Why I am a Universalist, Part 2: God is not worthy of worship just because He's God

I moved toward universalism during college. During my junior and senior year of college I went through a crisis of faith regarding the object of my faith: God.

What bothered me was simply this: God is not worthy of worship just because He is God.

For if God were a fiend, or cruel, or unreasonable, or spiteful then I just didn't see how He would be entitled to worship, service, and devotion. If God were vengeful, unreasonable, and cruel then the moral thing to do, it seemed to me at least, would be to rebel against Him. He might send me to hell for that, I decided, but if He's cruel at least my rebellion against Him was moral and heroic. I had no interest in serving a cruel and unreasonable God.

So I came to this conclusion: God is not worthy of worship because He is God, God is worthy of worship because He is Good.

And this realization, still at the foundation of my faith, sent my spiritual journey in a whole new direction.

For the crisis came upon me when I began to seriously meditate on the morality and goodness of eternal damnation. Any way I sliced it I found the vision of an eternal torment full to overflowing with unspeakable agony to be morally repugnant. No human judge or jury doling out such a punishment would be deemed reasonable agents of justice. Yet this was just the sort vision everyone around me was extolling about God.

And when I questioned my peers and bible professors about this vision of eternal damnation the arguments all boiled down to the same thing: An appeal to God's Sovereignty, His Godhood.

"God is God."
"Who are we to question God?"
"We can't understand God."

and most common of all...

"We worship Him because He is God and you are not."

As I heard these answers in various formulations I screamed in my heart: NO! GOD IS NOT WORTHY OF WORSHIP BECAUSE HE'S GOD! HE'S ONLY WORTHY OF WORSHIP BECAUSE HE'S GOOD!

So, I moved to universalism for this simple reason: It holds to the vision that God is good. No other vision, as I've sat with them, can make this claim.

It is true that counter-arguments can be marshaled. But they generally fall into one of two categories:

1. The bible says that there will be eternal damnation. Perhaps that seems unreasonable or immoral to you Richard. But God is God and you are not.

2. God is BOTH just and good. He needs to be BOTH.

I'll have more to say about each of these in the coming posts, but today my response is this:

To those arguing #2: I claim that God is Good, totally. Therefore, His justice must be good as well. His justice must be loving. God is not schizophrenic, with two competing personalities within Him, one pulling for forgiveness and the other for justice. As Talbott points out, God's moral nature is simplistic. God is love. And thus, since God is the creator of Hell, Hell must also be an extension of His love. Just how this can be so I'll discuss in coming posts.

To those arguing #1: I have no answer than this. If God is God and I am not and you ask me to believe in or submit to a God I find morally reprehensible, I will refuse. I would rather envision and seek a God greater and more gracious than the one you now serve.