill yourself because it’s very good here and God doesn’t like shortcuts anyway, will be somewhat of a feat if they are really suffering.

[monstro]

@Skammer

I suppose you could do that. But this world is not bad. The world is good. God called it very good. So it would be sad if you left prematurely. IMO.

The world is not bad for you. And it’s not bad for me. But for millions of people living right now and for millions who have lived in the past, the world is not good. It is very bad. If I were suicidal, you’d have to give me a much better reason than your personal sadness to convince me to stick around.

Explain this further. Note that I did not say that Hitler was being tortured or burned alive - he is standing outside the kingdom and is invited in. No matter how wonderful it is inside the kingdom, I don’t see how that’s coercive.

Let’s say Hitler is just standing outside of the kingdom. What is this not-the-kingdom place like? Is it like a big rumpus room, where there are plenty of entertaining, fun, intellectually stimulating things to do while contemplating your life choices? Or are we talking about a colossally boring waiting room, and Hitler is sitting there for all of eternity, listening to the party happening on the other side of the door because he doesn’t have anything else to do?

Because that latter scenario sounds pretty hellish to me. I don’t know anyone sane who’d choose to stay in a waiting room for all eternity. Prolonged boredom is tortuous. You can’t say people are being offered a real choice if their only options are “bored out of my mind versus eternal joy”. However, if it’s like the former scenario, where a person can still have an interesting, pleasurable afterlife without all that eternal joy business, then that actually is a real option. No coercion there. But if well-being is possible without God’s love, what would compel Hitler to open the door? Something about the rumpus room would have to be real unpleasant for him to find the Kingdom irresistible, right?

It’s fine if you don’t have all the answers. I just want you to admit that you don’t have them. You don’t have to know how God is going to handle Hitler or other psychopaths to believe he is a loving not-a-monster. God could decide these individuals deserve to be reincarnated as oak trees, and such a decision could still be considered “loving”. At the very least, such an act would be no less loving that allowing souls to be born into grossly deformed, profoundly disabled bodies in abject poverty. If that reality call be called “good”, then just about anything short of eternal hellfire can be given the same descriptor.

[Voyager]

@Skammer

Explain this further. Note that I did not say that Hitler was being tortured or burned alive - he is standing outside the kingdom and is invited in. No matter how wonderful it is inside the kingdom, I don’t see how that’s coercive.

So Hitler can come in as his old same self? Or does he have to renounce who he was to come in?
How about someone like me who has no belief in god because God has not given me any convincing reason to believe.

I suppose you could do that. But this world is not bad. The world is good. God called it very good. So it would be sad if you left prematurely. IMO.

Yeah, the child about to get her head bashed in by a tsunami and then drown is blessing God for this very good world.
You, like most religionists, jump quickly from “I feel it should be this way” to “it is this way.” To put it mildly, your belief system is not very convincing.

[Voyager]

@monstro

What would be the point of life, given an afterlife that offers so few choices? If there are only two diametrically opposed options–a bowl of ice cream and a bowl of slimy turds–then we really don’t have a choice. We wouldn’t have any more of a choice than if someone holds a gun to your head and asks for your wallet. Is God really the kind of entity who revels in holding a gun to someone’s head while praising them for voluntarily handing over their wallet?

Hey, worse than that. The ice cream and slimy turds are both in sealed boxes, and people claiming they have access to the truth are telling you that one or the other is the ice cream.
And if you pick wrong, it is all your fault because you should have known.

[truthseeker3]

@monstro

If the only purpose to this life is learning the value of love but we’re going to get that lesson anyway once we die, then what’s the point of the 80-odd years we spend here? Why shouldn’t we just commit suicide so we can fast-forward to the really good loving waiting for us?

One very old answer to this question is that a person cannot know joy without being able to contrast it with sorrow, but I like your “embrace the Godly mysterious.”

As for the original question, I’m not a universalist because it requires me to believe that every single human being will come around eventually. If there’s even one holdout - and a few of the people here sound pretty steadfast - then universalism is false. (I wouldn’t mind being wrong, though.)

[monstro]

@Voyager

So Hitler can come in as his old same self? Or does he have to renounce who he was to come in?
How about someone like me who has no belief in god because God has not given me any convincing reason to believe.
Yeah, the child about to get her head bashed in by a tsunami and then drown is blessing God for this very good world.
You, like most religionists, jump quickly from “I feel it should be this way” to “it is this way.” To put it mildly, your belief system is not very convincing.

It does feel very much like “I want God to be this way, so I am going to believe he is this way. Because if he isn’t this way, I can’t love him and you shouldn’t either.”

If a person can love a god that allows people to suffer on Earth, why couldn’t they love a god that would punish them in the afterlife?

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

[DrDeth]

@monstro

It does feel very much like “I want God to be this way, so I am going to believe he is this way. Because if he isn’t this way, I can’t love him and you shouldn’t either.”

If a person can love a god that allows people to suffer on Earth, why couldn’t they love a god that would punish them in the afterlife?

It comes from reading John.

If God didnt allow suffering, he also would remove Free Will. You have a Choice, that is Free Will.

[Czarcasm]

@DrDeth

It comes from reading John.

If God didnt allow suffering, he also would remove Free Will. You have a Choice, that is Free Will.

What if there is suffering without free will, as in slavery or abject poverty?

[DrDeth]

@Czarcasm

What if there is suffering without free will, as in slavery or abject poverty?

You obviously know nothing whatsoever about the concept of Free Will.

A slave can choose to accept Jesus in his heart. That is Free Will.

[Czarcasm]

@DrDeth

You obviously know nothing whatsoever about the concept of Free Will.

A slave can choose to accept Jesus in his heart. That is Free Will.

Really? I could have sworn there was a bit more to Free Will than that.

[Czarcasm]

@DrDeth

You obviously know nothing whatsoever about the concept of Free Will.

A slave can choose to accept Jesus in his heart. That is Free Will.

IT may or may not be, depending on whether coercion is involved, but unless said choice effects the amount of suffering going on then the two are unrelated. If the claim is that choosing to follow this religious path leads to less suffering in the future then there is that problem of coercion going on, and also the problem that if this future without suffering actually happens, then why can’t the acceptance of this particular religion alleviate suffering now?.

[Ashtura]

Honestly, if you’re going to go to heaven no matter what, I see absolutely no reason to go to church, other than the social aspect. And it’s in a churches best interest that you go.

[Voyager]

@monstro

It does feel very much like “I want God to be this way, so I am going to believe he is this way. Because if he isn’t this way, I can’t love him and you shouldn’t either.”

If a person can love a god that allows people to suffer on Earth, why couldn’t they love a god that would punish them in the afterlife?

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

It seems that there are plenty of people who love their abusers. But I’m not sure that they say it makes for a very good world, just that the abusees feel diminished and that they deserve the abuse.
Anyhow, the argument I’ve seen for this is that babies killed in the tsunami would have grown up evil, so in this best of possible worlds it was good for them to die.
Which reminds me of the Jerome Bixby story / Twilight Zone episode that might be about exactly this, come to think of it.
“You killed my mother painfully, and made me poor and crippled? It is good, it is very good.”

[Voyager]

@DrDeth

It comes from reading John.

If God didnt allow suffering, he also would remove Free Will. You have a Choice, that is Free Will.

The child drowned in the tsunami was just oozing free will.

[DrDeth]

@Czarcasm

IT may or may not be, depending on whether coercion is involved, but unless said choice effects the amount of suffering going on then the two are unrelated. If the claim is that choosing to follow this religious path leads to less suffering in the future then there is that problem of coercion going on, and also the problem that if this future without suffering actually happens, then why can’t the acceptance of this particular religion alleviate suffering now?.

Because if giant hands came down and stopped everything annoying or dangerous, you’d no longer really have Free Will, a Miracle every minute pretty well means you will believe.