Good question, Once again this has to do with the black and
white thing. The world isn't that simple and it is becoming a lot
more complex with each passing day. God does not punish according
to the old testaments ten commandments anymore, rather he punishes
based on the sins of the heart and mind. Let me give two
contrasting examples.
You are born into a good society with good moral values, therefore
you can decide easily for yourself what it is that makes a person
"good" or rather "holy." However, there are many cases where people
in the world are not as "blessed" as you are. So God has to judge
from the light emitted from their souls, but then how is that fair
to those who are born into unjust environments? Is God so cruel as
to merely cast them away? No, hardly.
The thing is that if you are a person born of the cruelest
environments, and you had to steal, survive, and murder for a
living, and that was all that you knew, then wouldn't that be
extremely unfair to be condemned to a hell on earth, only to be
condemned to hell for not knowing any better? For a lot of these
people, it is what comes from inside of them that matters. If for
one day, for even a single instance, this person who was raised in
this environment can ever sympathize and refrain from killing a
person, then in the eyes of God, this act of refraining from
killing is worth more to God than anything I or anyone born of a
good environment could ever do. For a person with no moral
background, coming to his own senses and realizing the pain and
sadness he brings to others is a greater act than anything you or I
can do, who do know the difference between what is good and
bad.
to put it simply, the Christian gospel is a very counter cultural
one. In more ways than one. You won't like what you hear the first
time, and it becomes even harder when you start to understand
more.
The good news here is that God won't admit evil doers to heaven
(including "christians" who cheat, lie and steal, rapists, murders,
etc). The bad news is that God won't admit those who do good too.
Why? Because there is no one who does good. Everyone's guilty of
some sin one way or another. If you say you have no sin, you're a
liar.
So how? The question to ask then is not "how can God let anyone go
to hell" but rather, "how can a holy God allow anyone into heaven
at all"? It's not about doing good deeds to earn your way into His
good books. To think one can do that is delusional.
Jesus spoke on the beatitudes to inform his audience about the
characteristics of a true member of the kingdom of heaven. The
"blessed"-ness are more than just temporal fleeting feelings of
happiness but a state of well being in relationship to God that
belongs to those who respond to Jesus' ministry. The first one
(Matt 5:3) that speaks about the "poor in spirit" are those who
recognize they are in need of God's help and are spiritually
bankrupt. Does this look like someone who claims to have no sin, no
need for God's intervention, not just in the international state of
affairs but in his current condition?
It's counter cultural because nobody likes to be totally vulnerable
and be told they're no good. Worth nothing. Have come till the end
of the road. Unable to help themselves at all. We've been taught to
be self sufficient, that we're ok. Immediately, the first response
of the Christian in taking their baby steps to faith is to
recognize that apart from the grace of God (demonstrated by
Christ's cruxificion and resurrection), they can do nothing. (Which
is a far cry from the brash showmanship of the modern health and
wealth preachers, or those who "brag" or "boast" about others going
to hell and they're not)
It's also further counter cultural because we're asked to wait, to
be patient / long suffering and expect the second return of Christ.
Who likes to wait? We want something, we want it now... What's more
we're told to die to ourselves, reduce our previous nature more and
more, place the other person higher than ourselves... you
learn too that broad is the road that leads to death and
destruction and narrow and hard is the road that leads to
life.
So it's not a simple matter of doing good or refrain from evil that
will help you to gain entry into heaven. When you think you've got
the Christian God figured out, think again, not because He's
unknowable but because His ways are really beyond our ways (counter
cultural?). Being a "Christian" entails believing certain things
(Christ's sacrifice and meaning) and living out the truth of those
things that have changed. End of the day, it's still being able to
believe as what the writer writes rhetorically in Genesis 18:25,
"Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?"
