Do Nonbelievers Go to Hell?
C. Gourgey, Ph.D.
For [God’s] mercy endures forever.
Psalm 136:1
Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:8
The Inevitability of Hell
I knew a Jewish man who had recently lost his wife. A Catholic couple befriended him and consoled him. They gave him a copy of A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, also about faith and the loss of a wife. He very much appreciated the gift. He spent much time at the couple’s home, and they seemed to form a good, solid friendship.
Then one day, while he was at their home, the couple sat down with him at the kitchen table and asked him the inevitable question:
“How come you have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”
The man, taken aback, answered honestly:
“Because I already have a faith in God. And besides, your religion teaches that nonbelievers go to hell with no chance of ever escaping. That is a cruel God, not a loving God. The God I believe in would never withhold forgiveness from any repentant sinner, no matter how late may come the repentance.”
But the couple pressed on, quoting from scripture, claiming that everlasting hell for the nonbeliever is biblical and cannot be reasoned away. Finally the Jewish man asked some questions of his own:
“Do you believe in a God of love and compassion?”
Yes, of course, they replied.
“Do you believe that God’s love is infinite, far beyond any human love?”
Certainly, they said. God is love. That is what the Bible says.
“My wife never became a Christian, and remained a Jew until the day she died. Do you believe that my wife is in hell right now?”
The question made them uncomfortable. But yes, they told this man whose wife had recently died, if she died without accepting Jesus Christ as her Lord and her God, then she is in hell right now.
I did not want to write an article on this subject. I thought of doing it years ago. I decided not to. I want this site to speak a positive message, one of faith, inclusion, and healing. I do not want to stir up animosity or ill will. But I have witnessed so many instances of intolerance and lack of love preached in Jesus’s name that I now feel that something must be said.
I work as music therapist in a hospice. I share an office with the hospice chaplain. As music therapist, my work overlaps with pastoral care, so sometimes we talk about spiritual things. One day the chaplain asked me if I had any thoughts about how she could minister better to her Jewish patients, since so many of them refuse her services once they see her clerical collar.
I tried to explain to her about the history of Jewish-Christian relations, about how so often Jews were persecuted, tortured and killed in the name of Jesus, and how even today there are many efforts to proselytize Jews, which Jews experience as an attempt to wipe out their Jewish tradition. So there are reasons for distrust, both in the collective history and personal experience of many Jews. For them Jesus has become not a symbol of love but of rejection and persecution.
The chaplain responded that the history is unimportant. Jews must forget about all that and come to Christ now, for that is the only way they will be saved.
This chaplain is African-American. Never would I ever think of telling her that the history of race relations in the United States, including slavery and racism in all its continuing forms, is unimportant when considering the difficulties in race relations today.
There is a deep perceptual divide between large segments of the Jewish and Christian communities. When Christians proselytize Jews, they believe they are offering Jews a great gift, the greatest gift of all, faith and salvation through Jesus Christ who through his suffering and death paid the price for our sins.
Jews experience it differently. They remember Abraham on the verge of sacrificing his own son because he thought it would please God. And God telling Abraham: “Stop. This is not what I want. No human sacrifice.” How then can Christians expect Jews to believe God would require human blood to pardon the world? How can the same God who asks us to forgive even our enemies demand the bloody murder of any human being, even the Messiah, to pay for people’s sins? How can God be any less loving and forgiving than God wants us to be?
And of course the problem does not affect only Jews, although Jews are most often mentioned because Jews and Christians share a scriptural tradition, and Jews are most often the targets of Christian proselytizing. Last year in our hospice we had a Buddhist patient, Suzanne. Suzanne was a very loving soul. She had worked as a hairdresser, and her clients felt so much love from her that many of them had come to visit her in the hospital. Even though she was dying of cancer and constantly in pain, she still reached out to others in love, wanting to know how my day was, noticing when I felt sad or tired. Both the chaplain and I had been very close to her.
So I asked the chaplain: “Do you remember Suzanne? Do you remember what a loving heart she had? Do you think God would put her in hell forever with no chance of escape, just because she was not a Christian?”
And the chaplain said Yes, if she was not a Christian, that is what God would do.
And I know that Suzanne never became a Christian, because I knew her up until her dying moment, when I was with her. Her family surrounded her, and they did Buddhist rites and chants. That was her tradition, it was what gave her life meaning until the moment she died.
What I find incomprehensible is the disconnect between the profession of belief in a God of infinite love and the portrayal of a God so cruel as to sentence even good and loving people to be consumed by fire forever simply because they failed to believe the proper thing.
And so I asked the chaplain, “Can you not understand that from the Jewish point of view, the God you are inviting them to embrace is worse than Hitler? For Hitler burned Jews only for a while and then it stopped. But the Christian God burns Jews forever and never allows them to escape.”
Her answer was that we simply cannot understand the wondrous ways of God, and that we cannot rely on our limited human reasoning to figure it out. She said also that God is not only a God of mercy but a God of justice. And this is God’s justice.
Such a response is morally unacceptable. Basically it says that if a received religious teaching violates our God-given sense of goodness, then we throw away our sense of goodness and go with the teaching. Such thinking has enabled atrocities from the Salem witch trials to slavery to the Holocaust. The obvious evil of such events is somehow rationalized as conforming to God’s will.
The Rationalization of Divine Cruelty
There is a way of understanding the sentencing of nonbelievers to an eternity in hell that goes something like this:
We are all sinners. We all deserve to be damned. But God made the supreme sacrifice for us. Coming to earth in the form of His Son, he assumed the punishment that we deserved, died for our sins, and paid the price we owed to satisfy God’s justice. Those who do not believe that Jesus was God’s Son who came to die for us are refusing that great free gift of grace and so are worthy of the punishment that should have come to us had we not been saved. That original punishment was crucifixion but now comes in the form of everlasting separation from God. It might be endless pain in literal flames or it might just be exclusion from God’s Kingdom, which is hardly less painful because it is still an abandonment by God that never ends, whlle others enjoy eternal life in heaven.
This sounds very logical, but it rests on a number of assumptions that need to be examined.
The first assumption is that we are all such degenerate sinners that we all deserve the punishment Jesus got, crucifixion. Think about this. How many people do you know who deserve to be crucified, or who would deserve it if they were not Christians? Does the Dalai Lama deserve to be crucified? Did Anne Frank deserve to be crucified? Since she wasn’t, did she deserve her fate in the concentration camp? By what standard of goodness does one make such judgments? And how does one who professes a God of love not recognize the heartlessness of such beliefs?
The next assumption is that God is so bloodthirsty and so arbitrary that “He” would only be satisfied by the violent and bloody death on a cross of an innocent victim. Even our modern methods of capital punishment are more humane. But if Jesus had died by lethal injection, he wouldn't have suffered enough to satisfy God’s “justice.”
The final assumption is that endless suffering with no escape is an appropriate punishment for anyone. How often do people who believe this really stop to think about the enormity of it? How can anyone with a heart or even a sense of decency believe it is acceptable to subject people to endless torture, whether physical or emotional? After Anne Frank died in a concentration camp, is God’s justice served by her continuing to suffer unspeakable pain without end throughout eternity? What kind of a religion promotes such a belief, and what kind of God does it ask people to believe in?
If people are not Christians, it is not necessarily because they hate or reject God or anyone else. It may simply be that they have found a different path that speaks to them, or that somehow the Christian message as they found it did not make sense to them. That is certainly understandable. Why should a religion that professes a God who makes good people suffer endlessly make sense to anyone? Do people who cannot accept such a religion really deserve everlasting damnation?
God would not have given us the power to reason and the capacity for compassion if God had not intended us to use them. That is the true gift of grace we are refusing if we believe in hell for basically good people - or for anyone for that matter, since even the worst sinner deserves a chance to repent however late it may come. Does not the love in our hearts come from God, who is love? If our own love - and our sense of justice too - cannot discern that a God who rejects and tortures people forever, the good as well as the bad, is not loving and just but cruel and sadistic, then where are we? This lack of discernment renders both love and justice absolutely meaningless.
“But I was taught, and scripture teaches, that what I say to you is true,” this chaplain says, and so do many who believe the same doctrine. Somebody taught it to her, so that was that.
Yes, we are taught, by other human beings as flawed as we are. We ought not simply shut down our own discernment and refuse to question a teaching that should obviously be false to anyone who values goodness. Yet this is precisely what many people do. They believe their belief must be correct and that questioning it is forbidden. It does not matter how good you are: even if you are Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama, if you are not a Christian you are going to hell - forever.
So let us look at scripture closely and see whether it really teaches that nonbelievers go to hell.
A Scriptural Basis for Hell?
Let us take a close look at the scriptures most commonly used to prove there is an everlasting hell for those who do not believe.
There are numerous references to hell in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). Here is one:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. (Matthew 5:27-31)
There is no recorded instance in history of which I am aware of anyone tearing out an eye after looking at a woman with feelings of attraction. Are we really supposed to believe that no Christian man has ever experienced such feelings when seeing a beautiful woman to whom he was not married? Or perhaps most Christians do not believe that Jesus meant it literally? Yet they do believe in a literal hell with literal endless fire.
In any case, these verses about “hell” have nothing to do with what one believes. Nowhere in the Sermon on the Mount is hell mentioned as a consequence of failing to believe in the divinity of Jesus.
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my fatherÙs house - for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:19-31)
It does seem that the rich man is past the point of forgiveness. But this is a parable. It is a story intended for instruction. What is its lesson? The story is not about the literal composition of “hell.” It is about the need to live a life of compassion towards others. It is about the torments we experience if we have not done so, once we realize what the purpose of our life really was. The rich man asked for immediate relief from this torment. His request was denied. He would have to experience the pain of knowing what it was like to be Lazarus, sick with hunger and thirst yet treated with rejection. Is this experience without end? After a sufficient period of repentance, would the rich man be admitted into the Kingdom to take his place with Lazarus? The story does not say. Nor does it preclude such a possibility. What the story does tell us is that there is indeed a judgment, that we are responsible for how we have lived our lives and for the love we may or may not have shown. It does not tell us that punishment is forever.
And it does not tell us that hell has anything to do with belief in the Christian religion.
In fact, nowhere in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) is any connection made between hell and belief.
Most of the references connecting the punishment of hell to the failure to accept the Christian faith come from the Gospel of John.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16-18)
This seems pretty clear. But the impression most people have of these verses is based on a mistranslation. One must go back to the original Greek. The Greek word translated “condemned” really means “judged.” In addition, the word translated “believe” really means “to have faith,” which is a much richer idea than the narrow English word “believe.” This is how the passage should be translated:
God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son, so that all who have faith in him may not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world that he might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Those who have faith in him are not judged; but those who do not have faith are already judged, because they did not have faith in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
There is a reason I have put the word “judge” in boldface. We do not have to speculate about what this “judgment” means, or to read into it damnation to an everlasting hell. The Bible itself tells us what it means, and in the very next verse:
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3:19-21)
In this passage the word “judgment” is from exactly the same Greek root as the word in the previous passage usually translated as “condemned.” We are told what the judgment (“condemnation”) is, and it has nothing to do with an everlasting fiery hell. It has to do with loving darkness rather than light, trying to hide from the light, and doing evil deeds. Yes, there is a judgment and there is an accounting, but it is not connected to a hell that never ends and that leaves no possibility for forgiveness.
Just as important, this judgment does not have to do with one’s beliefs but with one’s deeds. How do we know some people loved darkness rather than light? Because their deeds were evil. Their deeds, not their beliefs. This is what scripture tells us, over and over.
Thus what the entire passage really means is that those who love the light, which is goodness, will identify with Jesus’s message of selfless, compassionate love, and this will be revealed in their lives and in their deeds. Those who do not love goodness will reject this message, and this too will be evident and will constitute a judgment.
A discussion of the precise meaning of “faith” is beyond the scope of this article, but if we read through the entire scriptures (and most notably Paul’s Letter to the Romans), we can see that in the New Testament faith does not mean simply belief but rather a profound transformation of the heart. (See my Commentary on Romans elsewhere on this web site.)
Here is just one example, often misunderstood:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above [or ’born again’ or ’born anew’].” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the motherÙs womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ’You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:1-10)
This passage says nothing about belief or about hell. It talks about what it means to be a true member of the faith community. One must be “born anew”; that is, transformed from within. Jesus told Nicodemus this is something he should be expected to know as a “teacher of Israel”: not any specific belief about Jesus - for teachers of Israel were not concerned with that - but rather that faith itself is not mere belief but a radical transformation of the heart (see for example Ezekiel 36:26).
Finally, here is another famous passage from John:
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
What does “except through me” really mean? Through belief in something about Jesus, or through transformation by Jesus’s teaching, accepting its message of selfless compassion and living by it? In any case, hell and eternal separation from God are not even mentioned here.
In fact, throughout the Gospels Jesus tells us he is not interested in what we believe, but in what is in our hearts and in how we live our lives. Another scripture that bears this out is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:31-46)
This passage could not be clearer. It does not matter how religious you think you are. What matters is how you have lived your life. (By the way, “eternal” does not mean “everlasting.” “Everlasting” means endless time. “Eternal” means outside of time. But that is another discussion.)
So did Jesus have anything to say about whether belief in him is sufficient for winning salvation? He certainly did, and it certainly isn’t:
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” (Matthew 7:21-23)
It is not confessing Jesus as Lord that puts one into right relationship with God. It is the transformation of the heart in love, whose fruits are loving actions towards others. This is what the Bible says. This is what Jesus says, for anyone to read whose mind is not clouded by centuries of mistaken theology that have been imposed on the scriptures and have distorted their meaning.
Now some will read this and think I am leading people astray. They will be scandalized that I do not tell people what is the true key that will lead them to salvation and escape from endless torment. But they have no scriptural leg to stand on. Even so, many of them will not be able to consider what I am saying (or not I, but really scripture itself), because their fear is too great. They have so thoroughly absorbed this awful teaching about God and hell that they will never dare to question it - for them, even doubting it would risk losing their souls to the devil. But it is the voice of fear, not the voice of God, that tells them this. And real faith cannot come from fear.
The great tragedy is that many are still continuing to teach others to fear as they do. They are teaching a God of fear and vengeance and calling it a God of love and forgiveness. They are teaching about a God who wants us to forgive, but who closes the door on people forever simply for holding a mistaken belief. This idea of God is so self-contradictory and so absurd that only fear could sustain it. And unfortunately, it is still very strong even today.
What does the Bible really have to say about God’s love? Jesus told us in the Parable of the Prodigal Son:
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ’Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.“But when he came to himself he said, ’How many of my fatherÙs hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father.
“But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ’Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ’Quickly, bring out a robe - the best one - and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.” (Luke 15:11-24)
The parable makes it clear: No matter how far one may drift from God, those who sincerely repent and want to return are accepted with open arms. But this is not what the proponents of hell believe. They believe that God’s love comes with a statute of limitations - that once this life is over and nonbelievers find themselves in hell, no matter how sincerely they repent and no matter how many times they may beg for forgiveness, the only response they will hear is “Go away, I never knew you.”
Not only the New Testament but the Hebrew Bible too is full of passages telling us that God’s compassion has no limits:
The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Exodus 34:6)
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever. (Psalm 103:8-9)
But you are a God ready to forgive. (Nehemiah 9:17)
God is always ready to forgive. Without exception. The New Testament does not cancel these passages about God’s love. It reinforces them and broadens them. Yes there is judgment, but it is not endless, it is not sadistic, and it does not terminate all possibility of forgiveness.
God of Love vs. God of Fear
The Christian God is supposed to be a God of love and mercy. Ironically, this loving God is often contrasted with the supposedly wrathful and vengeful God of the “Old Testament.” But the God of the Hebrew Bible is merciful and forgiving, and even in God’s supposedly angry moments there is nothing remotely close to the cruelty and vengeance of the God of many Christians: a God who torments people forever because they hold a wrong belief, regardless of how sincerely they came to that belief, how loving they were, or the good they have done in their lives.
We cannot fully and truly love our fellow human beings if we believe God has forever rejected some of them. At best, such love will be tinged with condescension. One will feel grateful for one’s own salvation and pity those who have not been saved, just as the Pharisee was grateful to God for making him better than the rogues and thieves whom God supposedly has rejected (Luke 18:11).
If there is still any doubt, Jesus said it all right here:
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28)
What could be plainer than this? When asked what eternal life requires, Jesus did not say “Believe that I am God.” He said “Be loving.” It is all right there in Jesus’s own words. Yet two thousand years of bad theology have complicated this simple message, completely obscured it, and worst of all have turned it into a reason for people to hate Christianity. Christianity owes it to itself, and Christian theologians and pastors have a responsibility, to recapture Jesus’s original message and direct people along the path that Jesus originally intended.
Final Words with the Chaplain
“But Reverend, even though many accept the offer of salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ, there are still many other good people languishing in hell whose pain one cannot forget. There are still all the members of my family who weren’t Christians.”
“God’s justice is not something one can hope to understand,” the chaplain replied. “One must forget those people and concentrate on one’s own individal salvation.”
A religion of individal salvation is no longer a religion of love. It is a religion about the self. And it is a religion based upon fear.
A God who does precisely what he told Abraham not do to, shed the blood of His own son for a sacrifice, a God who burns people in flames that never die, a God who wants us to forget the pain of others if that is what we must do to gain our own personal salvation: This is not a God of love. This is a monster.
On September 11, 2001 we received a dramatic wake-up call. The United States was attacked by people who are also convinced their scriptures teach that nonbelievers go to hell forever. This should have prompted us to examine and question how such a similar belief can be so prevalent in our own society. It should have shamed us and frightened us to think that our own religion could also be capable of such ugliness. But it is difficult to question what we’ve been taught about hell because it is locked into place by fear.
Fear is what keeps this monstrous, unbiblical view of God alive. To those who still believe it: Have the courage to question your fears. To those who are afraid of it: Let the love in your heart tell you that the real God, who gave you the capacity for that love, is a God of love, not everlasting vengeance. Yes, there is justice, and we will have to account for how we have lived our lives. This is what the Bible says. But the Bible also says that God’s mercy endures forever.