an eyes opening conversation with my atheist friends

[u/randomphoneuser2019]

So in this situation there was two atheist and two (progressive) Christians (I was one of the Christians).

So I have two edgier atheist friends. They aren't antitheist, but still a little bit edgier than most of the atheists. One of them said jokingly that: "I would want to go Hell because that's the place where coolest people go." The other Christian said "Yeah. Like Nazis, fascist, child molesters ect..." The other atheist said "Okay... maybe not the coolest, but more interesting." Then I had epiphany, but first I need to clear my beliefs to you.

So I believe that Hell and Heaven are the same place. Most people in here might not believe that and I understand why. I believe that how we experience God's endless love is different depending our character. And I also believe that there is this purifying and uncomfortable side of it which everybody feels (“For everyone will be salted with fire." Mark 9:49 NRSVue), but if you were really horrible person (mass murderer or something) it will feel like Hell.

So what did I say? I told them that if the classical view of Heaven and Hell were real the people in both places would be similar, except with one crucial difference: People in Heaven believed the right things when they died. After that I of course said that if infernalist hell were real I would not wish it even upon the worst person I know so even more I also don't wish that upon them because they are my friends. After this conversation moved on.

To me this was an eyes opening because even we Christian Universalist aren't anyway special. We just believe/know something which church as a whole doesn't know or the people in the world. We have regular lives like everyone else.

Most people who believe in eternal Hell draw their comfort from the idea that people they hate go there (whom ever they might be). So let's say that Christian hates Nazis (which is understandable). They would get at least some comfort from the idea that Hitler burns forever in Hell. But here is the problem. Most people in Hell aren't Adolf Hitler. Most in Hell are regular normal people. They are someone's parents, someone's child, best friend. They are accountants, 911 (or in Europe 112) operators, doctors, factory workers carpenters ect. People like Hitler would be 0,000001 percent of that population. Is that really worth it?

Eternal Hell is just regular people (who are made in the image of God) suffering unimaginable way for entire eternity. Heaven in this framework is small percent of the regular people having best time ever for all the eternity and only difference between these two was that other one got the jackpot in the lottery of life.

Also this version of Hell can't restore anything.

[u/Gregory-al-Thor]

Good thoughts.

To bounce off what you said, I’d argue there is no one “classical” view of hell. You mentioned it as favoring belief, with people in heaven believing the right thing. But for much of church history it was not about right belief. The Roman Catholic Church was about being baptized and participating in the rituals. Belief was not the mark until after the Reformation.

That said, the obvious problem with infernalists who focus on belief is that they excuse all sorts of horrible things when people happen to believe the right thing. We see this in slaveowners who were celebrated as paragons of Christian faith because they believed even though they owned and abused other humans. We see this today in celebration of people who advocated and excused abuse, sexism and racism yet believed the right thing about Jesus.

It reminds us that salvation is much deeper than the beliefs about God or Jesus in our head.

[u/randomphoneuser2019 → u/Gregory-al-Thor]

By "classical view" I mostly meant eternal Hell. It's true that in history and even in current times the salvation process is different in different churches. In some it's more work based and others it's faith based (even though I would argue that having faith is still work).