Part 1 Background

My younger brother was crying from his room.

I quickly rushed over to him. He was sitting on his bed, sobbing and afraid.  I asked him what was wrong and he replied, "I’m scared that you and mom and dad will all go to heaven and I will be left alone to go to hell.” I reassured him that would never happen.  "How do you know?" he asked while looking up at me. I explained the theology I was taught: "You believe in God, and that Jesus died for you, right? It doesn’t matter how good you are, it only matters if you believe Jesus died for your sins and we get to go to heaven when we die. Just believe it right now with your heart and say it out loud and you’ll have nothing to worry about.” We talked for a little while longer until he was comforted and reassured.

I quickly rushed down the stairs to my dad’s home office afterwards and began writing some words up on some paper. My brother couldn't be the only one feeling this way, and I wanted to ensure that the message got out. I wondered how many people in my neighborhood hadn't heard of God or hell, and I wanted to ensure that everyone knew how to avoid hell by placing their faith in Jesus. I knew that good works or bad works didn't matter; the only thing that mattered was believing that Jesus died for your sins and accepting Jesus as your Savior. I placed a few handmade pamphlets with the 4 step gospel on the doorsteps of some of my neighbors hoping and praying that they’d get saved. I knew I needed to make more to ensure that no one in our neighborhood would have any doubts about how to change their eternal destiny, and I was often plagued with guilt and anxiety for not doing enough.

Around this time, I also started experiencing some unusual symptoms. I found myself repeatedly zipping and unzipping my binder for school. You know those binders from the 90s that had fabric and zipper going around it. I couldn’t stop zipping and unzipping my binder before placing it carefully inside my backpack before school. I also found myself hitting each step of the staircase in our home with equal force, and going back to re-hit the ones that didn't feel quite right. I turned my alarm clock off and on repeatedly until it felt just right. At school, I knew that doing these noticeable actions would make me a target, so I developed a secret habit in my mouth using my tongue to tap my gum where my last molar was located in a specific pattern: left-right-right-left right-left-left-right. I would do this over and over and over again until it felt just right. Although I knew it was strange, I didn't really question my actions at the time. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned that I was suffering from selective OCD - things had to feel just right. As an anxious child, I worried a lot, and my prayers were constantly focused on my fears and worries, asking God for protection, favor and mercy several times a day. 

I ended my prayers with the phrase "In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray Amen," and repeated it incessantly until it felt perfect. I was plagued with the fear that if I didn't pronounce each word perfectly, my prayer would not reach God. My prayers were a monotonous litany of repeated worries every single night. I was terrified that if I missed one, that would be the one thing that happened.

My perception of God was rooted in fear. It's understandable considering that the God I believed in held ultimate power and supposedly condemned most of his creation to eternal suffering unless they adhered to a very specific doctrine.

Something changed in 9th grade. I attended my friend's youth group service on a Wednesday night. I started going because it was fun and I got to hang out with my friends. On one particular evening, the youth pastor talked about God's grace and it was a type of sermon I heard before but on that night somehow God spoke to my heart. The pastor spoke of how God’s grace is simply a gift given to us. There are no strings attached. There is nothing we did or could do to earn it. It is simply a pure gift because God wanted to and loves us. That’s it. No buts, ifs or ands. It was such a simple message but that night the part with ‘no strings attached’ struck my heart in a way that I remember to this day. Perhaps it was a mix of the worship music, and environment. Or maybe it was the Spirit moving that night in my heart. Whatever it was, it was the first time ever, I felt like I could genuinely trust this God. I started to believe that perhaps God is actually good and maybe the good outweighs the scary stuff like hell. I brushed hell off to the back of my mind with the excuse that God must have a good reason for it. Things started to shift after that evening. My OCD symptoms decreased substantially until they were almost non-existent by the end of the year. They still emerged from time to time, but I felt more liberated and self-assured, a feeling that seemed familiar, though I couldn't recall exactly when I had felt it before. 

I began trusting God’s goodness even though I didn’t know how to reconcile it completely at the time with the suffering in the world and eternal damnation. I just knew in the pit of my being that God is Love, God loves me and I love God. My desire from that night on was to learn about who God really is and break any misunderstandings that we may have of God. I wanted others to experience a trust and deep knowing like the one I encountered quietly that night. It was on this long journey of desiring to know who God really is, that my eyes were eventually opened to see eternal damnation as a false doctrine, and what was unveiled was something far more beautiful than I could dream of. 

Do I believe it is possible for someone to be a true Christian and believe in the false doctrine of eternal damnation? I actually do because that was me for far too many years. There are many believers I personally know who genuinely love and worship God, striving to follow Jesus to the best of their ability, while still holding to the doctrine of eternal damnation commonly referred to as hell. I know it's possible, not because this version of hell is true, but because God meets us where we are at in our understanding and works with us. This can be for generations before we see even incremental movement towards who God really is. 

However, I also believe that God wants us to discover Their fullest vision for us and come to an ever increasing understanding of who God is so we can be more deeply healed and be a better embodiment of God in this world.