God loves all of his children, even those who have sinned grievously or who have rejected him. He is, after all, our Heavenly Father, and his love is deeper and richer and more constant than any love of which we imperfect and unstable mortals are capable.
In Moses 7, we see God weeping — to the utter astonishment of Enoch — over the suffering of those who have turned their backs on him and on his other children. He doesn’t cease caring for them. His love is at least as strong as that of minimally decent mortal parents, who often still love their children even when those children are behaving hatefully or self-destructively.
For that reason and others, I’ve always inclined toward something like universalism, and I’ve long loved Pope John Paul II’s response to a question about whether Christians are obligated to believe in Hell. “Yes,” he replied. “But we can hope that it will be empty.”
However, God honors human agency. We are free to reject him. And, thus, it’s possible, even likely, that there will be some who will, out of some kind of sheer perversity, never accept the gift of Christ’s atonement even postmortem, who will refuse to repent or ask for mercy, who will defiantly turn away from divine grace. Such, I presume, are the “sons of perdition.” I believe that their numbers are, and will be, relatively few.
For everybody else, though, there will be at least some degree of salvation. And I personally have profound faith in the patient and never-ending love of God, which leads me to hope, at least, that most people will eventually receive the fullness of all eternal blessings.
I don’t believe that we can be saved in a state of either indifference to divine law or defiant refusal to repent or angry rebellion against God. However, I also doubt that anybody who sincerely seeks truth and goodness will be punished merely for having made an honest mistake. Moreover, I believe in repentance and progress beyond this life. This is one of the things I most cherish in the Restored Gospel: The great plan of happiness is very, very, very good news.
Posted from Park City, Utah
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