I think that one reason that many Christians might answer no to this question is not that they lack a ‘true christian love’ or whatnot, rather that for (some of) them, the concept of hell is much more real than for non-believers. It may be a lot easier to jump into that kind of a commitment (heh) if you’ve never really given the concept of ETERNAL DAMNATION much thought or rejected it outright. I do feel that astorian has a good point though, one which I can respect even though I don’t subscribe. I don’t think it’s a dodge to say that your faith would preclude this choice on your part. A person of faith’s conception of his or her God is just as much a factor in this type of question as the humanist morality of a non-believer.
All that said, I pretty much made this decision in second grade, though the question wasn’t put like this- the scenario was thus:
My parents had gotten a divorce and since my mom worked full time we got a nanny. She was pretty weird, had a real Shaklee vitamin obsession* and whatnot, but she was there when we got home from school and on weekends when my mom went out of town. She was also a pretty hardcore evangelical christian. We were a very liberal Catholic family, and at first the religion thing was not an issue. Gradually, though, Nanny started weaving more and more religious discourse into daily discussion, including bringing me to her church a few times and culminating in the “Accept Jesus Christ as Your Personal Savior [out loud, in public] or your will burn in HE-YULL” speech. This followed a campaign of convincing me that my baptism and first communion weren’t “real” because they were performed in a Catholic church etc. Needless to say, my mom would NOT have been cool with this if she knew what was going on, but it never occurred to my sisters or me that talking about god could be considered inappropriate.
Interestingly, the thing that kept me from being swept away on her particular Jesus-train was her description of the Rapture. Having gone to Catholic sunday school in the 80’s, I had never heard of such a thing until she brought it up- telling me about how when judgement day or whatever it is comes, all of “us” who had done the personal savior bit would be whisked up to heaven, leaving the rest to burn forever, having missed their chances. I remember quite vividly walking through my classroom in school and picturing what would happen if I suddenly went to heaven and the rest of my family and friends (except Nanny) were left behind - what a shitty thing! I couldn’t imagine how anyone could feel good about such a scenario (still can’t) but at least at that point I seriously did believe I was going to go to hell and I held on to my decision.
Years later, I don’t think there was any harm done, in fact I think it was the earliest point at which I came up against a real moral dilemma and figured out what to do all by myself- critical thinking skills hurrah! Nowadays I am ‘unaffiliated’- I don’t have faith in any religious sense, but I don’t have a real vested interest in a lack of a deity either…
At this point, I don’t know if I would go to hypothetic-hell voluntarily, though I would like to think that I would do it for one of my loved ones, I just don’t know if I’d be strong enough to make that choice. Maybe if I only had a split second to choose I would, but given time to come up with rational reasons (aside from my own fear of endless torment) I would probably end up running away with my tail between my legs. Kind of makes me wish I was still as good a person (or as idealistic) as I was when I was a little’un.
*her mother was a sales rep :rolleyes:
But I will say that for years I thought you were supposed to love others first and then yourself, but it turns out you can’t love others without loving yourself first.