Last week, I argued that ignorance is actually often a good thing, because knowledge – when that knowledge is useless – can do nothing but make us arrogant. For my money, this makes sense of why the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD) is not actually in the Bible even once. I sometimes have this same conversation with Creationists. They say that Gen 1 (or Gen 2) must be a science lesson, because if it wasn’t a science lesson, it must be a waste of time, and God wouldn’t include anything in the Bible that was a waste of time.
This reasoning is not very good, because the first three chapters of Genesis tell us many, many important things that help us live godly lives. So even if there is no science there (as I believe), it is still certainly valuable. It is useful practical information for us to know, for example, that we humans have a responsibility to care for the earth, or that not trusting God leads to pain, etc, etc. The point is, a deep knowledge of Genesis 1-3 helps us order our lives. But how exactly would it make a difference in your life if the universe is 6000 years old or if it is 13 billion? What does that change? What are you going to do differently if one is true and the other is false? And since it is useless practical information, we should not expect God to tell us how old the universe is. As I said last week, I believe that God puts us on a need-to-know plan, and there are many things we do not need to know.
But some argue that knowledge of the EHD is actually important, because without such knowledge, there would be no evangelism. That is, it is helpful to know that some people might experience eternal, conscience torment, because that motivates us to share the Gospel. Honestly, I feel sorry for people like that. It seems clear from nearly any passage of Scripture that God intends to improve our earthly lives. I am not saying that there are no plans for an eternal life, but it is not possible to believe that the goodness of this life is unimportant to God.
Thus, it would be incredible for someone to say something like, “Well, I’m not going to share the gospel with that person unless I can be certain that she is going to experience eternal, conscious, torment if I do not.” When the matter is put that way, we may even wonder if that person even understands what it means to be a Christian.
