The idea is that you will be held accountable for your sins, but if you have faith then you will not perish.
I think it makes more sense to say something like... upon death you are released from the limitations of this physical world and you instantly come to understand the consequences of your actions and the weight of that falls on you. Without Christ, it would cause you to fall forever in anguish... but he will lift you and unburden those sins from you.
But this requires some things that are not popular in most Christian doctrines:
1. Everyone has every chance to go to "heaven"
2. Only the truly evil or bitter will choose to fall/perish even after knowing the truth
3. It's not like God is standing at the gate looking over your record on some computer and deciding whehter you get in or not. Everybody can get in. That's 100% up to you and you will never have to worry about "not having had the chance to believe".
if someone is confronted with the story of Jesus but finds it unconvincing, then I'd argue that they never "knew" or "rejected" the "truth" because the "truth" was never true to begin with, according to the well-intentioned individual who found it unconvincing. christianity explicitly seeks to punish people for not believing in supernatural powers, instead of actually being fair to humans and taking into account that human reason ("God" given human reason, after all) prevents us from believing that.
I know this sounds rather convenient. We want to believe salvation is something the "truly worthy" deserve... but it's not about deserve. I believe Jesus died for the scum. How our Father sorts it all out will be miraculous in and of itself... but he will and has it figured out.
I'm a believer in unconditional love and grace. In so many ways, that's harder to believe in than law and order.
unconditional love and grace would be nice, wouldnt it. but Christianity doesnt do that, it condemns most of the world population to burn for eternity. god's judgment is no more fair in christianity than the people's judgment.
