Joshua the Firefighter

30-year-old firefighter Joshua Messias tragically sacrificed his life today to save all 200 children from a burning school. Unfortunately, because he saved all the children and not just some of them, his sacrifice was completely meaningless. If only he had saved just a few of them, then his death would have really meant something.

Also, the fact that all the children were saved basically means that burning buildings aren’t dangerous. No one is going to learn to stop playing with matches if some children don’t die. It was quite irresponsible of Joshua to save all the children, as they will surely go burn down more buildings now. It’s almost like Joshua didn’t care about burning buildings at all.

One of the students that we reached for comment, Calvin, said, “I don’t understand why he saved all of us. It would have been more glorious if he had shown his power as a firefighter by letting most of the students burn to death.” Another student, Wesley, responded, “One of my classmates didn’t want to go with Joshua at first, but he stayed with her and insisted that she should go until she finally went with him. He’s so mean. It would have been much kinder if he had respected her free choice and respectfully left her to burn to death.”

Let this be a lesson to all firefighters. Only ever try to save some people from a burning building. If you save all of them, you’re nearly as bad as an arsonist yourself.

Does this story make any sense? Do these objections to Christian universalism make any sense?

“If everyone will be saved from sin, then Jesus’ death didn’t matter.”

“If everyone will be saved from sin, then sin doesn’t matter / God doesn’t care about sin.”

“God sends people to hell for his glory, to show his power.”

“God sends people to hell because he respects their free choice.”

“If God saves everyone from sin, it’s like he’s working with the sinners.”

Credit to Drew Costen for this concept

Edit: Some people have been confused about the analogy, thinking that the burning building is a metaphor for hell and rightly objecting that God saves us from sin, not hell. The burning building is a metaphor for sin. I thought this was fairly clear based on the way I phrased the questions (“If everyone will be saved from sin”), but it’s probably my fault for choosing a burning building rather than something less similar to traditional depictions of hell.