By Jim J. McCrea
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Often it is heard that if a person does not believe in Jesus Christ, but is "good," it would be unjust for a good and just God to condemn him to hell.
That on the surface sounds reasonable. For it seems right that God should allow a person into heaven because he is kind, just, good to others, and civic minded, rather than because he accepted a point of doctrine from a particular religion.
However, to see the fallacy of that, we have to look at exactly what "good" is and its structure within the human soul.
We can use an analogy from the 2009 Star Trek movie. In that movie, the villain would destroy planets by drilling to their core with a giant ray machine and then dropping a miniature black hole in. That black hole, at the center of the planet, would within minutes consume the entire planet because the planet would collapse around the black hole into it.
Now lack of Jesus Christ and God's grace in a soul is like a black hole in the center of it.
The idea that God should reward a soul for simply "goodness" presumes that goodness proper to a soul is completely on the natural level and is that which can be empirically perceived.
However, our souls are structured so that they have a God shaped hole within them. At their depths, if they are what they should be, they have an infinite supernatural good dwelling there. That infinite supernatural good is Jesus Christ and His grace. All other levels of goodness in the soul depend upon that infinite good for their proper integrity.
Now to remove that infinite good in the soul, by knowingly and willingly rejecting Christ and His law, the rest of the goodness there does not have a proper foundation.
That is why Catholics who dissent against Church teaching or other Christians who live in a morally compromised way are in grave danger of losing their eternal salvation. If willfully and knowingly done, there is a black hole at the center of their soul, which is the absence of God's grace (for a Catholic to knowingly and willingly dissent against even one point of Church teaching is to reject Christ as untrustworthy and hence is to reject Him).
Without God's grace, the empirical goods that a person exercises may last most his life, because of the support of society, others around him, and his own psychology.
However, if rejection of God's grace continues, collapse is inevitable, like the planet collapsing into the black hole. The natural levels of goodness in the soul eventually disintegrate because there is no supernatural core of Jesus Christ to support them.
This can be seen when "good" people, with the onset of death, become vile and abusive (however, we cannot judge the individual case. Bad behavior with the onset of death may be caused by psychological factors due to a deteriorating brain rather than a deteriorating soul).
Once in hell, all natural goodness disappears, and a person is converted into pure evil.
However, the Good News is, Jesus came to earth to save us sinners (John 3:16).
Unlike the black hole at the center of a planet, where due to the laws of physics collapse in inevitable, we can always reverse course in our life - even at the last moment - to accept Christ and His mercy into our soul - avoiding ultimate collapse, and having that supernatural core of goodness which eventually brings the whole soul to eternal life in God.