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Is salvation through Jesus alone? This is a question that many religious people struggle with. There are verses in the Bible that seem to state unequivocally that there is no salvation for atheists, Jews, and others. I remember when I was first told that my non-Christian friends were going to hell. I was in Sunday school. My teacher was an elderly woman who emphasized her point by dwelling on the horrors of hell, painting scenes of people being burned alive a la Dante's Inferno. Most of the class didn't take her warnings seriously. I, however, remember feeling quite traumatized.

Many Christian churches teach this doctrine. However, upon examination, their case falls apart.

Try this. Ask a born again Christian if salvation is through Jesus alone. He or she will assure you that it is, perhaps pointing to a bible verse or two.

Then paint this scenario. A six month old baby dies. Where does he go? Most people believe that babies have souls, but a child that young could not possibly have put faith in Jesus, or any other God for that matter.

99.9% of the time, the Christian will say that the baby goes to Heaven. They will cite some reason such as the fact that a child is innocent, Jesus provides for this, etc. The bottom line is- if God is good and just, he would provide an exception.

At this point, we have come to see that even fundamentalist Christians do not believe that salvation is won only by professing Christ. There are, obviously, exceptions to this rule. Sowhere do the exceptions end?

Let's take the next step in logic. If a baby can go to heaven without accepting Jesus, what about someone who has never heard the gospel? We have just reasoned that a child can go to heaven without believing in God, thus proving that Heaven is not only for professed Christians. Once that is admitted, the whole house of cards falls down. We can infer that a person who lives out her life never hearing about Jesus is as innocent as a baby in the respect that she never had the opportunity to reject Christianity.

Now let's take it one step further. What about a person who is raised in a religion such as Judaism or Islam? They may have a passing knowledge of Christianity, but would they be faulted for being faithful to their own religion? Statistics show that most people stay faithful to the religion they were raised in if they don't fall away from religion entirely.

Jesus himself said that God is love. A loving God would want everyone to go to heaven. Therefore, if Christianity is true, he would have to provide a way of salvation that is attainable by everyone, not just those who were raised in Christian homes or exposed to certain Christian preachers. Everyone's life experiences are different; therefore, justice demands that everyone be held accountable on an individual basis. Anything else would be unworthy of a loving God.

Anyone with a grade school education in biology knows that the bible is not literally true- the world is not 4,000 years old, we know it wasn't created in seven days, etc. These parts of the bible must be taken with a grain of salt. The handful of verses that indicate one must be Christian to be saved should be taken the same way, as we have seen that they conflict with the character of a loving God.

Learn more about this author, Sarah Terzo.
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