Throughout my life, I have seen a lot of people who have held grudges about the stupidest things. It can often happen that while defending a belief, you might get your feelings hurt. You need to realize that holding onto your beliefs and protecting them against other viewpoints is going to happen (or should anyway) and you will be challenged. Arguing and debating should be a common practice. Remember though, that you can argue, debate, and even yell at someone, but still show them, love.
Realize that mercilessly shutting down a point of view of someone else is going to hurt their feelings. People often wrap their identity up in their beliefs and because of that, they will take what you say as a personal attack, even if you only attack their point of view, idea, or belief. Arguments should never be focused on attacking a person, but on attacking the ideas. At times, it can even help to point this out to folks you are in the middle of a debate with.
“Look, I’m not attacking you, I’m attacking your ideas. You aren’t stupid, but what you are saying is, and here’s why…”
Make sure to focus on the idea, belief, or statement being made by the other party. If you begin attacking the person themselves, you have lost the argument. Give it up and go home. Lick your wounds and next time prepare better. Learn why you believe what you believe and research the other side. Know their typical arguments and thoughts. Be ready with concrete ideas on how to do things and think of things differently.
In the end, forgive those who disagree with you and attack you. It’s going to happen. You have to let it go. There are many people who I have debated with in the past that are dead wrong in their beliefs and have gotten so upset at me (for attacking their beliefs) that they have ruthlessly attacked me personally, even so far as one man threatening to “knock me on my back” the next time he saw me.
Forgive them. Even if they don’t ask for it.
If someone truly wrongs you. If someone indeed attacks you. If someone really hurts you. Forgive. That doesn’t mean you lie down and take abuse; you can fight back. You can defend yourself, even physically if need be, but in the end, forgive. Forgiveness is not about what they have done to you, it’s about trusting God to take care of you in spite of what they have done. Trust God and trust that he has your best interests at heart.
In 2001, I was in college at MVNU. We had to take a “Christian Beliefs” course. This was part of the liberal arts education that was a part of all bachelor’s degrees from this institution, regardless of actual major. Looking back on my education, I can’t say that I am thrilled to have spent so much time (and money) on classes that ultimately didn’t enhance my understanding of Psychology (my actual degree), but I can say that I enjoyed these extra classes immensely and feel as though they have enhanced my person greatly.
Anyway, while in this class Dr. Sanders challenged us to write a paper detailing a way to get into Heaven without going through Jesus or a traditional understanding of salvation through grace. We were to present our papers in front of the class and then take questions and discussion after presenting them. I recall many people in my class standing up and talking about Buddhism’s enlightenment or how to seek nirvana and even some discussion about the Muslim faith. I remember being slightly confused, did these people really think these were legitimate ways to enter into Heaven?
I have never been someone to keep the boat from rocking. In fact, I have been the one to jump from side to side, just to see who falls out and how much they scream. That might seem cruel, but honestly, I would rather question everything and be certain than just go along and follow fools. Just know that if I argue with you about your thoughts and keep coming back to do it again, it’s because I value your tenacity and spirit, even if I disagree with you. So, I stood up to take my turn in trying to defend a way to get into Heaven without Jesus. Now, I’m going, to be honest, I haven’t torn through my files from 2001 to find that same paper that I wrote. I’m sure it was very basic and not well-spoken, let’s be honest though, I haven’t matured that much since then and my writing has most likely gone downhill without the constant critique of learned professors. However, I remember my main points and will detail my arguments for you.
So, without further ado, here are 3 ways to get into Heaven, without becoming a Christian.
1. Ignorance:
Let us start with an easy one. When Jesus died on the cross, this was the start of Christianity proper. We could argue that the coming of Jesus’ ministry was the start of it, but without a doubt, we can say for sure that after he died, was resurrected, and then ascended into Heaven, from that point on Christianity was the way to get into Heaven. However, there’s a problem with this idea. The spread of Christianity was limited by the speed at which early missionaries could travel and convert.
The problem here should be apparent; people died before the truth of the gospel could reach them. This was after Christ’s death, but before they were able to have any knowledge at all about what had happened, or what they would need to know about Christianity in order to repent and be saved or even baptized. Because of this, there are a group of people who never had the information needed to be saved, but lived after the death of Christ and should therefore be held to the standard of needing Christ’s blood to be saved from their sin. I often think about native American peoples over in the Americas before Europeans came in and began to spread the gospel to them. If they were to die before the message of Christ came to North America, does that mean that they would automatically go to Hell because they hadn’t accepted Christ?
I honestly doubt that is what a loving God would do. To me, when I think about how those people or anyone who has never had the opportunity to learn about Jesus before face judgment at the end of time, I think God has a different standard by which he judges these peoples. In Romans 2:14–16, it says, “Gentiles don’t have the Law. But when they instinctively do what the Law requires they are a Law in themselves, though they don’t have the Law. They show the proof of the Law written on their hearts, and their consciences affirm it. Their conflicting thoughts will accuse them, or even make a defense for them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the hidden truth about human beings through Christ Jesus.” So, we can see that even if a person does not have the “law”, the ideas of what is good and bad are written on their hearts. It’s in their mind. We all have a conscience and because of that understand basic rules of what is right and wrong. God is able to know all things; He will judge the person based on what they know and how they followed their understanding of what is right and wrong.
So, does this mean that we should never have started the great commission? No, of course not. Jesus, Himself said we should be spreading His words into all the world in Mark 16:15. So we are called to bring people out of ignorance. We aren’t meant to live in ignorance. No, we are called to a higher state of awareness. However, do I believe that when I get to Heaven, there might be some Native Americans there who never heard about Jesus, but followed the law written on their hearts? I believe that is possible.
2. Innocence:
I think this argument is one that most people would be willing to make. If a person is innocent, then they should not be held to the same standard as people who have lost their innocence. With the holocaust of abortion going on in our country these days, I have a very hard time believing that God would condemn those millions murdered by abortion to an afterlife in Hell. These are a group of people that would include the unborn, the just born, babies, young children, and perhaps even pre-teens. I would also include the intellectually disabled in this group as well. I might also include those peoples who are plagued by severe mental illness as well.
These are folks who do not yet have or will never attain the mental faculties to understand the offer of salvation through grace by Jesus Christ. There are of course degrees of disability or development that might make some people able to understand to differing degrees. In Romans 1:2 Paul states, “Since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” However, we know that the unborn, babies, some children, and even some pre-teens, often do not have the ability to “clearly see” God’s eternal power and divine nature. So I would conclude, that because some of them do not, or cannot “clearly see”, they have an excuse.
While I would not say that all people in this category get a free pass to Heaven (although I would think all aborted children and most young children) I would say that I believe that most do. However, God is of course able to accurately judge a person’s soul completely, so His ability far outweighs our own ability to make this kind of judgment. This is an important thing to look at and think about. I know many variations of Christianity talk about the idea of the “age of accountability”. This is basically what I’m talking about. Again, I’m not saying that all these people will be in heaven, but that I won’t be surprised when/if I see them there upon my arrival.
3. Soul Placement:
This last idea is not going to be popular and I’m not sure I agree with it myself. I say that because I’m not sure it doesn’t border on heresy. My assumption in this idea of how to get to Heaven without becoming a Christian is that God himself decides where to place souls. In Jeremiah 1:5 we see God saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Basically, God is talking about His foreknowledge here. I don’t believe this is Him talking about knowing a person beforehand like they existed before. However, because of this passage, we know that God knows the choices a person will make in their life. He knows before making them, whether or not they will fail in accepting His love and ultimately His forgiveness of sins.
So, with that in mind, God makes a choice of where to place our souls. He made a choice to place my soul within the growing child that was inside my Christian mother’s belly. Which was also a part of Christian marriage, in a Christian home, in a mostly Christian town, in a mostly Christian country, in a time where Christianity was largely free to be practiced without governmental or even individual interference. My statistical chances of becoming Christian were pretty good. Actually, according to Pew Research, I had an 80% chance of continuing to identify as protestant if both my parents were also protestant.
That’s really good odds. My question is, does God take His own decision, as to where He places a soul, into account when judging souls for eternity? I think he does. I verbalized my thoughts in this way back in college. Let’s pretend a man was born in a remote village deep in the heart of a remote area of the world that holds to a non-Christian-minded religious way of thinking. Let’s pretend that this man grows up very sheltered and eventually becomes the leader of this non-Christian religion in his town. Nearing his death, a Christian missionary comes to the town and begins converting some of the people. This missionary goes to the leader of this non-Christian religion and basically ends up telling him that everything he has been raised to believe, lived his life believing, and dedicated his life to honoring and upholding has been a lie. What are the chances this man will convert? Not very good. Statistically, not nearly as good as what I had.
I merely argue that God takes His own choices of where to place souls into account when passing judgment. I’m not saying the hypothetical man in that scenario will go to Heaven. Not at all. What I am merely saying is that I think God takes all aspects of His creation into account when passing judgment on the souls He has created. Obviously, this is not an argument that everyone gets to Heaven. Not in any way am I suggesting that is the case. I am merely saying that God is a merciful God. Something we already know to be true. We know He loves us, all of us. Those of us who choose to accept His gracious gift, and even those who choose to reject it. However, without Christ, how are we to know for sure we have eternal life? I don’t believe we can know that for sure without the blood of Jesus covering us.
Afterthoughts:
Do these three ways to enter Heaven even matter? Most of those who these methods affect, will either never know about it until they experience it in the afterlife, or were never aware they had missed it, or are too lost in the mire of where God placed them that they are truly lost to His truth. I think that knowing this and thinking about this helps us who it doesn’t affect. I believe that thinking about how God’s mercy and understanding affect those of us who might not have gotten the same opportunities as some others help us. Some of us are more privileged in our Christianity than we might have realized. I know I am.
Also, I think about the millions upon millions of children sacrificed on the altar of self in the name of abortion. The blood of these children cries out to us and so often we look the other way. I find comfort in the idea that I believe they now reside with their Heavenly Father. It’s unfair and barbaric, but at least there is that small silver lining. On the idea of the innocent, I think this is an idea we all want to be true. No one wants to believe that a child lost from the womb or one lost at a very young age is lost for all eternity.
I find it hard to believe that God would allow such a thing. I think the Bible upholds God’s view that children and I would say even the “child-like” are what the kingdom of God is made of. Mark 10:15 even states that people who don’t “receive the Kingdom of God “like a little child will never enter it.”, giving us the idea that Children have already received it because of their innocence. I know this post is out there. There is a lot to argue over with these ideas. I’m open to nearly all discussions about this topic. Having not fully made up my own mind about these ideas, I put them out there for critique and argument.
So in the end, I believe that really, there is no way to enter into Heaven WITHOUT Jesus. It is only because He is who He is that through His mercy and love we can start to unravel the idea that a traditional and even Biblical understanding of salvation may not be the ONLY way to which some select peoples enter Heaven.
Christians have failed. I speak to you now as one of them, the failures. All “Christians” are not Christians. It was the pagans at Antiauk that first called the apostles “Christians” (Acts 11:26; 26:28). They used it derogatorily because the apostles didn’t follow the religious and philosophical thoughts of the pagans.
Christians have failed. We are often still despised by the world, but honestly, not enough. If we truly believed, the disapproval would know no end. I say if we truly believed… and I mean that. IF we truly believed. Because I’m not convinced many of us do; believe I mean. We say we do, but often, I question that belief we claim.
Belief without a changed life is not belief in the truth of what you are claiming, but belief in the benefits of believing. I can sit in church on Sunday morning and say I am a good person for doing so. I can shake my head when the Pastor condemns sin and feel high and mighty for not going down that road in my own life, but when I am full of my own piety, where does that leave me?
We are often truly arrogant.
There’s a Zen teaching that says, “Look at everything with a beginner’s mind.” We, as Christians, have to continually empty our cups so that Christ can fill them with himself. We are so very good at filling ourselves… of filling our lives with nonsense, pride, selfishness, and patronization. So what does it mean to be a Christian? What should I expect from Christians? There was a man who asked Jesus a similar question, he said, what must I do to get eternal life? Jesus asked the man to tell him what the law said,
“He (the man) 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.” Luke 10:27
And Jesus basically says that this is exactly right. Now I don’t agree with everything he says, but Creflo A. Dollar said,
“In order to love God, you must first renew your mind where love is concerned. When many people think of love, they think of human, emotional love, which is basically selfish because it has conditions—it loves when the conditions are right, or when it feels like loving. This is the type of love many people demonstrate toward God. However, God is not interested in you loving Him with your feelings. When we choose what we want or desire over God’s Word, we demonstrate that we love ourselves more than God. We must get rid of our own selfish desires and replace them with the desires God has placed in our hearts. When we love God, we will submit to His plan and purpose for our lives.”
According to Romans 5:5, the Holy Spirit has poured the love of God in our hearts, and that love gives us the ability to love with a Godkind of love, an unselfish love. God’s love is unconditional. Unlike selfish, human love, God’s love puts the needs of others above its own. This is the love God wants Christians to demonstrate.
Every day, you have to make a decision to allow the “you” inside to die and the (unselfish) God Love to live.
That means in order for the love of God to be evident in your life, you have to make a quality decision to allow your thoughts, desires, emotions, and feelings, that oppose the Word of God, to die daily. It is impossible to love God, or others, when you have plans, purposes, and desires that are contrary to the Word of God. How often have you seen Christians who continue to live for themselves? How often have you seen the hypocrisy in one of them? How often have you looked at their lives and thought, “dang, I am a better person than them.”
The interesting part about your thoughts on them… is that you are right. They aren’t any better than you. They aren’t any better, or moral, or anything else. The only real difference between them and you is that they have given their lives over to Christ and are attempting to allow him to lead their lives.
I say attempting because that’s exactly what it is, attempting. Time and again they struggle to live according to his will in their lives and time and again they fail. They fail, and fail, and fail, and fail, and fail. They cry out to him for his help. They say in church and in songs that they believe, but secretly when they are alone in their rooms at night, they pray for God to help them with their unbelief.
I’ve said it before, Christianity is the fantastic fantasy that we as adults are allowed to keep believing in beyond childhood. The Bible tells this beyond belief tale of resurrection from the dead and heaven and entities of evil that angels fight against and we are allowed and privileged to continue believing in.
We have never told Kat (my daughter) that Santa Claus was real. When she would ask about it, we tell her he was a man who lived a long time ago who gave children presents and they called him Saint Nicholas and that he is who all the people we see around Christmas are dressed up like. However, she continues to believe in Santa because she WANTS to believe, regardless of what anyone says. Christians want to believe and because of the truths they see in their own lives, the truth they have seen revealed in scripture, they have the benefit of belief, even if sometimes it’s hard to believe.
I know the truth of the Bible. Sometimes it’s hard to believe. Sometimes it’s hard to live even with all the personal evidence I’ve seen in my life, but I choose to continue my belief because I know it’s the truth.
D. Michl Lowe - Author 