Universalism, sin, divinity, punishment and other things

An introduction

I would like to preface this blog post with a few comments of my own. First, yes, I didn't write one last week; the idea for this one has been simmering in my mind for a while, yet I didn't find the strength in me to write it until now, so I delayed it instead of writing something else. Sorry for that. Second, this post will be about religion, and I understand it is a sensitive subject for many folks, and I understand if you wish to skip this one. This won't be a simple critique of religion; instead, I would like to explore a different theological view that we rarely see in the mainstream. Most of this post will deal with Christianity, so do not be surprised if I equate religion with Christianity; it's the creed I'm most familiar with, but as we expand on the meanings, this can be applied to more religions, until the very end, where we will strip this discussion of God altogether.

Universal salvation

Despite considering myself not very religious, I find theology a very interesting topic, and there is a lot of merit in understanding it with a secular view. After all, it is the mix of philosophy, history, ethics, sociology, anthropology and, of course, politics; there is much more to theology than God and the Bible. As many queer folks, I have heard multiple sermons on how I am going against God's will, that I'll be going to Hell (depending on the religion), and all that jazz. But what if I told you this isn't the only way to view God, Jesus and the whole “Died for our sins” thing? That's where Christian Universalism comes into play.

The main idea is rather simple: salvation is, literally, universal. Since God loves everyone, and God is all-powerful, he must therefore succeed in saving everyone, otherwise he would be unwilling or incapable. Therefore, we will all be saved, be it in a future point of our history (like some denominations believe, the second coming of Christ) or literally as soon as we die, for a more direct afterlife idea. This school of thought has fallen out of practice lately because it is much harder to control people when you start with “You are already saved.” You must not live in fear of God, but instead understand that His love for you has already done its deed.

Universalism stands in contrast with Christian conditionalism, the belief that the gift of immortality for human souls is attached to belief in Jesus Christ, and therefore in some set of rules. It isn't enough that the whole crucifixion happened; one must also lead a good life here on Earth (as determined by whatever religion is teaching this) to gain entrance to Heaven (in whichever form this takes). A good chance is that every religion you know (especially Christianity, but also others) believes in conditionalism.

But what about this horrible person?

There exists a certain recoil at the idea of universal reconciliation (the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God), because you and I see horrible things going on in this life all the time, and we see the shortcomings of the human justice system all day long. It feels strange to think that the most horrible person ever has also been saved. And here we enter a discussion of ethics, sin, and purgatory. See, universalists do not necessarily reject the idea of an afterlife punishment; it is very common instead to think of purgatory, a temporary measure to cleanse one's soul, to fix the mistakes they committed during their life on Earth. For Christian universalists, punishment cannot last forever; it has to be corrective, remedial, and temporary. To put a name on those beliefs, if we think punishment is terminal, that is, the soul is destroyed in it, it is called annihilationism. The more classic belief of eternal damnation is called traditionalism.

For me, and probably for many, this may still not feel like enough, the idea that even the worst people can be redeemed. Well, I believe that this is rather simple to explain: we, humans, are constrained by human minds; we are naturally incapable of seeing the whole. For us, a bad deed must be punished, but what we actually want is revenge; you made people suffer on Earth, so you must suffer tenfold, we say. But our understanding of what is “fair” is flawed; it is transactional, a divine view of “fairness” must therefore be different, it doesn't focus just on the deed, but the desire for the deed. You must be punished not because you did horrible things, but because you still have the impulse to hurt, the lack of empathy. God here acts as “restorer” to the human soul, bringing it closer to divinity.

I think the easiest way to comprehend what a purgatory could be in this reading is by thinking of it as a path to cleanse us of our sins, but also of our human limitations, to become divine. This concept has different names across different schools, but it is often called divinization, theosis, or deification. If God made us in His image, our “perfected” form must also be divine, and this is a thing impossible to achieve in our human lives. This is a big deal to me: we must all go through the purgatory. The fact that we look at people doing evil and desire revenge is, in itself, a demonstration that we are not divine.

The limitations of the Bible and morality

I would like to address a point of religious interpretation, especially of the Bible. Different creeds have different relationships with it, from ones that take it literally to a more vague approach. Here we are taking a completely human approach to the Bible. It is a collection of books, written by different people throughout history, that had different reasons to write them. There will be inconsistencies, the narrative will change, and it may be hard to draw a specific “meaning” behind it. Because it was never written to have a collective meaning, in fact, the whole canonisation of the books was a very political act; the councils of Nicaea and Rome were not simple things, translation is also political and carries an agenda. The whole thing is just too complex to be understood as literally the words from God. So, here we understand it as an historical artifact, produced by humans, for humans. No divine inspiration.

Therefore, it is impossible to draw morality from the Bible; in fact, the moral guidance changes considerably throughout the book, God Himself changes in the writing, from a tribal war deity that demands the destruction of His enemies, to the view of God as agape (self-sacrificial love). Morality is human too, and it is through our evolution as a species that we determine what is good and bad. However, I think that there is good inspiration to draw if we believe that God is all-loving. We must also love, and this is already a big change in our current aspects of morality. Do not get the wrong idea, I do not think humans can achieve a divine level of morality, but I don't think that is the point. Protecting the weak and cherishing our differences, living in peace, that is the right thing to do. I stand by it.

Perhaps the biggest discussion on morality is fear. If we are already saved, why must we be good? That is such a gigantic conversation on ethics, honestly. But I find it almost offensive that people can suggest we are only good because we are either in fear of God or trying to buy our way into heaven. By this metric, your reasoning is poisoned; you aren't doing good, you are just trying to save yourself, far from a divine morality. We are not toddlers, and to think we can only be good if there's a reward in the end is pathetic. Kohlberg's theory of moral development would put those people in the preconventional level, the thing you expect from a kid with a limited understanding of ethics.

This is not to say morality is set in stone; we are evolving beings, and so is our understanding of ourselves and the world. Very little is static. While we could determine that things that protect the weak and value our differences are good, our understanding of what is good in that aspect changes, that is important to be aware of. We must do our best, but also aspire for more understanding; morality evolves alongside us.

Removing God from the equation, or unitarian universalism

Okay, so we had a good discussion about salvation, divinity, sin, morality and all that. But what if we expand on the previous topic and ask: what can we do here, now? Forget the afterlife, it doesn't matter. God doesn't matter. Well, there is a religion that spawned from a merge between Christian universalists and the Christian unitarians: unitarian universalism. For context, we focused a lot on universalism, but I must also explain Unitarianism, because it is far less obvious. Unitarians believe in the unity of God. There is no Holy Trinity, and Jesus is not, literally, divine. He is, instead, a great teacher and moral guideline (within context). This notion focuses more on drawing inspiration and less on worshipping. It humanised ethics and morality. In fact, if you wish to think more about this, the notion of a human Jesus is far more impressive than a divine one; his ability to resist temptation and act with perfect love is now a capability rather than a divine gift. We then focus on his words, rather than on his being, and what comes next? Well, why don't we also listen to other important figures who had good things to say? Now we are getting somewhere.

UU (Unitarian Universalism) is a non-creedal religion; there is no sacred text, no divine to inspire anyone. There is a deep belief in science and other humanist texts, with a deep root of social justice (in fact, there are many recent texts from them standing up for trans rights), and there is a general acceptance of everyone. Because it is non-creedal, you do not need to forego your belief; a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, an agonistic and even an atheist can be part of UU, because there is no focus on the divine, but instead on the human. In the right now.

Here is where my knowledge is lacking: UU is a deep and interesting topic, but one I lack proper knowledge of, as it is an actual religion and not just a school of thought. Still, I believe this is a good place to stop. I hope that this exploration of sin, salvation and all that was at least interesting. Perhaps the most fascinating thing is that despite my thoughts on purgatory and God, I don't know if I believe in this; this is just my thought of how it could play out. Also, you might find this rather similar to the ending of “The Good Place”, that Netflix show, baffling that a comedy show developed deep views on morality and punishment, huh? Go watch it if you haven't yet; it's really good.