Who goes to Hell?

Q: Suppose I'm wrong. Suppose your son is wrong. I'm standing outside the pearly gates and St. Peter, or God Himself, gives me one chance to explain myself. What would I say except "I'm sorry--I got it wrong. I really tried. But I got it wrong. I saw all the different religions, each saying different things, all changing over time. It seemed just a part of human culture, not ultimate truth. I saw unnecessary suffering and couldn't make heads or tails of it, if you were good and all-powerful. It didn't make sense to me to posit something existing to explain existence: that gets it backwards. I'm sorry, God, that I didn't believe in you, but it wasn't malicious--I just--I just screwed up."

What would Jesus say to that? Would he send me to suffer forever? Do I deserve to be tortured eternally because I read Lucretius as a young man--the 2,000 year old Roman poet who professed his atheism before Christ ever walked desert sand? Because I looked at the ontological argument and found it wanting?

Or would he press me to Him and forgive me? And wouldn't I desire that forgiveness---?

If there is a God that would send me to Hell for making this mistake, I don't want it in my life. Nothing justifies torture. Nothing at all. And He would not be worthy of worship--or even respect. If He is merciful, then I will apologize. If I am right--and he doesn't exist--then I live my life as a free man.

A:  There are so many directions that I can go with this that I feel like I have to first create the outline of my argument, then elaborate on each point.  That way if you don't care about each individual point, you can skip it and get to the parts you do care about! Part of the reason that there are so many directions to go with it is that the question itself is loaded with misunderstandings.  So here's my argument in point form.

1. The nature of Hell:  It is not eternal torture at the hands of a vengeful God.
2. You don't go to Hell for being wrong-  this idea is the confused interpretation by non Christians of the confused oversimplification of the Gospel by Evangelicals based on the confused theology of Martin Luther who was responding to the confusing writings of saint Paul who was trying to dispel the confusion of the Pharisees.  I'll elaborate, but as you can probably guess, it might get confusing!
3. If you ask Jesus why people go to Hell, it's because of a failure to love.
4. Jesus `saves`us by making it possible for us to love through His Grace.
5. People can always reject love, which means rejecting God, but they cannot reject their own existence, so they will continue to exist eternally without love or God, and would in effect torture themselves for this choice.
6. Rejecting Christianity does not make you free.

Ok, so now to elaborate on each point;

1. The nature of Hell:  It is not eternal torture at the hands of a vengeful God.

I think that because so many people learn about the faith when they are children, they retain childish images of faith principals that are actually exceedingly profound.  They presume that their childish notions are correct, and so they reject the faith rather than rejecting their notions!  The devil is a fine example of this.  He gets portrayed in Bugs Bunny as a guy who lives underground and carries a pitch fork, or invisibly sits on your shoulder trying to persuade you to do Evil-  this imagery is laughable, but the theology behind it is not!

So people have this impression that God and the Devil have some sort of a pact, and that if you do not please God he will send you to Hell, the Devils domain, to be tortured for ever.  But it's much more like a marriage proposal.  It's like God says "I want you to live with me in perfect love forever".  Reject God, and you reject Heaven.  Hell is being without God forever.  So God never tortures you, nor commissions the devil to torture you.  If you think of Hell more as a state of being than as a physical location, you will go a long ways towards understanding what the actual teaching is!

2. You don't go to Hell for being wrong-  this idea is the confused interpretation by non Christians of the confused oversimplification of the Gospel by Evangelicals based on the confused theology of Martin Luther who was responding to the confusing writings of saint Paul who was trying to dispel the confusion of the Pharisees.  I'll elaborate, but as you can probably guess, it might get confusing!

Pope Francis warned us against being limited to simplistic formulaic expressions of the Gospel, but these are very popular ways of communicating the Gospel.  The trouble is if you limit yourself to it, the analogy is always lacking and raises more questions.  People have to come to basically understand that the Gospel message is that we can be saved from Hell simply by believing in Jesus, and that not believing in Jesus means we will go to Hell.  But guess what?  That idea is not expressly scriptural, neither is it found in Church history!  It's essentially promoted by modern, American Evangelicals with a modern, American world view.  So how did we get there?

Start with Luther.  Luther was the founder of Protestantism, and he introduced the idea "Sola Fide"-  that we are saved  by faith alone.  Luther was a monk, who feared that he would go to Hell because he could not get his vices under control, and he was reading Romans and Galatians, and he noticed how St Paul always talked about the effects of salvific faith and not works.  From this he concluded that all that is required is to believe in Jesus, and you will be saved, no matter what you do. Never mind the fact that James said "Faith without works is dead."  But Luther misunderstood Paul on a number of points.  What Paul was talking about were the legalistic works, like circumcision or not working on Saturday, upon which pharisees based their merit. He was also not talking about being saved from Hell!

The Early Christians and the Jews did not emphasize much the afterlife.  The word 'saved' in greek can also be translated "healed" or "freed".  The word kingdom used by Jesus and Paul most likely refers to the kingdom anticipated by the Jews, which would be here on earth, and not to Heaven or the afterlife.  The word faith does not mean intellectual assent, but trust-  kind of like if I say to my wife "I have faith in you" it does not mean "I beleive that you exist" but "I believe that you can and will do what you have said you would do."Read in light of this, Paul could have been saying "You are not healed by a lot of legalism, but by grace from Jesus.  Trust Him" This changes everything! 

So the primary point of the gospel is not that you are saved from Hell if you give intellectual assent to the teachings about Jesus.  The point of the gospel is that you are healed of your brokenness and sin if you trust Jesus and rely on the grace won for you.

3. If you ask Jesus why people go to Hell, it's because of a failure to love.

In fact, read the gospel of Matthew and nothing could be more evident.  When separating the sheep from the goats (people going to Heaven from people going to Hell) Jesus asks these questions-  when I was hungry, did you feed me?  When I was thirsty did you give me drink?.... Just as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me."  

We were created in God's image and likeness.  But due to sin, we are no longer in His likeness-  we are no longer perfectly loving.  The point of Christianity is to be restored to his likeness-  deified or sanctified- through the grace won for us by Christ on the cross.  That's why the Catholics that we look to the most as examples of this are people like Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II or Pope Francis-  people who were transformed by love.

If this is the case, I think the people who should really be concerned about their salvation are the Rich Christians who believe in Jesus and in all of this, but legalistically give 10% of their wealth to the poor, while not really being loving, and spend their days judging those who sin sexually.  It was people like that that Jesus could not abide.  

4. Jesus 'saves' us by making it possible for us to love through His Grace.

I don't really understand how Jesus' death on the cross buys us graces- but I think the simplified formulas presented as a means to evangelize are sometimes misleading.  Every time we try to explain it, we only do so by allegory-  do not confuse the allegory for the truth!

5. People can always reject love, which means rejecting God, but they cannot reject their own existence, so they will continue to exist eternally without love or God, and would in effect torture themselves for this choice.

Love isn't love unless it can be rejected.  

6. Rejecting Christianity does not make you free.

I don't think anyone who thinks about it in light of what I said really thinks the non Christian is more free than the Christian.  Free to what?  Sleep around?  Look at porn?  Drink yourself silly?  Lie?  Cheat?  Spend your money selfishly?  All the things Christians call sins are limiting on our freedom, because they enslave us and make us function at a lower level.  The idea of Christianity is that we would be so transformed that these sins would hold no appeal to us, and we could function at the highest level-  always able to love without reservation.  It only feels like a restriction in the early stages.  Like the alcoholic, who sees that he is trapped and being destroyed by alcohol.  At first cutting out alcohol is a restriction, but once he is truly free-  at least in an ideal world- he can eventually enjoy a drink again without it enslaving him. The whole point of Christianity is to free you!  People who see it otherwise need to read Romans and Galatians again, because it was to people like that that Paul was really writing.

One last point.  The writer of the question acts as though he really sought the truth, but he 'found the ontological argument wanting.'  Frankly, if that's your excuse for rejecting Christianity, I would suggest that you have not really looked!  No one I know bases their faith on the ontological argument-  most people reading this have no idea what it is.  Don't think for a moment that you can come before the throne room of the almighty, all knowing God, and lay an argument that weak against Him.  If you want a stronger argument for Christianity, start with the historicity of Christ and the case for his resurrection... after all, that's what all of Christianity hinges on.  I dare you to read, say, the Gospel of Luke, and ask the question-  was this document written by a genuine witness, or was it a fabricated myth?  People who come to the myth conclusion as a general rule have not done the research.