From Fiona and Terryl Givens and their book ‘The God Who Weeps’:
What challenges and conditions may come when we have passed into that undiscovered country, death, we cannot know. What we do know is that Jesus spoke in simple, hopeful terms about the people for whom He died. “This is the Father’s will, that for all which He hath given me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day.” Surely the work of redeeming and exalting that He began before the earth was formed will continue after it passes away.
In the language of conventional Christianity, will all be saved? Put another way will anyone be eventually consigned to hell? If our intended destiny is to become like our Father in Heaven, “joint-heirs with Christ,” then anything short of that eventuality is damnation. As cycles of poor choices may tend ever downward in mortality, so may they hereafter. For redemption to be permanently beyond reach, however, one would have to choose to put oneself beyond reach.
Hell, in the sense of permanent alienation from God, a stunting of one’s infinite potential, must exist as an option if freedom is to exist. That anyone would choose such a fate is hard to imagine, and yet some of us choose our own private hells often enough in the here and now. The difference is that at present we see “through a glass darkly.”
Our decisions are often made in weakness, or with deficient will or understanding. We live on an uneven playing field, where to greater or lesser degree the weakness of the flesh, of intellect, or of judgment intrudes. Poor instruction, crushing environment, chemical imbalances, deafening white noise, all cloud and impair our judgment.
Hardly ever, then, is a choice made with perfect, uncompromised freedom of will. That, we saw, is why repentance is possible in the first place. We repent, when upon reflection, with a stronger will, clearer insight, or deeper desire, we wish to choose differently. To be outside the reach of forgiveness and change, one would have to choose evil, to reject the love of a vulnerable God and His suffering son, in the most absolute and perfect light of understanding, with no impediments to exercise full freedom. It is not that repentance would not be allowable in such circumstances; repentance would simply not be conceivable. No new factor, no new understanding, no suddenly healed mind or soul, could abruptly appear to provide for reconsideration or regret.
For lesser mortals, who never attain such lofty heights of intellect and will, repentance and change continue as long as our striving does. God would not have commanded us to forgive each other seventy times seven, if He were not prepared to extend to us the same mathematical generosity. He seems determined to demonstrate that when we make regrettable choices we are not really choosing what “the better angels of our nature” want to choose. Come, try again, He seems to be saying, like a patient tutor who knows his student’s mind is too frozen with fear to add the sums correctly. ~ Terryl Givens, Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, 2012), 99-100
