Several years ago my faith underwent an existential crisis. Looking back on it now, I would characterise it as a profound questioning of the particular version of God I had absorbed. I didn’t ask for the questions, they just presented themselves one day in the house of my life.
With my perspective now, several years further up the mountain, I can see that I had come to mistrust God, that I felt trapped in the religious paradigms I had received.
More specifically, I felt forced to believe that the eternal fate of humans is best described by one of two rather narrow explanations: Calvinism and Arminianism. These doctrines are, or so I had come to think, opposing viewpoints within the Christian faith.
Calvinists say God is utterly powerful and all-knowing and has decreed from the beginning exactly who will be damned and who will be saved. Arminians (not Armenians, who are natives of West Asia) seek to soften this narrative by saying that God gave people choice. I was taught that this version of events was closer to Scripture and was exhorted to believe it.
Like Calvinism, however, Arminianism still teaches that God knew from the get-go who was going to be damned: most of the human race, according to an awful lot of both Calvinists and Arminians. Or at least their black-and-white belief system implies as much.
Thus only two positions were on the table in front of me:
- God chose who was going to be damned, then created the universe. (Calvinism)
- God knew who was going to be damned, then created the universe. (Arminianism)
To cut a long story short, my faith buckled under the contradictions posed by such a capricious God. It came as no surprise then, that I found myself with a friend one stormy November afternoon sipping coffee in a cafe overlooking the harbour. He asked me point blank, do you still believe? Are you a believer?
I did and I was, but only by a thread. That thread was an idea I had stumbled across which would eventually allow me to stay Christian. It is the scandalous teaching that in the end God will, through Jesus, reconcile every created part of the universe into one united and beautiful whole. As it says in the Bible, “Through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
That’s the other thing: the idea comes from the Bible.
Clawing my way back to faith has not been easy. In fact, it would have been impossible save for this one ontological syllogism that I have clung to with every fibre of my being: God is pure love, God is in charge of the universe, and therefore we live in a safe universe.
We are all interconnected. If even one creature is going to hell the whole ball of wax is going to hell; likewise if even one atom is going to heaven then the whole shebang is going to heaven. As Thomas Merton puts it, “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.“
David Bentley Hart writes that our eternal continuity of self is dependent not on the exact physical molecules of our bodies, which replace themselves every 7 years, but on our relationships and memories. If some of the people who make up those relationships and memories are separated from us in hell, does that mean God will lobotomize big chunks out of those lucky enough to end up in heaven?
I know the objection that always gets raised here: believing in a final restoration will cause us to relax and idly sit on our hands. In fact, I find the opposite true. I would submit that no other theological doctrine demands more from us. Once you truly believe that yes, there is a cosmic showdown going on between good and evil, but that in the end everything and everyone will be reconciled, and that ordinary humans are going to help bring it to pass–that inspires anything but apathy. Instead, at least in my experience, it inspires a sense of hopeful and joyful urgency.
Recently I noticed I find it hard to love a member of a Whatsapp group I’m a part of. I realised that whenever he posted something, I was going back and checking if someone engaged with it. Out of sheer spite, I was secretly hoping nobody would. Of course I had to repent. It doesn’t make sense to believe in universal reconciliation unless you also practice it. Wishing evil on another person will not move the human project forward in any way.
That is the story of how my faith has survived and even sporadically flourished. People may choose to reject the teaching that saved my faith, and that is their prerogative. All I can say is I have found it to be a true belief about a good God who tends endlessly to a beautiful universe.
And it is on that foundation that I will build my faith, for I know no other.