In your opinion, can a Christian believe in universal salvation?

[Blue3]

None of my business of course, but I'm convinced that belief in it is the fundamental requirement for Christianity to be morally sound. I just can't reconcile any other view with my idea of good and evil. Even the free will argument doesn't really make any sense to me.

Why should God force salvation on someone who knowingly rejects it?

That's like asking "why would God force existence on someone who doesn't want it?" or "why would God love someone?"

I believe everyone will go to heaven, that Jesus saved everyone. I'm not 100% sure how, but a few possibilities:

1. at the moment of death, the truth is revealed to us... and everyone simply chooses to go to heaven

2. after death, either some people don't love God so God's light seems to "burn" them while the same light brings bliss to others...
or after death, some people don't love God, and God allows them to go to a spiritual "place" where God's influence is minimal...
===> but in either case, the individual can choose to learn to love God and enter "heaven," and with eternity this is inevitable for everyone

[Blue3]

The idea that some are condemned to an eternity in hell seems incompatible with the belief in a a God who loves all.

My Lutheran pastor has implied that everyone will go to heaven.  He said that salvation comes through undeserved grace, and that not even believing in the wrong religion can keep a person from receiving that grace.

Jesus died for everyone's sins, didn't he?

That's not the issue though.

The problem isn't about God's grace, it's that Jesus himself said some things that are really hard to reconcile with universalism. I'm thinking of Matthew 25:31-46 in particular (the sheep and the goats). It's really hard (I'd say impossible) to square that passage with universalism.

The "separating" that occurs in many parables (another is the crop with the weeds) is the separating of the good and bad within ourselves.

Or it could be that it turns out there are no "goats" or "weeds".

[Blue3]

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I don't know why that's "traditional Christian thought." When we die, we're still in this universe. There's just another plane/layer, invisible to us, in the universe, that we'd exist in after we die. Infinite time to explore the entire spacetime of the universe, learn all the infinite information out there, reunite with others and make new friendships, etc. It's not timeless, it's within the universe, and God is the "light" that radiates everywhere and illuminates everything.

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That's not what it would be. It would us, our entire life history, laid bare and naked before God and everyone else, along with simultaneously knowing God and therefore the ideal and how far we fell short. Once we learn to love ourselves, and forgive ourselves, the "burning shame" goes away... it comes from us and our mindset, not God.

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?

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God doesn't torture anyone, or overpower anyone.

I highly highly value free will, and reject predestination.

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Jesus's sacrifice, his love, made it all possible. Following Jesus is following love... and it will make it that much easier to come to God and bliss in the afterlife.

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Why not?
And is a God who says "follow me, or you'll go to hell in infinite pain forever, with no chance" better than what I'm describing?

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How? We have to live with each and every one of our actions, and confront ourselves in the mirror, our flaws perfectly apparent to not only ourselves and God but everyone. If we lived a life of love, that makes it that much easier to forgive ourselves and love God and get over it, if we suffer it at all.  We'll never be able to change our past.