Ross Douthat Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Ross Douthat Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Lindsay Beyerstein: Ross Douthat Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Ross Douthat argues that the doctrine of universal salvation is silly because, if everyone gets to go to heaven, life is like one of those kiddie kickball tournaments where everyone gets a trophy. I think he has a point. If God has a perfect afterlife planned for all of us, the awkward life-on-earth phase seems gratuitous at best, and sadistic at worst. If you believe in a benevolent God and an afterlife, it?s probably more comforting to think of life as a test, as opposed to a sick joke.

Douthat seems to think that life is only meaningful if the good are rewarded and the wicked are punished:

In this sense, a doctrine of universal salvation turns out to be as deterministic as the more strident forms of scientific materialism. Instead of making us prisoners of our glands and genes, it makes us prisoners of God himself. We can check out any time we want, but we can never really leave.

The doctrine of hell, by contrast, assumes that our choices are real, and, indeed, that we are the choices that we make. The miser can become his greed, the murderer can lose himself inside his violence, and their freedom to turn and be forgiven is inseparable from their freedom not to do so.

Determinism doesn?t mean what Douthat thinks it means, though. Presumably, God could have chosen to send people to hell. We?re told She?s omnipotent, after all. So that part?s not deterministic.

A divine policy of universal salvation wouldn?t undermine human free will, in any case. If the kickball coach promises to take the whole team out for pizza, win or lose, each kid still has to decide whether to play hard or slack off.

Which scenario would make a parent prouder: your daughter playing her heart out because she loves the game and her teammates, or your daughter playing hard because she craves pizza and fears being berated by the coach? Her choices are real, even if it has already been decided that everyone gets pizza and nobody gets berated.

Usually, doing the right thing for its own sake is more meaningful than doing the right thing in order to win a reward or avoid a punishment.

Douthat seems to worry that the faithful will have no reason to act morally unless they fear that they could be damned for their missteps. This attitude fits well with Douthat?s conservative politics. His view of human nature boils down to the idea that people are only motivated by their narrow self-interests. It doesn?t seem to occur to him that religious people who don?t fear hell might still be inspired to act ethically by the example of a loving God.

Many conservatives scoff at the idea that people might be motivated to behave well for reasons that have nothing to do with personal reward or punishment–while liberals are more likely to believe that people will find their own reasons to behave well if they are given the freedom to think for themselves and the social support to make positive choices.