I definitely with RiverRat on this one. He knows that the spirit of truth causes him to say the truth. He'll never be caused to judge people, by the spirit of lies.
If I were to get in a crash with my best friend tonight, and we both died; I believed in God and he didn't. I went to heaven and he went to hell; how could I be happy in heaven without my friend?
That this is believe by any believer, appauls me.
Even when I was a YEC I took RiverRat's stance. But even then it annoyed me that people would think that I would believe in this hypothetic.
My personal theology isn't based on
faith or works. So there goes that dichotomy!
Infact, neither have got anything to do with it.
My own theology would have it that heaven and hell, as concepts are a pretty "unknown" area, and warped beyond any fact, by modern and popular Christian theology.
I can only offer what I do believe is the case;
1. Hell is created for sinners.
2. This doesn't include the forgiveable course of a person's life.
To expand: I don't believe God means that one should burn forever, for being born and making mistakes, and believing certain things.
To expand further; A person is born, tries to get through life and survive, doesn't believe any particular thing, and then dies having made his fair share of mistakes and minor wrongs like we all do. Such a person, in my theology, is "righteouss". Whether a believer or not.
Also, Christ said, "I didn't come to call the righteouss". So this means
there are righteouss people. Those people are "normal people who are basically "good".
3. People who go to hell are sinners such as , murderers, rapists, tyrants, ardent disbelievers in Christ (this is not an atheist, but a violent enforcer).
Believers will accuse me now of making up my own religion, but I'm not - I'm only thinking from the facts I've been given. Atleast my theology makes logical sense. The facts my evaluation uses, includes contradictory texts, therefore I have pulled out of making sense of it as an accurate text, and moved on to the "gist" of what it is trying to say.
Any believer who accuses me, is no better. His theology is just as bad or good, it's just that his is the popular modern one made by people with lower IQs than me.