“Ashamed of hell”

“Many in the church today have universalism simply as a hope. Though they may not preach it dogmatically, they don’t eliminate the possibility that all will be saved in the end. We may call them the ‘wishful universalists.’

I have been told numerous times that there are many ‘closet universalists’ in evangelical churches today. These are people who believe that all will be saved, but are afraid of being public about this belief as it is considered a heresy in orthodox Christian circles, and also because the idea that all will be saved could add to the spiritual apathy of this generation.

Related to the above question is that of evangelicals who are ashamed of hell. They are bound to believe everything the Bible explicitly teaches, so they believe in an eternal hell. But they wish that they did not have to believe it. If they speak about the topic, which is not very often, they do so with a sense of shame, as if it were something very unjust, and they keep saying that they wish it were not true.”

Ajith Fernando from Crucial Questions About Hell