I was raised Catholic and although “an eternal hell” was a cardinal doctrine in the church I didn’t really think too much about it. As a young adult I was invited to join a Bible study by some evangelicals. This was a new experience for me since at that time Catholics were not encouraged to read the Bible. I gradually became convinced that it was by grace I was saved and not through my affiliation with any particular brand of church. For the next 30 years I kind of uneventfully lived out my Christian life pretty satisfied with everything. I had a good life and was blessed with a family. I guess what I am trying to say is that there was no crisis in my life to prompt me to look to change something major in my theology. Just to grow in my love for Christ and in my faith in him.
When my sister first gently challenged my doctrine of eternal hell a few years ago it surprised me how I didn’t react defensively. Nevertheless I was very cautious … but I just kept thinking, “this just makes sense of everything.” I was in an independent church at the time but I was fully aware of the differences between the free-will Christians and the ones that believed in predestination. (I had spent a significant amount of time in a calvinistic church in the early days of my faith). I knew the differences between the arminians and the calvinists were severe as I witnessed my sister go through a very bitter church split over this. And I knew this wasn’t a rare occurrence. So to have it explained to me how these contradicting views are actually just parts of one understanding of God definitely made me think and want to study more.
It was sort of a strange encounter for me since I wasn’t looking for anything new. I wasn’t unhappy in my life or ever given to spiritual depression. My family life was stable and I had a good church. I have never been significantly bothered by the doctrine but perhaps it was because I didn’t dwell on it much. But my sister here was challenging me to look more into it “to see if these things were true.” So a subject I had never thought much about before became a major topic of debate in our family for awhile! My wife was skeptical although she was one who had had major problems with it. I think she didn’t want to let herself get her hopes up so she avoided studying it until she saw I was becoming convinced. I began studying the Scriptures that appeared to support the eternal nature of hell and found that the only passage that is really used to drive the doctrine is from Matthew 25. All the others cannot be absolutely proven to demonstrate an eternal hell. Then I realized that Matthew 25 is a parable and that to take everything literally would add other problematic issues. (Please see the writings on this website to understand the other reasons I am now an Evangelical Universalist).
Over the years as I have read through the Bible I have seen this theme of restoration and full redemption pop up over and over. The accounts of God seeking and finding the lost as described in the parables and God restoring the “destroyed” as described in Ezekiel 16 I believe are the major themes of the Bible and are the themes that describe the heart and character of God. Now I feel a call on my life to be a part of the restoration through God’s kingdom of caring for the “least of these.” I feel that the gospel message of ‘you must come to Jesus before you die and go to hell’ has really distracted the church from the mission of God to be His Body in the world as “ministers of reconciliation.”