My Grandma was a sincerely nice person who happened to NOT be a Christian. Your “all-loving” God is going to punish her in hell for eternity because she didn't “accept” Jesus?

That question usually has a face attached to it, and it should not be answered as if it were abstract. I am not going to tell you where your grandmother is; Scripture puts that judgment in God's hands, not mine.

1. I will not pronounce on her. “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” (Romans 14:4); “do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes” (1 Corinthians 4:5). Anyone who tells you a named person is in hell has gone beyond what they can know — in either direction.

2. The issue is not a missing password. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The biblical diagnosis is a broken relationship running through every human life, not a formula someone failed to recite.

3. “Nice” is being measured on the wrong scale. We compare ourselves to neighbours; Scripture compares us to holiness. That is uncomfortable, but it is the same standard by which anyone is called good at all. The point is not that she was worse than others; it is that “better than most” is not the category that saves.

4. Sincerity does not make a claim true. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12). A person can be sincere and mistaken about anything. That cuts both ways: it is also why your sincerity about her goodness cannot settle her standing before God.

5. God judges by light received, not by label. Paul says Gentiles without the law still have “the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:14–15), and Jesus says the servant who did not know his master's will is punished more lightly than the one who did (Luke 12:47–48). Access to light is the standard, and only God knows how much light a person had.

6. Christians genuinely disagree here, and you should know it. Exclusivists hold that faith in Christ is the only way, while allowing that God may create that faith apart from ordinary missionary contact. Inclusivists hold that sincere people may be saved through Christ without knowing his name. A few hold universal restoration. D.A. Carson defends the first, John Stott was cautiously open to the second, and nobody worth reading claims certainty about individuals.

7. Turn it around: it claims to see the heart. The question assumes we can know she was acceptable and that a judgment against her would be unjust. That is the same overreach the objection charges to religion — a finite observer pronouncing on an eternal verdict. If we cannot know she is lost, we also cannot know she is safe.

8. The cross measures God's willingness. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). A God indifferent to your grandmother would not have gone to that length.

9. Justice is part of love, not its opposite. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25). A God who shrugged at cruelty would not be loving; he would be indifferent, and indifference is not love. Whatever hell is, it is not God failing to care about what happened to people.

10. What is actually left to do with the question. You do not have to resolve her case to know the character of the judge. The argument does not require certainty about her; it requires only that the one judging her is more just and more merciful than you or I are. That is a claim you can examine, and it is where the discussion really rests.

The objection assumes that a good God would grade on the same curve we do, and that we are in a position to audit his verdicts. Neither assumption survives, and neither is needed to answer the fear behind the question. The case is in better hands than yours or mine, and that is the only thing the argument has ever claimed.

Sources: D.A. Carson; The Gagging of God; John Stott; William Lane Craig; C.S. Lewis.

Related challenges:
• Can God make a rock so heavy that even HE can't lift it?
• Is it fair that a North Korean woman who never heard 'boo' about Jesus, let alone the Gospel, is going to burn in hell for eternity because she didn't choose the right set of parents, geographically?
• If God is all-good, why does God allow natural disasters, i.e. earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis?