The disease manifests itself differently in different people such that some have more egregious symptoms of it, and some less. The proper way of looking at this is not as a wrinkle in theology, but seeing mankind as desperately ill, deathly ill with a disease that will kill everyone. But eventually the disease kills everyone. It just seems to delay, or set aside for the time being, the symptoms or the adverse affects. But note that the goodness they do doesn’t cure the disease. Some seem to weather the disease with a smile and with goodness coming out of them in spite of the disease. So here two people can have the same disease but some display the symptoms of the disease more aggressively than others. Yet here is a woman who glows so powerfully in the midst of this awful sickness that you can hardly tell she is withering as the sickness takes hold of her body. It’s like some people who have a disease, and in having that disease, their bodies deteriorate and they turn into irascible people because they’re in pain.
It’s just behavior that happens to avoid the sickness for a period of time. The good that he does isn’t a medicine that cures his sickness.
But the fact is, even though he did good, it didn’t nullify his sin. Jonas Salk, on the other hand, though a sinner, didn’t have the same symptoms that Hitler had. They have much more evil behavior symptomatic of their sinful condition. Some people have more symptoms than other people. The manifestation (or the symptom) of the disease is evil behavior. Some people have the symptoms of the disease more obviously or in a greater manner than others. Jesus is an antidote to a deadly disease. Here’s the way it works: Jesus is not a wrinkle in theology. But, in any event, I gave an answer yesterday and I’m going to articulate it a little bit more clearly now. I think he had formed his opinion already and was making a statement and trying to make Christianity seem as ridiculous as possible. I don’t think he called interested in getting a clear answer, to be honest with you. So I tried to back up a little bit and explain it to Charles yesterday, to make it more clear to him. Put in those terms, it sounds rather ridiculous because Christians haven’t been careful to explain what exactly is going on here. In other words, you get one wrinkle of theology mistaken and God gets so mad at you that He sends you to hell forever.
But if you just happen to think He’s not worth believing in for whatever reason-maybe you don’t like Him, maybe you like another religion better-you just happen to reject Him. So, it’s not just an incidental detail of theology: Well, if you just happen to believe in Jesus, you go to heaven. And if they get the right doctor, with the right medicine, they can be rescued. People with cancer die unless they get a doctor. He’s the only one capable of dealing with it. The problem itself is what condemns people to hell, and if He doesn’t solve the problem then the problem doesn’t get solved. It’s because belief in Jesus solved a problem. They’ve not been careful to communicate what’s going on here and why belief in Jesus is the pivotal factor. The reason people raise this question is because Christians have not been careful in how they’ve explained their faith. But according to Christian theology, that’s the way it would be.) It just seems absurd that someone like Hitler, as evil as he was, could be admitted into God’s holy heaven, and unconscionable that someone like Mother Teresa could be condemned to hell. (Apparently she does and apparently he didn’t, so this is hypothetical. The more bleak way of saying it is, if a Hitler believes in Jesus, then he goes to heaven, and if a Mother Teresa doesn’t believe in Jesus, then she goes to hell. The notion of forgiveness is collapsed into another kind of statement that I think Christians are guilty of saying by itself, and it creates confusion as a result. Often times when this issue comes up, the question of forgiveness isn’t discussed too much. The Christian theology is that anyone can get forgiven if they believe in Jesus, but if they don’t believe in Jesus they’re not forgiven at all. The important thing is that Charles raised an objection based on the observation of an absurd circumstance it seems could obtain if Christian theology about forgiveness is actually true.
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