How Afterlife-Focused Faith Distorts the Kingdom of God
- Guest Writer
- Dec 7
- 6 min read
By guest author Alex AKA The Dropout Professor
“One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, ‘When will the Kingdom of God come?’
Jesus replied, ‘The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.’”— Luke 17:20–21 (NLT)
Those of us raised in the church know — or rather, we’ve believed — that the ultimate hope of humanity is Heaven, and the ultimate fear is Hell.
But what if this dichotomy is more of a disservice to us than any kind of motivational benefit?
If you’ve gone through any level of disillusionment and restructuring of your theology or relationship with God, one of the biggest questions any intellectually honest and moral person inevitably has to ask is:“How could a just and loving God allow anyone to spend eternity in a place of infinite torment and punishment for finite trespasses?”
This is a valid point.
Trying to Bible-thump and scripture-quote your way out of it is only going to alienate the people you claim to want to save from this final destination.
So what do you do?
As with many things in my life, I’ve taken sort of a both/and approach to the dilemma, while also remaining humbly uncertain about unknowable unknowns like what awaits the human soul postmortem.
I think it’s worth noting, however, that any sort of faith that is primarily motivated by what happens after death is subject to supreme subversion and hijacking, rather than making the focal point being one’s relationship with God, others, and themselves. If how we live takes a backseat to what we believe then all kinds of mishaps are to be expected as par for the course.
Of course, belief should inform behavior, but if the belief is that all sins are forgiven by declaring Jesus as Lord and that this life is a cosmic crapshoot, every human soul is one-and-done, and there are only two options of experience after the body expires… I think we’ve seen plenty of examples of this not quite panning out as a perfect omnibenevolent being would sign off on.
If the point of an incarnational human existence is less of any sort of an objective scruples quiz to be reviewed, infinitely graded, and infinitely improved upon, and strictly a one-time doctrinal purity/sincerity of belief geographical crapshoot with infinitely incomprehensible stakes in either bliss or suffering, people on the secular side of the fence are absolutely correct to claim that the deity you believe in could reasonably be concluded to be callous, cruel, and evidently has no qualms creating people expressly for the purpose of setting up them up to eventually damn them.
“No Punishment, No Justice” Mindset
It’s hard to effectively “love one’s neighbor as oneself” if the underlying idea is that unless one’s neighbor is in total theological and/or behavioral agreement, they’re doomed to experience an eternity of torture and flames once their physical body ceases to function.
This perceptual trap intrinsically roots one’s love in a “holier-than-thou” position, which does not translate to feeling anything resembling the agape love purportedly held in such high esteem by religious folks.
I understand the concept of the “necessity” of Hell, to some degree. It may seem just as morally abhorrent for someone like Jeffrey Dahmer (who purportedly accepted Jesus Christ before his murder) to not face more than an earthly prison sentence and be welcomed into the pearly gates. Frankly, at this point, I don’t know or care if he was. Not my call, fortunately.
Admittedly, I still wouldn’t want the cloud next to his.
One could, and probably still will, argue that love for one’s neighbor is the impetus of evangelical work. “We are spreading the Gospel to them because we love them and want to save them from their sins” etc.
But this is still rooted in a “we’re right, they’re wrong” mindset, hinged on a belief that the designer and tireless maintainer of the universe either doesn’t care about a vast enormity of His children’s individuated consciousnesses being eternally sustained after physical death for the purpose of punishment for transgressions beyond their comprehension, or worse, actively wants that to happen.
Father, forgive us, we know not what we do.
The Underlying Cruelty of Evangelical Heaven
One of the most striking things I’ve seen in my years around missionary family members and acquaintances is a profound revulsion at the ideas of annihilationism (which postulates that at the “Day of Judgment” non-believers would be simply erased from existence) or universalism (which suggests the crucifixion and resurrection set in motion a chain of events that would eventually redeem all of creation) as opposed to the concept of eternal conscious torment awaiting non-Christians either at the moment of death, or at the end of time. Either way, it’s a pretty telling worldview to see over half of humanity as damnable, irredeemable, and necessary to burn and torture infinitely.
I don’t believe in that God; I don’t believe that was Jesus’ Father.
“Yes, Jesus’ death absolves all my sins in perpetuity, and no matter what I do in life, I’ll be rewarded with bliss forever, while the happenstances of your birth and life justify a ceaseless postmortem brutality against your soul, regardless of your conduct or character. That’s just Divine Will.”
This is monstrous theology.
If you’d push your sibling into a furnace and be capable of turning around and enjoying bliss after, I wouldn’t want to be in that Heaven anyway.
Overlooking the Gift of the Present Moment
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”— Master Oogway in Kung-Fu Panda
It’s cliché. It’s corny. But it’s still true.
I know I’m guilty of ignoring blessings in favor of focusing on things I wish I had or activities I’d rather be doing. Thou shalt not covet. Whoops.
That said, I know I’m also guilty of being hedonistic and prioritizing “enjoying now” over preparing for the future.
We have to balance responsibility and recreation, trust and truth, embodiment and eternality.
Do the laundry. Breathe in. Wash the dishes. Breathe out. Trust the process. Breathe in. Love your neighbor. Breathe out.
“Be here now.”— Ram Dass
Final Thoughts
I’ve made jokes onstage about varying Heavens of different religions and written ad nauseum philosophizing, trying to reconcile the cosmologies of which I’m aware — both for my own sanity, and for the hope of a future where religion isn’t such a tremendous source of division and we all recognize our connection to divinity. Christians who keep prepping for the rapture to leave everyone else in the ashes are doing themselves and their faith a disservice as much as they are everyone else.
God is bigger than our boxes.
The dissonance between how much people who call themselves “Christians” follow Paul in actuality, as opposed to Christ, is maddening. If you don’t think their ideals are opposed, consider the following verses:
“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.”— Matthew 7:21
“If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”— Romans 10:9
Hardly seems like these two are in agreement.
I would rather sit around a table with Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims who are sincere in their respective beliefs, but have done their inner work than a bunch of professing Christ-followers who don’t take issue with the current administration, or worse, actively support it and think it to be some sort of righteous crusade against “the evils of the left”.
To be fair, I’d rather get pistol-whipped and taken behind the chemical sheds than sit around that second table.
Oh well, here comes the holidays.
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