Have you seen or heard the "football field" illustration of the age of the earth and where human life shows up? It's worth five minutes of your life.

Just want the "Cliff's Notes" version? OK. Scientists believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Stretch those years across the 100 yards of a football field and you go over 90 yards before you start seeing mammals appear on the earth. Humanity as we know it shows up in the last inch before the goal line. Your life and mine are less than 1/1000 of a millimeter on this football field.

That's not eternity, mind you, that's just a REALLY LONG TIME - 4.5 billion years.

Now, let's imagine that there is another football field starting from today, and heading 4.5 billion years into the future. And let's say that something that a person does in their lifetime has the power to either give them an ice cream cone every day for the rest of those 4.5 billion years, or to make them get punched in the face once a day for the same amount of time. Now let's say that the secret to getting the ice cream cone or the punch in the face is knowing a certain dance. It has 14 steps. You can learn it in about 5 minutes and it takes about 20 seconds to perform.

There is an ultimate power in this football field reality and that ultimate power decides whether you get the ice cream cone treatment or the punch in the face treatment based upon whether you learned the dance in your sliver of life on this football field.

The problem is, not all the humans on the football field have access to learning the dance. No one they know has knowledge of how it goes. Some people who happen to live in "dancing areas" don't master the dance, or fail to understand how important it is to learn the dance. It doesn't matter, the ultimate power of the football field makes no exceptions. You either learn the dance and get the ice cream cone treatment, or you don't and you get the punch in the face treatment. Every day for 4.5 billion years.

What do you think of the ultimate power? Is this being good? Just? Loving?

See where I'm going?

The Christian story I have grown up with tells me the good, loving, just Ultimate Power of the Universe has created life in this way. Eternity stretches out before us, not just for a football field of 4.5 billion years, but for 4.5 billion football fields of 4.5 billion years, and then more. And there is heaven and there is hell. Heaven is eternal bliss in God's presence. Hell is conscious physical torment separated from anything good. Both are forever. Both fates are sealed with NO CHANCE OF IT CHANGING, based upon a person hearing and responding to the gospel, the story that Jesus is the Savior of the world and through following him and placing trust in Him your eternal destiny will be fixed.

I cannot call an Ultimate Power who treats created beings this way good, or just, or loving.

So whether one believes the earth is 6000 years old or 4.5 billion years old, the problem is the same. It's eternity, based upon something that happens in an instant, that the majority of humans never even have had the chance to do.

I believe the Ultimate Power of the Universe is good, is just, is loving. So when it comes to the eternal destiny of human beings, I believe there must be another answer. The traditional story handed down to me requires an unjust, unloving Ultimate Power - one who would torture creatures every day forever with no chance of it ever ending. Ever. I refuse to believe that the heart of everything we know and experience is such a Being.

I don't know exactly what the answer is. How does God judge? What mechanism does God have in place for allowing God's creatures to change their destiny after their physical heart stops beating? I don't know - but I have to believe there is some way. Because God is good, loving, and just.