Theological Kryptonite

[oladotun]

There is one question that fundamentalist Christians cannot answer objectively; it is one of the questions that shows the tremendous loopholes in their doctrines and in Scripture. The question is “what happens to babies and little children who do not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, do they go to hell?†I first asked this question at a Bible study over a decade ago when I was still mired in fundie junk, and I was amazed at the answer I was given. I asked the question because I remember being told over and over again (with Bible verses as arsenal) that the only way that a person could go to heaven was if they accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The reasoning always goes like this: Because of the mistakes of Adam and Eve, we are all born sinners (ref. Romans 3:23) and the wages of this sin is death (Romans 6:23), so we need a savior, someone who is divine and sinlessly perfect to pay the price for our sins, and that person is Jesus, so we must accept his gift by faith to go to heaven (Romans 10:9), otherwise we spend eternity in hell after death. So my question was, if that is the case, what happens to a baby who does not even cognitively know anything about all this, but then dies for whatever reason, say a terminal illness or whatever, does that child go to hell? I was amazed at the answer that I was given, which went something like this: small children are exempt from this rule because they have not reached the so-called “age of accountability†(by the way, there is no mention of such an age in the Bible) and until they get there they are technically “under grace� My next question then was, “what is the age of accountability, and show me the Scripture that talks about it, and what if the child misses the age by say one day. So if the age is 6 years old, and the child is 6 years and a day, and hasn’t yet accepted Christ, does he or she go to hell?†I quickly realized that my questions were making everyone uncomfortable, no one could agree on what the age of accountability was (“only God knew†was what one person told me) and their answers were complete and utter bulllshit, and a classic example of how fundies make rules to fit their warped and bondage forming mentality. The Scripture that was manipulated to explain their so-called theory that small children do not go to hell came from 2 Samuel 12:22-23, where King David cried over the loss of his baby son, saying that “he (the son) will not come to me, but I will go to him†the implication being that one day David would meet his son in heaven since his son was not coming back to earth.

 

This answer was the beginning of the end of my fundie journey. Christians can’t have it both ways, you can’t say on one hand that there is no way to get to heaven except that you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, and then allow for a big loophole that does not mesh with your own Scriptures. The fact is that Christians themselves do not want to accept the fact that their book basically teaches that even if a baby or young child does not accept Jesus, they are going to hell, so they find a neat little way to rationalize away. It is complete and utter hogwash and they know it. I am glad that I asked that question now, because like a crack on your windshield that spreads like a spider web, it slowly precipitated my realizing that this whole thing is a huge, albeit effective sham!!

[R. S. Martin]

Most of us start with one question or another that makes no sense. And it just snowballs from there. The fact that so many of us come to the same conclusion from such a vast number of different questions may be some indication of the serious inconsistencies in the theology.

 

There is one question that fundamentalist Christians cannot answer objectively; it is one of the questions that shows the tremendous loopholes in their doctrines and in Scripture. The question is “what happens to babies and little children who do not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, do they go to hell?†I first asked this question at a Bible study over a decade ago when I was still mired in fundie junk, and I was amazed at the answer I was given. I asked the question because I remember being told over and over again (with Bible verses as arsenal) that the only way that a person could go to heaven was if they accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The reasoning always goes like this: Because of the mistakes of Adam and Eve, we are all born sinners (ref. Romans 3:23) and the wages of this sin is death (Romans 6:23), so we need a savior, someone who is divine and sinlessly perfect to pay the price for our sins, and that person is Jesus, so we must accept his gift by faith to go to heaven (Romans 10:9), otherwise we spend eternity in hell after death.

 

I think this is what is called Original Sin. Some churches, such as Roman Catholic and Lutheran, baptize infants to wash them of Original Sin so they can go to heaven when/if they die before the age of reason. I think there's major holes in their theology, too, but possibly it takes care of that one problem--given that a lot of other things are true that I don't believe in.

 

Congratulations in doing your own thinking despite the brainwashing and persisting till you found your way out of whichever version of the cult you found yourself in.