A Loving God
While reading A Case For Christ, I was impressed with D.A. Carson’s response to the age-old question: “How can a loving God send people to hell?”
Carson says:
Hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes but just didn’t believe the right stuff. They’re consigned there, first and foremost, because they defy their Maker and want to be at the center of the universe. Hell is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn’t gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It’s filled with people who, for all eternity, still want to be at the center of the universe and who persist in their God-defying rebellion.
Later, Carson says:
If God took his hands off this fallen world so that there were no restraint on human wickedness, we would make hell. thus if you allow a whole lot of sinners to live somewhere in a confined place where they’re not doing damage to anyone but themselves, what do you get but hell? There’s a sense in which they’re doing it to themselves, and it’s what they want because they still don’t repent.
He concludes:
One of the things that the Bible does insist is that in the end not only will justice be done, but justice will be seen to be done, so that every mouth will be stopped.
I think that’s my favorite answer as to why a loving God would send people to hell. They don’t repent and justice has to be done. For trying to make themselves the center of the universe, they earn an eternal trip to hell. I think I’d much rather repent, and I’m certainly glad I did!
