I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:6

“How can you date him, knowing that he is going to hell?”

The words hung in the air as my daughter tried to understand what her roommate was asking. It seemed foreign to my daughter because she was not raised in a religious system like this (at least, not during her formative years). My daughter’s boyfriend does not go to church nor does he know what he believes about God.

I understood where the roommate was coming from because I grew up with similar beliefs. It is often referred to as “Turn or Burn” theology, but I again ask: how can this turn-or-burn-god be a loving father?

I have seen people do all sorts of mental gymnastics trying not to answer a direct question about God. They could not answer directly because their beliefs would paint God as a monster.

What happens to babies who do not get baptized before they die?

What about indigenous tribes who have never heard the name Jesus?

What if you grow up in a household that holds a belief outside of Jesus?

Or if you die as a child while living in such a household?

How can God condemn these people to Hell?

People will try to avoid these questions, because it is easier to say, “We just have to trust that God knows what he’s doing,” or, “God is merciful.”  Saying these things are easier than saying their true beliefs: “Those people are going to Hell because God wills it to be so” (of course, I do not believe this).

I went to a priest in high school the day a friend of mine committed suicide. I was looking for comfort, but he had very little to give. I was under the impression that suicide was an unforgivable sin. I asked the priest what would happen to my friend. Although his words said to trust in the mercy of God, his eyes told me otherwise.

I think this was the first moment I began to realize the god behind my beliefs was a puny god. How could Yahweh take a soul fractured by a tough life, a soul with mental illness, and send him to the place of eternal wailing and gnashing of teeth, merely because he could not stand against the world that had broken him?

At that point I knew, in my soul, that the God of my life was bigger and better than the god I had been sold on for the previous seventeen years!

The truth is that we have limited Jesus’ redeeming power to the life we see and know. What if he can still redeem us, as I believe he can, during the life-after as well?

I did not know it at the time, but I was already starting to run these questions through a primitive version of my filter system (see Foundations 1-7). I knew that God is love and that he loved and personally grieved for my friend. I knew he could redeem any and every sin. I knew that Jesus (and the Father and Holy Spirit) came to heal the sick and broken-hearted and my friend fit within that category.

I did not know how God would reconcile both justice and mercy in my friend’s death, but I knew that reconciliation would happen. I did not need to understand the mechanics of the restoration because God had it, and was reconciling all things, in heaven and on earth, to himself (Colossians 1:20).

Is Jesus the only way into heaven? Yes! Does his healing power end with earthly death? No!

Some of his best work has happened after death.