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What kind of God would allow a Hitler to go to heaven if he believed in Jesus and a Mother Teresa to go to hell if she didn't?

"You're saying that Hitler and Mother Teresa would both suffer the same fate before God if they didn't believe in Jesus?"

The words echoed over the radio airwaves as the host of "Religion on the Line" on ABC's L.A. affiliate station patiently waited for me to answer. I knew the question was coming, but I had no tidy theological retort that would put the ball back into his court.

Someone once said that if you word the question right, you can win any debate. The question that evening was a classic case in point. The host might as well have asked, "Do you still beat your wife?" Simply answering "yes" or "no" wouldn't do.

At the root of this discussion is the issue of Jesus as the only way to salvation. It is one of the biggest stumbling blocks of Christianity to those who are sincerely interested in leading moral lives and working hard to mitigate the impact of evil in the world. To make Jesus the sole issue of salvation seems to ignore the obvious difference between people of conscience and others who are entirely without scruples. Does that make sense?



Radical Surgery Required

Let me give an analogy that may add perspective. All things being equal, it's good to practice healthy living. People who eat their vegetables, get proper rest, exercise sensibly, and don't smoke or drink to excess, generally reap the benefits of longevity and vitality. Those who don't, get sick.

But what if all things aren't equal? What if there's a hidden element, a terminal disease quietly sucking life out of the body? Healthy living does nothing to avert the underlying disease. In that case, the undisciplined junk food addict and the diligent athlete suffer the same fate. The silent tumor breaks its silence; the grave claims them both.

There's a parallel to this in the spiritual realm. On the one hand, it's good to live righteously. Holy living contributes to spiritual health. Those who continually practice sin eventually suffer its consequences.

There's another side to the equation, however, a crucial element too often ignored. Our most valiant attempts at goodness are met with failure because a deep-seated malignancy sucks the life from our efforts. No matter how hard we try, each of us is dying from a spiritual disease no amount of righteous living can heal.

The sad truth is this: Ultimately, no person lives completely right. Sure, they're capable of doing good things, sometimes phenomenal things. Even a dying patient can have healthy eating habits. But good works, like good meals, cannot restore vitality to a diseased patient; they can only maintain it. Restoration must come through surgery.

At first glance, it seems unfair that God wouldn't consider all the good we've done. Think about it, though. When was the last time you received a letter from the D.A. congratulating you for not holding up a bank or shooting your neighbor?

Obedience to the law is expected. A year of good behavior doesn't cancel out a year of lawbreaking, evening up the record. Every person, from the greatest to the least, has broken God's law. That makes them guilty, and guilty people must seek God's surgery: forgiveness. Agreed, some need more forgiveness than others--sometimes much more, just as a disease can ravage one body more violently than another. But every person is fatally stricken, nonetheless.



Ever Heard of the Ten Commandments?

Have you read the Ten Commandments recently? Take a quick inventory by asking yourself these questions.

Have you ever given allegiance to anything else over God in your life or used anything as an object of worship or veneration? Have you ever used God's name in a vain or vulgar fashion? Have you worshipped God on a regular basis? Have you even once disobeyed or dishonored your parents? Have you murdered anyone, or even had harsh thoughts about someone (see Matthew 5:22)? Have you had sex with someone other than your spouse, or even thought about it (see Matthew 5:28.)? Have you taken something that wasn't yours? Have you lied? Have you simply wanted something that wasn't yours?

Sound tough? It is. This is God's Law. These are God's requirements. Even in grammar school, 60% is a flunking grade, yet who among us has not violated each of these commandments many times?

Reducing the Ten Commandments to only two doesn't help. Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:37-40). Even the best of us violate these two laws daily.

Whenever you're tempted to trust in your own ability to please God, take a good look at the standard, God's Law, then look at your own score card. To use Paul's words, each of us is "shut up under sin" (Gal. 3:22). Our mouths have been closed, and we all have become accountable to God (Romans 3:19). Saved by our own goodness? The Law gives us no hope.

Try this calculation. If you sinned only ten times a day from your tenth birthday to your sixtieth--and keep in mind we're not just talking about rape, pillage, and murder, but the full range of human moral failing, including heart attitudes and motives--what would your rap sheet look like? You would have amassed 182,500 infractions of the law. What judge in his right mind would turn you loose with a record like that?



Ghandi vs. Al Capone

The worst of us tend to whitewash our own contribution to evil. Al Capone said, "I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man." [1]

By contrast, Ghandi--a man utterly committed to a life of virtue--was not so optimistic. Towards the end of his life he lamented, "It is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from him whom I know governs every breath of my life and whose offspring I am. I know it is because of the evil passions within me that keep me so far from him; yet I can't get away from them."

C.S. Lewis captured this contrast with these words: "When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less....Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either." [2]

If Lewis is right, then the One who is most holy sees sin most clearly. The One who is perfectly righteous understands the full tragedy of even the most "trivial" breach of goodness. God's purity is without flaw, so He sees sin as it really is. That's why He is not so inclined to dismiss our moral imperfections with a "boys will be boys" mentality.



Hitler and Mother Teresa

Could Adolph Hitler and Mother Teresa suffer the same fate? No and yes.

No, because they'd answer for different crimes and, as such, their judgment would be different. Just as there are degrees of sin (see John 19:11), there are degrees of punishment. Jesus said Sodom would fare better than Capernaum in the day of judgment (Matthew 11:24), though each would be condemned.

Yes, because each person must ultimately answer for his own sins--Hitler for his, Mother Teresa for hers, you and I for ours. Unless, of course, Jesus is allowed to answer for them.

That is the good news: Jesus, though rich, for our sake became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9).

To stay alive physically, first cure the disease, then keep fit to maintain your health. To experience spiritual well-being, God must do surgery on the root problem, sin. Living righteously afterwards secures our spiritual vitality, but it can never cure our disease. Only Jesus can do that.


[1] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), p. 20.

[2] Clive Staples Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 73.

Source

Do you actually post original thoughts? All I ever see are copy pasta articles from you.

Moral here seems to be that everyone is worthless garbage, and somehow there's a different hell for everyone, but only one of the two is thrown into it - and it isn't Hitler, since all that matters is belief. Mother Theresa was malicious in her own way, celebrating the suffering of people she had the ability to help and did not, but she didn't personally order a genocide.

Also, bears worth mention that Jesus can see past the murder of over 15 million people, but would be "just" in tossing stillborn babies into eternal torment for lack of belief.

The Christian doctrine is that Jesus is the Way, and without belief in him, you go to hell. The New Testament carves out exactly zero exceptions, either for the stillborn, the mentally handicapped, or those who have never heard the Gospels.

Romans 2:6 is a bit ambiguous, and should be used with caution, as it could be pointed out as a contradiction to Ephesians 2:8-9, implying that works are integral to eternal life and confusing the concept of salvation which can be muddy enough as it is. In this case, it can imply that Christians can go to hell anyway for not living correctly.

Matthew 18 is being used out of context, because the point of the passage is humility rather than actual children, and I can't see how Mark 10 is relevant at all.

I'd encourage some reading on Mother Theresa, but further discussion of my opinions on her isn't exactly relevant to the topic at hand. I didn't miss the Gospel. I'm familiar with exactly what it is, and am well-read on the issues at hand - we just have differing opinions on the matter, and condescension doesn't further the discussion.

There is one sin, actually, that Christ himself said he would not forgive. Do you know what it is? It could be argued that for a huge percentage of the planet, there's no point in conversion since they wouldn't be saved from that sin.

Good content is really only productive as long as it's read, and from the majority of the posts here with no responses, it's probably fair to say that most aren't reading and it's just copy/paste into the void. Summaries and editorial might be better to get people involved, with a link to the article. That would also reduce the number of things posted under your account that you don't agree with (there's a particular picture from a translation versions post I'm thinking of here, that months later you came back to disagree with). Not telling you how to run the place, just an observation from my own Guild Captain days.

James also throws doubt into the salvation of anyone dealing with a "deathbed conversion" with that passage. It doesn't relate to Hitler and Mother Theresa, as both were Christians for all of their lives, and both did their deeds with the explicit approval of the Catholic Church (though - speaking of "deeds" that approval does become relevant. Is Pope Pius XII in hell for endorsing the slaughter of millions?).

What I'm pointing out is that Ephesians makes a case for belief alone (among other passages), and James makes a case for requisite works in addition to faith (among other passages). It creates confusion, of which God is not supposed to be the author. That was what was meant by the assertion that salvation can be a muddy subject. Go to a different denomination, you'll get a different answer on the subject. That's why there are upwards of 30,000 different denominations of Christianity, and no two agree on every point of doctrine. Everything can be different, from the divinity of Christ, to methods of baptism, to who can lead the church.

That is the crime that I'm referring to, and it's easier, especially with circumstances of anguish or grief, to commit. Consider that. Jesus refuses to forgive people for what has the potential to be thought crime that we are unable to control.

I understand time constraints. I myself work 50 hours a week, and used to post here from overseas deployments. It can be rough, but you may get a better response just posting a 2-sentence editorial with a link than a wall-o-text. Gaia doesn't have the formatting available to make that an easy read.

We could talk about humility, but it would be a change of subject. This came about because I said that children don't have a clearly defined pathway to heaven without believing a thing they don't have the capacity to understand, with the same principle applying to the stillborn or mentally handicapped. I don't know what you meant by the sentence, " I don't see any zero exceptions for the mentally handicapped or the stillborn in this, or in that Jesus is the only way." Maybe you can rephrase? I've never seen any way of getting to heaven in the Bible that doesn't explicitly involve belief in Jesus Christ - the categories mentioned do not have such capacity.

I also noticed you may have unintentionally omitted it, but I further specified those who haven't heard of Jesus. Those people are definitely "up the creek" so to speak, as according to Paul viewing the world around them is enough to condemn them, but not enough to save them in Romans 1. So all of the people born out of reach of Christian missionaries were condemned to hell from the get-go.