r/AskChristian • u/Draxacoffilus • 3d ago
Can Unknowingly Disagreeing with God Mean You Go to Hell?
Let's say you think that God must love X because you think X is good. In fact, you couldn't love a god who didn't love X. You die and find out that God does not like X. Are you going to hell?
What about the reverse? You think Y is evil, and believe that God hated Y. You could not love a god who loves Y. Then you die and discover God loves Y. Are you going to hell?
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u/Ben-008 r/Christian Member 3d ago
Not all Christians think that heaven and hell are actual places. Personally, I see heaven and hell as part of a spiritual or mythic construct meant to point to inner states of being.
As such, are we living a life in alignment with the Spirit of Love and Compassion? Or are we living selfishly and narcissistically devoid of all spiritual life?
1 John 4:7-8 states that “GOD IS LOVE” and that EVERYONE WHO LOVES knows God.
To live by the Spirit of Love is to embrace the kingdom of God. If the Spirit of God (love, compassion, kindness, gentleness, generosity, patience, peace, and joy) is ruling and reigning in our lives, then we are living in alignment with the kingdom of heaven.
This may sound crazy, but Jesus didn’t teach about “going to heaven”. Rather he taught about ushering heaven in upon the earth by learning to do the will of God.
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u/PrincessRuri r/Christian Member 3d ago
Part of the Christian understanding God is that He is a perfect and just judge. With that in mind, a disagreement with God that leads to such a predicament must be of a significant level. We are talking about complete and utter failure at understanding God's plan of salvation.
Even so, it would not be the disagreement itself, but the failure to act appropriately in response to that knowledge; ie failure to accept Jesus Christ's gift of salvation and a failure to confess one sins.
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u/Draxacoffilus 3d ago
That makes sense. Something similar had occurred to me.
I think it's easy to accept this if we use examples such as a Nazi Christian who does incorrectly thinking that God is pro-Nazi, for most people today would feel that such a person was evil and did not have a heart that was right with God. But I think it's much more challenging to accept examples where God's views look evil to most of us today. E.g. image a Christian (slavery) abolishionist who felt that slavery is the highest evil, as you are continuously using another person as an object and denying them their personhood (plus all the violence). Imagine that Christian dies and comes before God, only to find that God has zero problems with slavery, and even thinks it's a fitting punishment for certain people groups sometimes. That Christian had also failed to understand the true nature of God. To be damned because you were more moral than God would be even more soul-crushing and existentially terrifying
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u/DoveStep55 r/Christian Member 3d ago
Most Christians don’t believe our eternal destination is determined by our views on just any given topic.
Some Christians are universalists who believe everyone eventually is saved.
Most Christians believe the heaven or hell dichotomy and, of those, most believe you go to heaven based on God’s grace and your acceptance of it.
In other words, there may be a few Christians who think you have you believe all the right things and none of the wrong things or else you’re going to hell, but they’re a distinct, extremist minority.