Let me get this straight. You think that those who have never heard of Jesus but lived good lives went to heaven right?
Now, they were “in a small village in Africa” and they all lived good lives and were going to heaven. But you do gooders read that Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel so you pass the collection plate, put the money together with other do gooders and send a missionary down to “do God’s work”. The “villagers” don’t much cotton to this new fangled idea and send the missionary packing and reject any talk of some foreigner who is supposed to “save them”. Now we know that anyone who rejects Jesus is going to hell right? So what you and the rest of the do gooders just did was condemn a bunch of people that would have gone to heaven to hell? Is that what your telling me?
That part of the doctrine was developed because there were some in the pre Christian world like Cicero, Plato, and such that were greatly admired by the early Church. Many of the Early Church Fathers could not see how one who had such a strong moral code that they taught and lived out, but had no knowledge of Christ, would be damned.
It is like saying all the children killed by abortion went to heaven. Simply put, we can't say that. We are not allowed to with the information revealed to us to say that. We can hope for a merciful God to look on those little ones, but if you say all aborted children went to heaven you make abortion a good thing. Because if a mother is going to kill her child, the likelihood of her raising that child to know and follow God was not very good. That child had a decent chance of going to hell, and him or her being killed pre birth saved them.
Same with the “Village in Africa” mind game. We can hope for God's mercy, but with the information given to us the likelihood is that those villagers were not going to make it to heaven.