What we really believe.
"While most of us Christians believe in some kind of hell, we usually just don't bring it up much. It is an unpleasant subject and leads to too many questions about the character of God. Hell is that crazy doctrine that we keep locked in the basement of our belief systems. We all know that it is there, chained to the underbelly of the theology of the holiness of God. We hope that it stays in the shadows and never comes up in conversation. Why? Because if people found out what we really believed they would think we were radicals, extremists, and kooks. If hell isn't real, then maybe we are [radicals, extremists, and kooks].
But if it is real, then why aren't we more intense, more aggressive, more intentional, more urgent? If hell is real (and the Bible says it is) then we should be motivated to keep as many people we can out of it - friends, foes, teachers, classmates, coworkers, teammates, family members, strangers. . . everybody." -Greg Stier in his book Dare2Share
If we could only see the afterlife, we might be less scared of men and their opinions. Why are we scared in the first place?
"Many of us who have been subjected to the terrorism of Hell do not respond as emotionally as some of the people represented in the above testimonials. We are more hard-hearted. We have learned to "back-file" the teaching of Hell. We suppress it in our subconscience because if we did allow it to be on our minds daily, we would go crazy. It is those who are unable to bury the teaching in their subconscience whose lives are most severely destroyed by the teaching of Hell. The fact that most Christians believe unbelievers are going to Hell but they do little to no evangelizing proves they are really very heartless people or that they have buried the belief deep in the back of their minds. If average Christians REALLY believed in Hell fully, they would spend much more of their time trying to save the lost. The fact is, only a few percentage points of Christians ever share their faith with anyone."
