Is it okay if fear of hell is the only reason you believe in God? Jimmy Akin explains why that’s a legitimate grounds for belief, even if other, better reasons exist.
Transcript:
Caller: I have a hard time believing in a God who does not reveal himself to us, but what keeps me scared straight is the possibility of hell. And the fear of hell is what keeps me scares straight, and I was wondering what you think about people like me, who have a hard time believing in God but believe in the possibility of hell, and the possibility of hell keeps them scared straight.
Jimmy: I think that you’re in a fundamentally sound position. I mean, it would be even better if you had great confidence in God’s existence, and if you had a conscious experience of His love and a recognition not just that it’s possible to reject his love and go to hell, but that He is actually out there and He loves you and He cares about you and He sent His Son to make it possible for you to be with Him for all eternity and be happy with Him for all eternity and be in love for all eternity.
So that’s the desirable state, and I hope that, with time, God will lead you to where you’re able to experience that positive side of things, but in terms of where you are right now, the Church is not gonna look at your situation and say “Oh, you’re doing something wrong here.”
Self-interest, like “I wanna go to heaven and not hell,” is a legitimate motive for motivating human behavior. Jesus himself said “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?” So Jesus taught the reality of the fact that we can reject God’s love and we can choose to spend eternity apart from God and that’s not pleasant because we’re cutting ourselves off from the source of all goodness. So Jesus himself used that to motivate people to turn to God, and it’s motivating you to turn to God.
You may not, at the moment—you said you have trouble believing in God, I would assume that means that you don’t have a lot of positive emotions about, or confidence, that God exists. And that’s understandable. We have different emotional states, our emotions are not under our control, and so consequently it’s not necessary, from a Christian perspective, that you have lots of confidence that God exists.
What is important is that, even if you can’t prove that God exists, that as an act of will you say “I’m open, God. If you’re there, I accept you, I want your grace, I want to do what you want, I want to be with you for all eternity,” and even if you don’t have emotional confidence that God is there, as long as you, as an act of will, as a choice, you open yourself to God and say “I accept you, I want to do what you want me to do, I want your grace,” that’s all you need to do to be in a good place with God, and hopefully over the course of time the positive emotions and the confidence and the feeling of love, all of that will follow.
Caller: Okay. I appreciate that very much.
Jimmy: No problem.
Host: Thank you, Bill.