Is it actually possible that a benevolent God would sentence non-believers to an eternity in hell?

I have to admit that I've never really believed this. I have always believed that God would forgive everyone of every sin, including failure to have accepted God as Savior by time of death.

Admittedly, we aren't equipped, mentally, to handle these questions. No amount of intelligence in the most brilliant of religious savants could conjure up enough mindpower to compute the rationale of our world's hidden machinery.

But we'll take a stab at it anyway.

Hell is, after all, the supreme weapon with which Christians judge others every day. Death-row murderers are, obviously, "going to hell" for their crimes, when in reality, we usually don't know if these people were Christians or not. Its pretty easy to forget that "don't kill" is no different than "don't lie" or "don't cheat on your spouse" in Christian law. Yet, every day, Christians judge others for crimes against this world, forgetting that the hierarchy of sins they attempt to construct is really a lie in and of itself.

[The other side of this, of course, is the chorus of non-believers who toss the word "hypocrite" around when this type of judgment occurs. Its the other side's defense mechanism that completely avoids the issue entirely. Not the point here, though...just an aside.]

We aren't here to judge others. Shutting down this natural defense mechanism, so we don't hold others in contempt for doing things that the Bible says are equivalent to things that we ourselves do, is something I believe to be an ultimate goal for every human being on this planet.

After all, judging others reveals an implicit weakness in our faith in God. If we were completely faithful in God's ability to judge others and restore justice, we wouldn't waste our time this way.

But will God actually send people to spend an eternity in Hell? How can a life of anywhere between 0 and 120 years in length merit an ETERNITY of suffering?

Furthermore, wouldn't the knowledge that others are suffering in Hell weaken the ability of Christians to enjoy Heaven? I wouldn't feel good about anybody, regardless of their crime, suffering for thousands upon thousands of years.

And what about many of my friends who aren't Christian? Don't I have to accept some responsibility for an end result of their non-conversion to Christianity? Its a tough question.

Jesus came to earth not as a warmongering chieftain, but as a peaceful messenger. When Judas sold him out for 30 pieces of silver, Jesus immediately asked for his forgiveness.

Clearly, its difficult to juxtapose Jesus' life on earth with the prospect of a Hell awaiting those who don't accept Jesus as savior.

But the Bible mentions Hell for a reason, and the sheer quantity of times it mentions Hell is cause for alarm.

And we're back at square one.

What does all of this mean for our practical living, day in and day out? For me, I can't pay too much attention to the question, as much as it bugs me sometimes. Thinking about Hell seems to be the religious equivalent of a tightrope walker looking down...doesn't get you any closer to the goal.

Hell could be any number of things, from the most nightmarish of realms to simply living out, in perpetuity, situations of pain and suffering within an otherwise normal context.

But attempting to use our own rules of reason to analyze what can't and won't be seen in our natural lives is just foolish. We need to be spending our time improving ourselves and the world around us, and thanking God that our existence is governed by benevolence and forgiveness...which we'll all need someday.