Flashback - whilst even one sinner is left unsaved.

In 1982 Dad asked me one evening, how can you, a Christian, sleep at night whilst even one sinner remains unsaved.

This question jolted me. Probably much more than Dad ever realised. He may even have been drunk when he asked it. When Dad drank he usually became quite philosophical. At the time we were working as lai missionaries for the Catholic Church in Lombadina which then was an Aborigional Mission in the Kimberleys, NW of Australia. Although I was baptised a catholic as an infant I had only recently returned back to active life in the Catholic church and many of the doctrines / beliefs were still new to me and sometimes confusing.

At face value it does seem kind of absurd to think that salvation was an exclusive right to a very small minority of people in the world. Yet that is what most of the major Christian denominations actually state. I lived with it only because I believed the fact that God asked us to judge nothing. That Jesus actually said in His Father’s House were many mansions and the mere fact that he promised the thief who was crucified next to him that they would meet that very day in Paradise.

From what I knew about Roman Catholicism it appeared that unless you had the fortune to be baptised a Catholic you would not stand a chance to get to Heaven. And even babies who died before someone could baptise them didn’t stand a chance. Other Christians claim that you must be “born again” to get to Heaven. And the term “born again” has different meanings to different people. The confusion is due to various scriptural verses which do sound hard to understand.

My experience of God has always been one of a very loving God in the image of a Heavenly Father. I was his daughter and all people ever born are daughters and sons of this Heavenly Father. Nowhere do I read that God is the Father of a very exclusive little family. Now…how can a Heavenly Father who loves His children unconditionally and with a love that cannot be fathomed or measured in human terms, design a system which means that almost all of his children end up burning for ever in a pit called Hell? How many billions of people have lived and died without ever hearing about Jesus Christ? How very many Christians have lived very unchristlike lifes thereby setting a very bad example? And even those who have heard of Jesus…how many had lifes so horrific that they could not relate even to the very thought of a loving Father and did not recognise in Him their Saviour?

How much HATE does it take to design such a system? And what monster could be the architect? Not the God that I had come to know. That was for sure.

It is easy to put aside the difficult questions. And so it was that I had not even dared to think about the injustice of it all. Until Dad raised the lid of that particular Pandora’s box. The Bible says:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be
judged….

These words were imprinted on my subconscious by various experiences that I had in my early years as a Christian. I decided that we were lucky that God was the final judge and not mankind, if the interpretations of who would be saved are anything to go by. The question that my father raised made me feel very uncomfortable. Initially it made me feel a failure as a Christian because I could not see where I had actively contributed to anyone’s salvation. But it also made me question what I heard and definitely made me question the doctrines of churches. I began to see judgement all around me. Not only were churches claiming the right to delivering salvation, they were also often pointing the finger at what everyone else did wrong. I began to be uncomfortable anywhere I felt an air of “exclusiveness” to the point where I didn’t want to be part of a heaven that was dwarfed by this humongous pit called hell into which most of mankind seemed doomed or wished into.

Eventually I started looking for answers elsewhere. And I know now that Heavenly Father has a wonderful plan of salvation. That Jesus truly did pay the price for ALL our sins and that he won for ALL of his children the right to eternal life. He truly did say that in His Father’s house there are many mansions. There may still be a place called hell but it is reserved for the devil and his minions and those who consciously choose to align themselves with him. Not for those who through accident of birth, misfortune or other reason are not able to be baptised or born again in what ever shape this is defined by the various churches. This does not take away our responsibility to be good. There is a judgement and we have a duty to live the best life we can. We will be judged by what we know and what we have done with that knowledge. The only things we can take with us beyond this mortal veil are who we have become and the knowledge we have gained. I personally think we will judge ourselves and have many regrets if we don’t live to the best of our abilities.

I know that once we depart this life we will join those who went before us. That we will be greeted by our ancestors. And that there will truly be rejoicing in Heaven. I am so thankful that I have a loving Father in Heaven who is the final judge. I know that Dad is now with his ancestors. With his parents and brothers who passed on before him. And I know one day we will all be together again.