Via Ironic Catholic…
This is an interesting video … can provoke a number of trains of thoughts. A few of mine follow (you may want to watch the video before reading my comments)…
As I watched this, I got the grateful feeling I think it was supposed to evoke for Christians – "that's Jesus, totally taking the hit for me, despite what a mess I am and how little I deserve it." Afterwards I got to wondering though – what about all those people who stepped on the meter and scored "not good enough." Is the implication that they are all destined for hell? Perhaps. Is the video teaching a doctrine that all non-Christians go to hell? Maybe … at least taken at face value. But taken as a parable, intentional or not, perhaps not. At least I prefer to read it that way.
I take away from this the idea that no matter how hard we work, no matter how much good we try to do, we can't meet an eternal and perfect standard of goodness without God. This is not a great leap if you consider the fact that given God is who Christians think he is, you can't even go on existing from moment to moment without a constant effort of will by God. God has to continue to will the universe and everything in it to exist, always, or it simply would not. And given that we believe Jesus is God, and that heaven is eternity with God and hell is eternity without God, it makes sense that intervention on your behalf by Jesus and repentance and an acceptance of Him at the end is necessary to get into heaven.
There are different views among different Christian denominations on what this means and who it includes or excludes in heaven, but the Catholic Church in the Catechism, Section 846 says: "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation."
There's no way for us to know who ends up in hell, and I prefer to hope for the best for everyone – to pray that most people, at the last, influenced by grace and bolstered by the prayers of the faithful, at the final moment before they slip out of linear time forever, choose God.
