(Sorry if the "question/answer" format of this post seems flippant, but I've been reading too much Plato lately)
Q: I heard that the Bible says that whoever doesn’t pray the sinner’s prayer is going to hell. Is that true?
A: No, certainly not. There are many verses in the Bible, and not one of them says anything like that.
Q: Are you sure? What about those verses on signs at football games?
A: If you mean John 3:16, it says that the unrighteous will “perish,” which some people wrongly associate with hell. As non-Greek speakers, we learn what that word means by reference to another verse, Matthew 5:29-30, which is the one place where Jesus uses both of those words. He says that perishing is the opposite of going to hell (“Better for one part of your body to perish than for your whole body to be thrown into hell). The association of “perishing” and “going to hell” perhaps came from Dante’s Inferno or Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, but Jesus seems to hold that “perishing” is something like “decomposing”.
Q: Ah ha! So Matthew 5 does talk about hell after all. I knew it was there somewhere. A pastor once told me that Jesus talks about hell more than any other topic. Doesn’t that verse say that the non-believers are going to hell?
A: No, it doesn’t. The theme of judgment is recurring in the Bible, but judgment is not the same thing as burning in hell. The idea of “hell” comes up a handful of times in the Bible, but all of the references to hell have two things in common. First of all, hell is only brought up as a place where you go as punishment for not doing good deeds (some representative verses are Matt. 5:29-30, Matt. 25:41-42, Rev. 20:12-15). Whatever else you want to say about those verses, you certainly cannot say that they talk about getting thrown into hell for non-belief.
Q: So you get thrown into hell for other reasons?
A: No, we shouldn’t think that either. The second important observation to make is that each time “hell” is brought up it is in the context of a highly metaphorical teaching. Examples – Matt 5: “You should cut off you hand and pluck out your eye!”, Matt 25: “I’ve got the sheep over here and the goats over here!”. I’ve never heard a Christian say that we should literally pluck out our eye if it is causing us to sin. Rather, we conclude that this teaching communicates something very important about the seriousness of sin, but that it is not literally true. But it seems silly to say that half of the verse is metaphorical and the other half is literal. This makes it likely that the very few times Jesus uses hell, it is meant to convey something important yet metaphorical, and that he wasn't trying to advance a doctrine about people literally burning eternally in torment.
