An underlying part of who we all are is our beliefs in spiritual things. The physical world is like God’s GUI, but the spirit realm is like the back-end business logic. It actually determines what happens on the world’s stage. Our view on this will dictate how we present ourselves on the world’s stage. If I believe that there is no God then my actions will reflect that belief and I will not act as though there were a clear right and wrong. If I believe that God has no standards then I will have no standards. If I believe that God hates everyone then I will do the same.
You get the idea.
Recently, I have challenged my beliefs. The reality hit me that I could not possibly be correct in all that I believe so I set out to find something false in my belief system. I had no topic in mind but I figured that I’d find something and it would probably be rather interesting. I really don’t know how I started the search, but I do know that I spent quite a bit of time on the “UNLEARN the lies” YouTube channel. On it, he attacks all of the misconceptions that the modern church has, and then he explains his view and why it is correct. He is rather convincing oftentimes. On this topic I am about to mention, I did not end up agreeing with him, but I did change my original view and it changed my view of the world.
The topic he took on was the belief in an eternal and conscious torment in hell for those who reject Jesus. He said that the Bible does not support such a view. Suddenly, my interest was piqued. Hell has been a very difficult thing for me all of my life. The unchanging finality of hell and the extreme harshness of the punishment has always been disturbing and difficult to understand, especially when contemplating what forever truly means. In fact, several years ago there was something that caused me to doubt the truth of God’s word and my first thought was “that means that all those people aren’t burning in hell”. The thrill that comes from anticipating heaven disappeared quietly while the relief of realizing that people are not burning in hell forever launched itself into the forefront of my thoughts. That was more important than eternity with God in pure bliss.
What Mr. UNLEARN said was that souls that don’t know Christ are not tortured for eternity, but rather they are cast into a pit and annihilated. That’s it. Today you exist, tomorrow you don’t. No pain, no torment, no endless regret with no rest. Just… gone.
In continuing my search on this topic I came across the belief in Universal Reconciliation through Jesus, and here is where I found peace. To be honest, at first, I fully rejected the notion that everyone will be forgiven and reconciled to God. That’s foolish thinking. To think that we can live horrific lives, die, and be eternally rewarded was craziness. God does not reward evil, He hates it. God punishes sin. There are not multiple paths to God so nobody will get away with rejecting Jesus. Many other objections came up in my mind, but rather than close my mind, I decided to research it and suspend my disbelief so I could fairly evaluate it.
It turns out that Universal Reconciliation is a belief that Jesus is the only way into God’s kingdom and that Jesus will be sure that you end up with Him. God is not “out to get you” in a bad way, He’s “out to get you” in a good way, and you will not outrun Him.