You’re going to hell!
In 2022, I saw this post on Medium on how to respond when someone tells you that you are going to go to hell. It’s a subscriber only post, so you may not be able to access it. I will summarize some key points below.
The author, Dan Foster, an Australian former evangelical pastor who writes about issues with evangelical movement, was approached at a function by someone who knows his work with this statement and was told that he was going to hell. He also routinely gets these types of comments to his articles on Medium.
Dan has three major points about the people who say those things:
· They believe it is a loving thing to do.
· They believe it is their duty.
· They believe they know the truth.
I think he is right about these points; I also agree with most of his suggestions about how to respond to being confronted with someone saying that they are going to hell:
· Don’t stoop to their level.
· Assume the best of the person.
· Respond with compassion.
· Respectfully disagree.
He also gives some suggestions for how to disagree, but I recommend a different approach. Below are my own suggestions.
· I recommend using the model of Ask, Listen, Agree, Respond that I have talked about before in this newsletter. Here’s a link to the start of the series of newsletter on the basic idea. Here are some questions that might get you started: “Where did you learn about that? Where is it in the Bible?” Or you could ask them to tell you about their spiritual journey, asking, “How long have you felt that? What happened to you to change your mind? How have other people responded? How has this changed your life? What do you do to live this out in your life? Has it made a positive difference?” (Not all at once of course.)
· If you are a Christian but just aren’t that type of Christian, you might ask questions about the Bible: “Is that verse talking about believing in Jesus or is it about feeding the poor and visiting those who are in prison?” (That’s the gist of Matthew 25:41, which is often misused to support this belief. Another major verse in Revelation 21: 8 that is also used talks about murderers and sorcerers, not people who don’t believe in Jesus.) I learned in seminary that one of the major problems with Biblical interpretation is called “proof texting”. Instead, you have to look at the context around the verses, not just cherry pick the text the way this person might be doing.
· You might also ask, “Are you afraid of going to hell yourself? What are you doing to avoid that?”
· If you don’t want to talk about the Bible, ask them questions about how they learned that and who they learned it from. Ask how they knew they could trust that person to tell them what is true.
When you get to agree/affirm part of the model, you might say something like, “I can see that you care about my eternal life.” Or “I can see that God is active in your life.” If you think that is true. Or “I can see that you have been on quite a journey.”
I have a couple of ways that I would feel comfortable to me to respond. If you have others, please comment below.
· As a Christian myself, I might say, that I focus on loving my neighbor and my enemies as Jesus taught, trusting that God will make a good decision about eternal life for me.
· Or if you aren’t comfortable responding about what you do, you could respond by saying: “I’m sorry, I don’t like to talk about my spiritual life. It’s private to me.” That’s called a boundary, which I talked about another of these newsletters. And then change the subject, don’t wait for them to agree. Take control of the conversation with another subject of mutual interest.
Have you had this situation happen to you? How did you handle it?