Theology

While at work today, I went out to grab a quick lunch and soon found myself at an Atlanta Bread Company shop, just me, a tuna-salad-on-sourdough sandwich and the New York Times.

There were several young people around me, presumably students of nearby Kennesaw State College. Soon, while I was reading about the Senate's inability to even stage a meaningful dialog about the war, two young women sat down at a table so close by that I could not help but hear much of their conversation. They were talking about religion.

"But one thing I don't understand," one was saying, "is how could it be that if someone grew up in a non-Christian culture, say they were Islamic and that's all they've ever known their entire life, why would they have to go to hell?"

She didn't seem to be baiting or testing her friend, she sounded genuinely distressed at her inability to resolve this issue. I had forgotten that fear of hell still held such a strong grip on some people, even in this day and age.

As a youth, I had questions about that same issue myself, and was told that if someone had never had a chance to hear Jesus' teaching, but had lived a good and virtuous life, he would still be allowed into heaven as a naive pagan.

That didn't help things at all, because then I wondered if all of those "heathen" people were going to heaven anyway, why were missionaries being sent out to "save" people who are already, essentially, saved? In fact, aren't missionaries doing more harm than good by spreading the gospel, because once one of those already "saved" heathens hears the Word but rejects it, isn't the missionary, in effect, then condemning him or her to hell?

Alternately, if they were going to hell because they had never heard the Word, but God never allowed a missionary to reach them with his teaching, wasn't God then, in effect, flushing them down the celestial crapper without ever having given them a chance?

Or did God know, in his infinite wisdom, the choice that person would have made if the choice between acceptance and rejection were offered, and either admitted them to heaven or banished them to hell accordingly? But if that were the case, and it will all sort itself out in the end anyway, why again with the missionaries, and in fact what's up then with the whole church and religion thing? Seems kind of pointless from that perspective.

At that point I was usually told to shut up and not worry about these things, but the issue was never really resolved for me. And although I never thought much more about it after that, I never much relied on "heaven or hell" dogma as a spiritual reference thereafter, either.

The young women at the next table didn't get it figured out either, but by that point I had finished my sandwich and left.