Writing about hell, judgment and other weighty biblical matters could seem a little on the morbid side. Sometimes I wish I felt led to cover other, less serious subjects.

But the upside is that the truth I’ve found on these matters can bring great relief to those of us who were taught all of our lives that first of all, God chooses only the relative few for salvation (Calvinism/Predestination), and second, that the billions who weren’t “chosen” will be consigned to an eternity of conscious punishment (the traditional view of hell and immortality). Both of these doctrines, even considered alone, are enough to give people a serious check in their comprehension of God’s Merciful nature. But combined, you’re left with an absolutely monstrous god, and here is why I say this:

The Calvinist view of Predestination claims that God only endowed the relative few with the ability to respond to the Holy Spirit and accept salvation. The logical conclusion then is that billions of people who couldn’t possibly have asked to be born, are created with no hope of salvation, and while they really shouldn’t be considered at fault since they have no God-given ability to respond to the offer of salvation, and didn’t ask to be brought into existence (as a sinner, or otherwise) they are still held responsible. So when they of course do not respond to the call of salvation (because they can’t, according to Calvinist teaching), then they are sent, not back to a state of non-existence where they were (or weren’t, technically) before conception, but rather to an inescapable tormented eternity.

This view of God just doesn’t line up logically or spiritually with the same Person we see in Jesus Christ who prayed for the very people who were mocking and crucifying him because “they (knew) not what they (were) doing”, or the God who set the stars in place, yet got on His knees and washed our dirty feet.

It’s a twisted view of God, and I’m shocked that there isn’t more of an outcry against this kind of teaching, but I’m not shocked that people leave the Church in droves. We’re not teaching the God of the Bible.

I’ve found sound reliable evidence that strongly refutes both Calvinism, and the traditional view of hell as being a place and state of eternal conscious suffering for the lost, and no, we don’t need to join some cult or odd sect of Christianity to take hold of a different view on these matters. We just need to take Scripture as the source, and perhaps dig a little deeper, beyond the surface on the small handful of verses that have been mis-handled for centuries to create these poor doctrines.