The Perversity of the Age of Accountability

Like many identical twin children their age, Timmy and Tommy are very close. They live in a typical middle-class neighborhood with loving and caring non-religious parents. They like all the same things, always play together, and are rarely out of each other’s company.

One morning, while Timmy is at the family doctor with Dad to take care of an ear infection, Tommy enters the kitchen to find a pile of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter. Mom’s cookies are the best, and unable to resist, Tommy swipes one off the plate while her back is turned.

But before he can flee the kitchen with his loot, Mom notices the missing cookie.

“Tommy. Did you just take one of my cookies?” she asks, more in amusement than anger.

“No,” says Tommy, hands behind his back to hide the evidence of his theft.

“Tommy,” says Mom, turning serious. “What did I tell you about telling lies?”

“But I didn’t take anything,” insists Tommy, desperately trying to shove the cookie up his sleeve.

But when pieces of the crumbling cookie drop to the floor, Tommy’s guilt is revealed. After wiping her hands, Mom sits Tommy down and gives him a stern lecture about lying and the importance of honesty. Reduced to tears, Tommy is ordered to his room for a time out. For once, he is suitably chastened, having learned the error of his ways.

Later that day, after getting under Mom’s feet one too many times, Tommy and Timmy are told to go play outside. The neighborhood park is just across the street, so they pick up a soccer ball, leave the house and head to the soccer field for a kick around.

Meanwhile, just up the road, the elderly Mr. Gruber is setting off in his car to visit an old friend in hospital. Unfortunately, as Timmy and Tommy wait at the curb for Mr. Gruber to drive by, the old man has a heart attack. Out of control, the car swerves, careens toward the twins and plows into them, killing them both instantly.

Always together in life, the twins’ immortal souls immediately discover they will be forever separated in death. On the cusp of the “age of accountability” at the moment of death, their eternal fates were determined in that hour they were apart earlier that day. While Timmy was at the doctor’s office, Tommy’s cookie transgression and subsequent reprimand was the life lesson he needed to finally understand the difference between right and wrong. From that moment on, he was deemed fully accountable for every one of his sins, no matter how small. And thus, his fate was sealed.

And so, while the still innocent little Timmy rises to join the heavenly host in eternal paradise, his twin brother Tommy begins his plunge into the eternal fires of Hell.

Just a story, of course, but if the fundamentalist’s version of Christianity is true, there is no avoiding the fact that similar scenarios have played out innumerable times throughout the history of civilization. Hundreds of millions of children have died in the past two thousand years, and if we are to believe what the Christian fundamentalists are teaching, the eternal fate of all but a few hinged solely on whether they had reached an age where they could be held accountable for their sins before they died. For every Timmy, there is a Tommy.

But why does Christianity need an “age of accountability” at all? Where does the idea come from? Well, according to self-described Bible-believing Christians, the blame lies with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Thanks to their “original sin,” God declared that no human being is worthy of a place in Heaven when they die because we all fall short of the perfection required to be in his presence. This is the basis for the doctrine of salvation. Jesus Christ came down to Earth to wash our sins away, and it is only by the his saving grace that we avoid our just punishment–an eternity in Hell. All you need do is believe in his, repent of your sins, and ask for salvation, and you shall receive everlasting life in Heaven.

But therein lies a problem. If you can only achieve your heavenly reward through the conscious act of repentance, then what happens to babies and children who die before they are even capable of making informed decisions?

Naturally, the thought of the souls of billions of innocent little dead babies suffering the eternal tortures of Hell is unconscionable to the vast majority of Christians. A just and loving God would never allow such an abomination.

And this, of course, is where the concept of an “age of accountability” comes in. The argument goes that if you’re too young to fully understand the difference between right and wrong, you have no culpability for your sins. So if you die before you reach the age of accountability, there is nothing to repent and salvation is not required. Your passage into Heaven is assured.

There is no direct evidence in the Bible for an actual age of accountability. Indeed, given what we now know about the different rates at which children mature, it would be ridiculous to claim that all children should suddenly be held accountable for their sins the moment they wake up on, say, their twelfth birthday. However, many Christian teachers argue that there is plenty of Biblical evidence for the existence of an age of accountability, even if it is different for each child, and they warn parents of the critical importance of leading their children to salvation on or soon after that fateful day arrives.

Problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. The existence of an age of accountability actually creates more problems than it solves. Take the case of identical twins Timmy and Tommy outlined above. They share the same DNA, the same parents, the same upbringing, and as close to the same thoughts, emotions, and life experiences as any two people can possibly have, yet according to the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians, their eternal fates, one of them deserves an eternity of fire and brimstone while the other gets a free pass into paradise. All because, by chance, Timmy caught an ear infection and was not around when Tommy learned the valuable life lesson that would, henceforth, make him fully accountable for his sins. There is nothing loving or just about that.

And it gets worse. Some Christians will argue that we cannot blame God for Tommy’s parents rejecting his offer of salvation (not that it would be of any comfort to Tommy), but if the eternal fate of a child boils down to whether or not they’re born into a Christian family, it turns their eternal fate into a lottery–one called “accident of birth”–which leads to even more problems.

Consider the nation of Turkey, for example. According to official sources quoted in Wikipedia, about 0.3% of the Turkish population are Christians, and that number hasn’t changed significantly for many years. That means, barely a single child out of the 14 million born in Turkey over the last twenty years will be a Christian when they die. In other words, if the Christianity is the one true religion, the only realistic chance 997 out of every 1,000 children born in Turkey today have of avoiding the fires of Hell is to die before they reach their age of accountability.

Now, for the sake of argument, consider the predicament of the secretly Christian wife of a militant Muslim Imam living in rural Turkey. What is she supposed to do when she looks at her six young sons and daughters knowing that if she doesn’t do something soon, they will almost certainly be doomed to an eternity in Hell? Sure, she could try to persuade her husband and her children of the truth of Christianity, but realistically, she knows such efforts are doomed to fail. Thanks to the age of accountability, however, there is one way that she can be 100% sure that all six children will share in the delights of Heaven forever–by killing them in they sleep.

“God would never sanction such a thing,” the Christians cry, but so what? Even if it cost the mother her own salvation, depriving her children of a few uncertain years here on Earth is a perfectly reasonable price for anyone to pay for a cast-iron guarantee of their passage into Heaven, especially given how infinitely more terrible the alternative is. If a parent is willing give their own life to save their children’s, how much more willing should parents be to sacrifice everything to save their children from an eternity in Hell?

Likewise, the age of accountability turns the missiles and cluster bomb dropped by the United States and its allies on schools or hospitals in the Middle East into the best chance those babies, children, and unborn have of going to Heaven. Heroic rescues of young children become the worst possible thing that could have happened to them.

Worst of all, for all those pro-life Christians who are campaigning to end abortion in America, the bad news is that the age of accountability makes them less “pro-life” and more “pro-damnation.” Since abortion was fully legalized in 1973, there have been around 60 million abortions in America. If you believe that babies go to Heaven if they die, then surely you believe that aborted fetuses do too, and that the souls of every one of those aborted fetuses is safe in Heaven today. A comforting thought, perhaps, until you consider the terrible toll ending abortion in America would take on the souls of the future unborn.

If recent surveys on religious belief are accurate, only around one in five young adult Americans is a born-again Christian, meaning that right now, if abortion had never been legalized, 48 million of those 60 million souls safe in Heaven today would almost certainly be destined for an eternity in the Lake of Fire. For every five unborn children you save from abortion, you actually condemn four of them to a fate far worse than death.

Coincidentally, it also makes abortion doctors the greatest soul winners the world has ever seen. If saving souls is the most important thing you can do as a Christian, then abortion doctors are to be lauded, not vilified.

Not surprisingly, many moderate Christians recognize there are serious issues with the concept of the age of accountability, and prefer to remain non-committal about its existence. They like to “trust in the Lord’s wisdom and mercy” when it comes to the destiny of the souls of dead babies and young children.

But that is nothing more than a dodge. Either salvation through Jesus Christ is the only way into Heaven, or it isn’t. If it is, then billions of human beings are being born with no chance of avoiding an eternity in Hell. If it isn’t, and those under the age of accountability get a free pass, then some of the worst atrocities people have ever perpetrated on their fellow human beings suddenly become among the greatest acts of deliverance the world has ever seen.

Could there ever be a better example of damned if you do, and damned if you don’t?

Of course, there is another possibility. Maybe, just maybe, none of this is true. Perhaps Heaven and Hell are merely concepts dreamed up by Stone Age leaders as the ultimate carrot and stick for keeping their subjects in line. Without the doctrines of original sin and salvation, there is no need for an age of accountability, at least not in the religious sense.

Seems like a reasonable idea to me.