Universalism: Isn’t God gonna save everybody?

UNIVERSALIST ju.nə'vər.səl.əst adjective. Believing all humanity will (eventually) be saved.

Generally, pagans believe good people go to heaven, and bad people to hell. There’s a minority among them who believe there is no hell—not even for genocidal maniacs; everybody goes to the same afterlife, and if you’re a westerner that’d be heaven. There might be some karmic consequences to the afterlife, like you might find yourself in the suckier part of heaven; but it’s all heaven, so it’s not that bad.

The reason many pagans believe this, is because they believe the universe is benevolent, or believe God is love. Which he is! 1Jn 4.8 And he does love everyone; “for God so loved the world” Jn 3.16 and all that. So they figure a loving God would never throw people into hell, especially for something so minor as not believing in him—which is an honest mistake, most of the time. Hardly sound loving of God to toss someone into hell simply because they were born in a part of the world where they were never taught God properly, be it North Korea, Nepal, Mali, or Mississippi.

Now I agree God’s unlikely to smite people for honest mistakes. But I also seriously doubt the bulk of humanity’s mistakes are honest ones. Face it: Lots of us embrace our God-beliefs purely out of convenience, pragmatism, or selfishness. That Iranian who’s never gonna hear the gospel: He already wouldn’t listen to it if offered. If he honestly wanted to hear the gospel, it doesn’t matter what filters his nation puts on the internet; he’d track down Christians (there actually are some in Iran) and ask questions. Or Jesus might personally appear to him, as he does throughout Christian history, beginning with Paul. (No, that wasn’t just a one-time deal.)

Or that American whose parents raised her a militant atheist: No matter how skeptical and free-thinking she claims to be, she honestly doesn’t wanna challenge her parents’ claims, and examine whether there’s anything to this God stuff. If she did, the first miracle she experienced would shatter her atheism like a cinderblock through safety glass.

Honest mistakes are like Calvinism: People try to defend God’s sovereignty, go overboard, and wind up teaching God’s secretly evil. But if they’re honest mistakes, these people are nonetheless pursuing God despite their errors. And the Holy Spirit’s still producing love and patience and kindness in them, and still letting ’em into his kingdom. (Unless they’re only pursuing clever arguments, producing no fruit, and wind up some of those poor souls who’re mighty shocked Jesus doesn’t recognize ’em. Mt 7.23) The whole “honest mistakes” cop-out is a convenient excuse to ignore God, avoid obeying him, and dodge religion, church, and Christians.

It’s a risky little game they’re playing, for Christ Jesus says not everyone’s getting saved.

Matthew 7.21-23 GNT

21“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. 22On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ 23But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’”

That’s the people who really thought they were Christian. How much chance does the “honestly mistaken” nontheist have? Well, God is gracious, so we’ll see.

Though God absolutely does wants everyone saved, 1Ti 2.4 he knows full well many people want nothing to do with him. Nor his kingdom. They don’t want saving. Since God did create ’em with free will, he permits them to tell him no. He won’t force ’em into his kingdom. They don’t have to enter. But man alive are they gonna hate the alternative.

Christian universalism.

Universalism isn’t only a pagan idea. A lot of Christians have adopted it too.

Seriously: A lot. It’ll startle you to find out how many. You’ll talk with someone you’ve known for years, and in conversation they’ll let slip—“but let’s just keep this between us”—they’re not entirely sure hell is permanent. They think it’s temporary, like jail. After everyone serves their time—maybe a couple billion years—God’ll let everyone out. (And sometimes they won’t even believe in hell, ’cause Jesus only talked about it in parables and apocalypses.)

All right, lemme remind you of historical orthodox Christianity. The early Christians, just like today’s Christians, had a hodgepodge of ideas. But once their leaders got together, they concluded in the creeds that the scriptures do teach Jesus is actually returning to earth to judge the living and dead.

Now, the creeds don’t teach what Jesus’ll do with us after he judges us. That gave Roman Catholics just enough wiggle room to invent purgatory. For Protestants, the current debate is whether suffering in hell is eternal or instantaneous. I mean, it’s eternal fire, but when we’re tossed into it, do we eternally burn in it, or is “eternal fire” so mighty it disintegrates us immediately? Some of us really like the one idea; some the other. It’s actually debatable, ’cause the creeds never picked a side.

Anyway, what Jesus does with us after judging us, is the loophole the universalists try to slip through. They claim he judges us… then forgives us and sends us to heaven.

Arguably universalism evolved in the United States. Puritans, who’d been raised with the Calvinist idea of efficacious grace—if God wants us saved, we will be saved, whether we want saving or not; what do we know anyway?—managed to rediscover the non-Calvinist (but wholly biblical!) idea of unlimited atonement, that Jesus died to save everyone. So if Jesus’s salvation actually applies to everyone, and his efficatious grace also applies to everyone, it means everyone’s saved. Everyone. No exceptions. Done deal. You’re going to heaven.

This being the case, some Puritan churches stayed otherwise orthodox Christian… but now taught hell is temporary, or a metaphor. This’d be what we call Christian universalism. Still Christian, but when it comes to hell, they’re heretic. (As you’ll see once I explain universalism’s problems below.)

In the United States in 1866, some of these churches organized into the Universalist General Convention; in 1942 this became the Universalist Church of America. In 1961 they combined with the Unitarians (whole different heresy; they don’t believe God’s a trinity) to become the Unitarian Universalist Association. The Unitarian church has since evolved into eclecticism, so you’ll find they hold all sorts of nonbiblical beliefs about how God and universalism work.

Don’t these people know Jesus said not everyone’s entering his kingdom? Actually yes they do. But they ignore the verses which say so, and instead point to other verses which appear to back ’em up. Like this one.

1 Corinthians 15.22 GNT

Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.

Problem is, the apostles weren’t writing about universal salvation, but universal resurrection. Ac 22.14 God raises everybody—some to eternal life, and some to eternal death. As people will do, universalists are picking their proof-texts regardless of the actual context of scripture. Verses about universal atonement, Ro 5.21, 11.32, 1Ti 2.6, 4.10, 1Jn 2.2, 4.14 universal resurrection, Ro 5.18 and God’s desire to save everyone, 1Ti 2.3, 2Pe 3.9 are all half-quoted to make it sound like there’s universal salvation.

Most of ’em figure it works like this: Once Jesus returns, he resurrects everybody. Then everyone can finally see him for ourselves, see how he behaves, see his miracles… and since he’s so awesome, they’ll just embrace him. Remember in the first century, when various Pharisees irrationally hated Jesus’s guts because he violated their beloved traditions? Somehow that‘s not gonna happen after the second coming. Everybody will just love Jesus. Nontheism will evaporate. Other religions will be abandoned. People will quit doubting God. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus as Lord. Pp 2.10-11

Others figure there’ll be some holdouts at first, who still resist Jesus. So he’ll have to stick ’em in hell to cool off. (Ironic pun intended. But like I said, some of ’em think hell’s a metaphor, and therefore not that hot.) After a time, they’ll come to their senses and get with the program. You know, like those terrorists who don’t wanna rat on their buddies, but after a bit of sleep deprivation and waterboarding, they’ll tell you anything you wanna hear; they’ll even make stuff up. Hell’s job is to break them. (Although they will never, ever put it this way… but yeah, that’s roughly what they’re imagining.) So hell is kinda like a purgatory.

And of course there’s their fallback position about God being love. And a loving God would never throw loved ones into hell if he could help it, right?

Yeah, you could show them how every bible quote they use was quoted wrong. Believe you me, I’ve tried. They’ll just shrug off these errors with, “God is love, and God won’t send anyone to hell. He just won’t.”

So… forcing people into his kingdom is loving ’em?

Okay, I’ll concede two of the universalists’ points:

• God is love.
• God won’t force people into hell.

I should point out though: If God won’t force people into hell, why on earth do universalists maintain God forces people into heaven?

Why do universalists insist God’ll save everybody? Simple: If they were God, they’d save everybody. The foundation of a whole lot of bad theology is the all-too-human, all-too-arrogant insistence that God thinks like we do. If we were God, we’d find some way, by hook or by crook, to abolish or negate hell, and get everybody into heaven. Doesn’t that sound loving of us?

Well, not really. ’Cause not everyone wants heaven. Currently they spend their lives trying to evade God’s presence. Yeah okay, some of ’em have the entirely wrong idea about God; they think he’s evil, so they’re rejecting an evil God. I get that. So does God; he can work with that, and correct ’em, and show them he loves them. But the rest of those who avoid God aren’t wrong about him: He’s good, but they want the right to redefine “goodness” to suit themselves, and God keeps getting in their way. They might claim “honest mistake,” but they’re far from honest. They want nothing to do with God nor his heavenly kingdom. They’ll go anywhere to get away from him. Even hell.

As nice as we imagine the kingdom to be, and try to make it sound that way, there are always gonna be people who look at the idea with offense and horror. Often ’cause we’re describing it wrong. We regularly make the same mistake as universalists: We describe the kingdom of heaven like we’d want it to look, and work; not how Jesus describes it. We fill it with all our favorite things—as if what we like, works for everyone. (This is why we’ve gotta cut back on the speculating and stick to Jesus.) But even the scriptures’ depiction—God’s presence, people of every nation and tongue, praises and glory and healing and blessing and abundant life—is gonna bug some people. They don’t want such a heaven.

But no, say universalists. Everybody goes there. Everybody will want to go there. It’ll be irresistible. Because God will fix us first.

Fix us? Yep. He’ll make it so we invariably want heaven. Free will? Gone. Sinful attitudes, behaviors, emotions, intentions? Wiped away like a reformatted hard drive. Anything else we don’t happen to like about human beings? It’ll all be deleted. No one will resemble the old sinners they used to be.

This is what universalists imagine when they think of Jesus making everything new: When we enter the kingdom together, we’ll be happy forever, for we’ve been reprogrammed. Happiness will no longer be a choice. It’ll be our default setting.

Again, it’s how they’d do it. It’s how people try to “fix” one another all the time—if only there weren’t laws against it. Kids out of control? Send ’em to boot camp. Too many foreign-speaking brown people in your neighborhood? See if you can’t get a few of ’em deported or jailed. Your fine young son has turned out gay? There’s a therapist who can make him straight. Make everyone fit our standards; make ’em behave; make ’em conform. Doesn’t matter what they personally want. They don’t know any better.

This is universalism’s dirty little secret: They figure God’s gonna forgive all, then lobotomize us so we can never sin again. The resistant get tortured in hell till they finally break. They claim God is love—he’s doing all these things to people out of love!—but obviously they have some really f---ed-up ideas about love.

Really, the ball’s in our court.

Ezekiel 33.11 GNT

“As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die?”

“…There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”

—C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, chapter 9.

The reason universalism isn’t true, is because people embrace the dark. Jn 3.19

They embrace agnosticism: They love the idea God is unknowable, ’cause it means they never, ever have to seek him out. They embrace evil: They don’t want a God who rejects their misbehavior; they don’t want anything resembling him to even exist. They embrace their own will instead of his. They embrace their own kingdom instead of his. It’s not because they don’t know any better. It’s because they reject better.

Yes, God is almighty and sovereign, and could force people into his kingdom regardless. But he doesn’t want captives and slaves; he wants eager followers. He doesn’t want manipulated chess pieces; he wants willing participants. He doesn’t want pre-programmed drones; he wants obedient daughters and sons. It’s why he gives us commands instead of uncontrollable urges, why he draws us instead of compels us. It’s free will. Apparently God thinks it important.

Universalists do not. Heaven will be good. And if we won’t believe it’s good, God’ll make us believe it’s good.

Once we understand how universalism really works, we ought not be quite so eager to embrace the idea.