yes, you are doomed. I hate to call judgement on anything between you and God, but that's what God says. Note that you may yet change back to God and accept Him, then you will not be doomed. But otherwise, I'm sorry. You aren't doomed until you take your last breath...
So then I’ll start having sex with anything that moves; I’ll start drinking daily, cursing my grandmother, tell people that all of metal music is extremely satanic and that if you listen to it you’re automatically rejecting any and every good thing in life. I’ll go out and set fire to homes, I’ll steal candy from babies, I’ll flip the elderly my middle fingers, and I’ll start punching my parents, all because the two of you say I’m damned to hell because I don’t believe in your deity.
My grandmother was a strongly devout Catholic when she was alive. But if she was alive, she’d give you a verbal lashing that you’d both remember for the rest of your lives.
Who are either of you to tell me I’m doomed because I don’t believe as the two of you do? I suffer more internal turmoil at age 26 than the two of you will probably understand for as long as you live. My parents put me through hell when I was younger, I can’t find a job, people stare at me, there’s a history of alcoholism on both sides of my family, and I have no idea how I’m going to make it to 30, nevermind 80. To top it all off, my endocrine system is screwed up with a condition that few “experts” understand, let alone friends and family that forget I haven’t slept well for the last 13 years.
To be honest, worrying about eternal damnation is the last thing I’m worried about. I’m more worried about how I’m going to live my life successfully. That doesn’t mean I’m going to drop my morals because you two tell me that I’ll be subject to fire.
Maybe I should just kill myself and end up in purgatory to escape what you two tell me is going to happen to me. Maybe you ought to speculate about people’s lives before you personally pass judgement on them. Not you, a deacon I’ve known for a long time, my favorite local priest, any cardinal, bishop or even Pope Benedict XVI himself can tell me that I’m doomed to hell because I don’t accept Jesus Christ.
I judge people for the wrong things they’ve done. I don’t judge people for the things they believe in. Somebody believes in satan? That’s fine. Don’t try to sacrifice me. Somebody believes the Earth is really flat? That’s fine, but there’s a mountain of evidence against it. Somebody doesn’t believe in God? It’s understandable when God cannot be sensed with any of the 5 senses.
I do believe in a higher power. I’m trying to figure out what it is. It may be the God that you believe in, or may be my own craziness.
Then let’s look at it logically. There’s all these monotheistic religions that say their God is the one true God. Well, which one should I believe? Hinduism? Buddhism? Judaism?
I could go to the retired priest in my parish and ask him if I’m doomed because I seem to have lost my way. Wanna know what he’ll say? Odds are, a simple “no.”