#976 Why Would God Create People He Knew Would Go to Hell?
January 25, 2026Dear Dr. Craig,
I am a man in my twenties living in Korea, and although I have not yet come to faith, I believe that Christianity is true and that the God of Christianity truly exists. I also have a clear understanding of the gospel as Christianity presents it. However, despite knowing the gospel, I have been unable to come to faith because of certain logical, theological, and philosophical obstacles. I would be grateful if you could address and refute the argument I am currently struggling with. My argument is as follows.
I believe that genuine love seems to imply anti-natalism. Suppose there is a set of parents who live in an area known for a dangerous and influential gang. These parents know that if they have a child, the child will have the genuine possibility of either choosing, of his own free will, to join what the parents consider an evil environment (the gang), or choosing to remain safely within the care of his parents. In such a situation, would it really be the loving choice for the parents to bring a child into existence?
In this scenario, it seems more loving not to have a child. Certainly, if the child freely chose to remain with the parents, then the decision to have the child would prove beneficial and achieve its intended purpose. However, if the opposite outcome occurred—if the child chose the gang—the parents would deeply regret having brought the child into existence and would think that non-existence would have been far better. In cases like this, one ought to consider the worst possibility rather than the best. While the best-case outcome would be wonderful, it seems that avoiding the worst-case outcome is incomparably more important, since non-existence prevents that terrible possibility altogether.
Now, let us apply this reasoning to Christianity. Christianity teaches that God is love and that God created human beings in order to share His love with them. At creation, God knew that humans would face the genuine possibility—on the last day—of either choosing God or choosing hell. If God truly loves His creatures, how could He bear to watch those He loves condemn themselves, by their own free choice, to a place that He Himself sees as unimaginably terrible?
The earlier example of the gang does not come close to capturing the Christian understanding of hell. From a Christian worldview, hell is vastly more horrific, dreadful, and devastating than any earthly danger a parent can imagine. And yet God still created human beings. For this reason, I find it extremely difficult to understand or accept the claim that “God is love.” The thought of my own beloved mother choosing hell is unbearable.
In addition to this, issues such as the problem of evil and suffering, the divine command to destroy the Canaanites (herem), the existence of people who never hear the gospel, and the fact that some fall into cults or heresies—all of these hinder me from coming to faith.
I sincerely desire to come to faith, to share in the love of God and His church, and to live within the joy of that fellowship. Therefore, I would be truly grateful if you could help me by addressing and refuting my argument. Thank you very much for reading.
Wooseok
Korea, South
Dr. craig’s response
A
I’m so glad that you want to come to Christian faith, Wooseok, and I would encourage you to follow the Spirit’s leading. Many of us came to faith without having all of our questions answered. Indeed, if saving faith required having answers to all our questions, then faith would be indefinitely postponed.
In the title of this QoW I have tried to capture the essence of your question. Your opening argument about anti-natalism is really not relevant to your question because the situation envisioned not analogous. I imagine that every Christian married couple asks themselves whether it is right to bring children into this sinful and decaying world. I can imagine situations--for example, a couple imprisoned in a concentration camp--who might reasonably refrain from having children until they are released; but for the vast majority of us, to refrain from having children is to display a lack of trust in the sovereignty of God and to act out of fear.
The better analogy for your question would be whether or not a couple should choose to have children, even though they knew that some of them would freely rebel against their parents and lead self-destructive lives. Are they morally obliged to refrain from having children altogether? The disanalogy remains in the fact that coming to know and love their parents is not an incommensurable good for the children, as is the knowledge of God.
I have addressed the question of why God would create persons, knowing that some of them would freely rebel against Him and be forever lost here https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/christian-particularism/no-other-name-a-middle-knowledge-perspective-on-the-exclusivity-of-salvatio. Crucial to answering this question is understanding that the knowledge of God is, indeed, an incommensurable good, literally beyond comparison. It is an infinite good. God’s desire is to bestow this incomprehensible gift upon every person He creates, and therefore by His Holy Spirit He seeks to convict and draw every person to Himself. My hypothesis is that there is no world feasible for God having a more optimal balance between saved and lost than the actual world.
Should God therefore have refrained from creation altogether? I think that the blessedness and happiness of those who would freely choose to believe in God should not be prevented by those who freely reject God’s love and His every effort to save them. Such persons shake their fists in the face of God and defiantly reject Him. Such evil persons should not be allowed to have, in effect, a veto power over God’s decision to create. Why should those who would want to know God and His love suffer loss of an infinite good because of the perfidy of those who would reject Him? Since God’s decision to create brings about an incommensurable good, we cannot conclude that his goodness would preclude it, despite the tragedy of the loss of those who freely reject Him.
Your other questions--like “the problem of evil and suffering, the divine command to destroy the Canaanites (herem), the existence of people who never hear the gospel, and the fact that some fall into cults or heresies”—are all addressed on our website www.ReasonableFaith.org or in my books like Hard Questions, Real Answers.
Keep seeking God, Wooseok, claiming Jesus’ promise: “Seek, and you will find” (Matthew 7.7).
- William Lane Craig