There are common barriers to Christian faith advanced by humanists. These include the doctrines of depravity, hell and suffering. Some persons resist the call to faith claiming that a good God espoused by Christians would not permit the ongoing of depraved people, that he would be too loving to send recalcitrant persons to hell, and that there has been no satisfactory explanation for suffering, especially the suffering of children. From the limited purview of nature’s context in which we live, move and have being the points are fair and offered as reality. If held in emotional fury, they become threatening. If the humanist holds that understanding extends only to that available in nature, and the theist holds that faith projections into whatever is unknown in nature must be included in the analysis of meaning and life, any projected debate may be fruitless – except in the search for understanding of both contexts so to assist in the ongoing discussion. We ought to agree to disagree with both communities seeking for truth and cooperation wherever it may be found. Conclusions in any context large enough to attract a significant following ought to be clear to all others for the testing of ideas and resultant conclusions to resolution. It is fair in the objective meaning of living and learning in peace and good will. God is gracious to persons of good will, and stern even with his own children in any violence against love and peace. In the Christian interpretation, all persons are the physical children of God. Those who choose Christ in redemptive process may not agree on the doctrine of hell. Redemption is satisfied in the factor of Jesus only.
The debate may be suspended as noted above, but there are answers to the objections of humanists who have trouble with the idea that there is God in the margins of our lives, wooing us to his care, concern and love. As difficult as many see the matter to be addressed there is an overriding and simple perception that all may agree upon, and that is that there are only two options available. By birth we are citizens of nature in our human generation. The only difference from that inevitable position is to add or avoid the spiritual nature which means significant change for the individual. To evade it is possible during a physical lifetime and surrender of physical life ends the human drama for whatever death means without faith. Biblical Christians believe there is inevitable accountability after death interpreted as affirmative and negative, cast as awarding or damning for the individual. Humankind will not determine what God will do in the final management of the course of life resolution. Since self-conscious life relates to the image of God in mankind, and that which comes from God will be irrevocably his property, he will determine outcomes. We can be comforted that God is fair, loving, and competent to achieve right endings to new beginnings.
Scripture makes hell a major theme. Human thought would erase the concept of hell if we could. We remind ourselves that God can do whatever he wants to do except deny himself. Perfect in all facets, he is perfect in judgment (evaluation). That he may in eternity find a way to redeem hell, or dispose of it, may be possible. We may evade the context by choosing the redemptive alternative, not on hell’s reality. It is a theme beyond human understanding, but illustrated in the analogy of physical life. Nature is fierce in the life of mankind. Current leading conversation between nations is how to manage weather, pollution and upheavals in the earth. The promises of God for tranquility, for peace, for all the idealism that we conjure about are carried over for perpetuity in the heavenly vision. The negatives of our lives related to the depravity in all of nature including humankind, and identified in suffering and death related to all persons so demonstrating differentials between blessing and cursing are meant for us to reach out for the blessings and make cursing personally meaningless. We may invite both into our lives. Ultimately God will repair all matters, disposing of the curses and the cursed, and preserving that which he intended to become the norm. We don’t possess it all in human terms so may not offer adequate answers for those without faith. My understanding or lack of it does not determine the truth of whatever is future. The comfort of faith is not to be proved by logic, but by its power to find spiritual rest in its promises. Faith is present, as is the air, but invisible. It is spiritual breath by which we connect with life, in God’s eternity. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020