Hard Question

There is a very hard, painful question that a nonbeliever can ask a believer, a question that any Christian has to recoil from a little before answering.
The question?
"Do you think I am going to hell?"

It's a hard one, because it's loaded like a flatbed truck carrying a house… or maybe like an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear payload.
The question is loaded to say "are you wishing hell upon me?"
Hopefully the truth is no such thing. Hopefully we don't think that at all. I pray that my heart would stay right and I would not look at someone and say, or think, "you're going to hell!"

But, wait a second, isn't that what the Bible says?
What about Psalm 1:5-6?
"Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish."

That says there's a judgement, and a different place for the "righteous" and the "wicked." And Jesus himself says in John 14:6
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

No other way to being with God eternally but Jesus Christ… that means everyone else isn't going to be… that means everyone else will be in hell…

So can I answer "no" to the question? Absolutely not! But I have to answer much more than "yes."

Yes, I know Christ is the only way to be right with God
Yes, I know God brings us to judgement for all that we have done
Yes, I know that anything else you have placed your faith in is nothing, and will come to nothing at the Judgement.
But, I know you can be changed
I know God has Grace for even you
I know God is able to reach anyone at any point in their life
I know that God can not only fix a soul's eternity, but also calm every fear, work through every failure, and illuminate even the darkest parts of any heart.
No, I don't wish hell on you
No, God does not desire hell for you
No, I don't think that you are broken beyond God's help
But I do know that you are broken rebel like I am and
Yes, hell is what, as rebellious creatures, we deserve.

Sadly, that's too long of an answer, sometimes, for someone asking this question to want to sit through. Also, it is nowhere near a perfect answer, but it's as good as I know at this moment.

(warning, the rest of this post is off the stated topic, but still interesting… to me)

Of course, the next unavoidable step is why God allowed humanity to revolt at all. I talked about that some in a previous post (Problem of Evil), but there is one more thing I feel I should say here:

When you ask how an all-knowing, all-powerful, and loving God can allow evil in His world, I would ask you to have a thought experiment from God's perspective for a second.
Being the Creator, outside of time and space, defined only by Himself (self-existing), what would it be like to create a temporal universe?
Well, here's the thing: I believe, being who He is, God experiences the past, present, and future of this world as one thing. He knows the sequence we experience, of course, but He sees us as things defined in relation to Him, not relation to time.
God didn't create the world, then see it fall, then plan to come and die to save it, then decide that it would end one day…
NO!
God created the world knowing that men would fall, knowing that He would die, knowing that we would be able to experience and love Him, having the choice for the opposite. God created the world in a way we cannot imagine, knowing, experiencing all of it, for He is outside of it all. God created in a temporal fashion (6 days), lived with us in a temporal fashion (33 years), but in both places He knew all of it.

God knows who will go to heaven and hell. God knew when he created the cosmos, when as yet the earth was formless and void. God knew what each hair on your head would be like at that moment too, long before you were formless and void in your mother's womb. God's the only one who knows.

Do I think any of my friends are going to hell?
I don't know, I hope not, I will not extrapolate, lives can change instantaneously.

So, what does this tell me? What am I to think and do because of all this?
What now?
"[Jesus Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me."
(Colossians 1:28-29)