The Divine Oops

It has been claimed that one of the first things aspiring dentists are taught is to never let your patients hear you say “Oops.” 

That’s probably a joke. I think it’s pretty funny, but it wouldn’t be one bit funny for a patient to actually hear their dentist say Oops.  

My first experience with a tooth doctor was on my eighth birthday, and it wasn’t a happy one. He was old and old school, days away from retiring, used minimum anesthesia, and shook uncontrollably. It’s quite possible I didn’t hear him say Oops because I was bawling too loud to hear anything, but His unsteady hand on that deplorable drill produced plenty of Oops moments. Oh my, was I ever terrified of dentists for years to come!

“It’s not God’s fault if you go to hell!” That’s what the preacher said. “God has done everything he can to keep you out of hell. If you go, it’s your own fault.”   

How responsible is God for the destiny of man? Do traditionalists believe God is to blame for endless torment? Was it His idea? Does He administer it or just allow it? Could he empty and close it? 

These are valid questions for anyone who is sure the vast majority of mankind will burn forever in the fires of hell.

The preacher was sure it wasn’t God’s plan, at least not His original one. 

“Hell wasn’t made for you,” he insisted, “it was made for the devil and his angels.” 

Indeed, the Bible says, “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).  

Don Stewart, in his book What Everyone Needs To Know About God, agrees with the preacher: “The Bible teaches that God did not create hell as a judgment for humanity. God created hell for the punishment of the devil and his angels and not as a place for human beings to suffer.”

Think on that! God didn’t create hell as a judgment? Or as a place for human beings to suffer? 

Then why is hell the destiny of billions according to proponents of perpetual pain? Whose idea was it? How was God’s original intention foiled? How did hell become a place for humans to suffer? 

Not willing to charge God with such a repulsive conception, some traditional theologians have espoused the idea that the God who never would have planned such a thing is unfortunately powerless to change it.  

Let me introduce you to “The Divine Oops.” You may have unwittingly accepted it. 

It goes like this: God created the world. Satan and his angels rebelled. God created hell to punish them. God gave man an immortal soul. Man sinned. God cannot allow sin into heaven. Oops! What to do with man? There’s no other recourse. Man is immortal so he is bound to live on and on somewhere. Oops! Can’t be in heaven! So God has to send him to a place where he did not plan “for human beings to suffer.” What else could God do? He didn’t mean for that to happen. 

Oops! Oops! Oops!

Bishop Keith A. Butler contends, “God created Hell for the devil and his demons only. However, when people decide to follow the devil, they will end up where he ends up.” 

J. Vernon McGee adds, “They don't go there because God sends them; it's the only place for those who have rejected Jesus Christ... There's only one place for the lost who have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and that's with the devil and his demons.” 

Created only for the devil and his demons, it becomes the only place for those who have rejected Christ. 

Oops! 

Sound iffy? It is. 

But this Divine Oops scenario is how many believers rationalize a good God with such a bad outcome. Consider the only other option - that God actually willed it from the outset. That would mean God knowingly created man with the original intention that all but a few would suffer eternally in fire. That’s a sickening suggestion. 

But even the Divine Oops explanation doesn’t vindicate God moving forward knowing full well that eternal suffering of the masses would be the consequence of his creation.  

Here’s the dilemma if you believe in eternal conscious torment: your God is either cruel or He is weak. He is either so cruel that he authored, administers, or allows unending agony, could change it, but won’t; or he is too weak to do anything about it.  

Ah, but some will say God can and did do something about it. He gave His Son to die on the cross. Yes, indeed, but only because He couldn’t do anything else in this view. 

Nevertheless, according to the Oops, it doesn’t change the reality that an overwhelming majority ("many go in thereat"- Matthew 7:13) will end up in endless torment. God prepared it for the devil, and the devil takes many times more with him than God is able to rescue.

In fact, the Oops theory has fashioned the heart of the gospel into God rescuing man from a place He never created for humans in the first place. Meditate on that for a moment. 

By Oops teachers’ own estimation, God will not be successful in rescuing very many, only a very few. But, don’t forget, it’s not God’s fault. That’s what the preacher said. 

God made a way and if you don’t take it, you’ll suffer forever in hell, a fate you justly deserve. 

It’s your fault. 

My intention is not to offend by mocking such nonsense. But I’m convinced it is nonsense. It makes the cross of Christ into an improvised remedy for the Divine Oops. 

“Oops!” a surprised God reacts to His error. “I made the mistake of making man immortal but he sinned and can’t come where I am, and, oh no! (God groans as His hand covers His eyes) - there’s no other place for him to go except the everlasting fire I prepared for the devil and his angels. I’ll have to give my only begotten Son to suffer in his stead and if man will believe He did, I’ll forgive him and let him in heaven.” 

But God knows that even with this “simple plan of salvation” it will be but a minuscule percentage that will accept the offer. Apparently the Creator in this invention valued His glory and desire for human fellowship so much that it didn’t matter if it came at the cost of infinite anguish for billions of His creation.

I admit I’m putting this in much blunter terms than the preacher. He made it sound all reasonable and right, as did Don, J. Vernon, and Bishop Butler. And he had a sincere reason for doing so. 

In spite of an avowed belief in “hell-deserving sinners," the preacher naturally preferred to see God as deliverer from it, not the architect behind it, and certainly not the administer of it. I understand this very well.  

How can we believe that the God who so loved is also the God who so intended? It would be the folly of fixing a fate so as to later be the fixer of the fate. Revolting! 

Could you imagine your surprise if the hero who rescued the damsel in distress from the oncoming train is the very villain who tied her to the tracks! 

So the preacher, bless his kind heart, couldn’t and wouldn’t charge God with such a monstrous crime. I couldn’t either.  

You have to suspend reason to imagine a God of everlasting mercy as the perpetrator of everlasting misery. And for what? The torment is neither reformatory nor remedial. Why must it be endless? 

Does God’s idea of justice demand infinite torture for a finite life of sinning? Are we so sadistic to think we will praise the Lord more in proportion to the discomfort of the damned - the worse it is for them the better it is that we were saved from it? Will that be the joy of the redeemed? 

That is loathsome lunacy.

As you know if you’ve read even one other chapter of this book, I’m not building my case on sentimental philosophy or liberal logic, but on the very words of Scripture. The Bible presents a gracious God who gives life with opportunity for eternal life, and takes no pleasure in inflicting pain.  

The truth of John 3:16 is the heart of the gospel, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That makes sense. It’s life that ends, or endless life. This was the loving Creator’s plan all along. 

He is not a monster, and He didn’t make a mistake. 

 And he never ever said, “Oops!”