This is a good question, one that almost everyone asks at some point. But this question, while sincere, is fundamentally flawed because it fails to see “both sides of the coin.”
On the one side, we have the love of a creator God who does not want to see anyone go to Hell (that is the only side most people want to look at). But on the other side is God’s holiness, purity, and justice. When human judges take bribes to let the guilty go free, or when officers of the law knowingly turn a blind eye to crime, we call such people “corrupt” because they are corrupt.
But because God is perfectly righteous beyond any human measure, His very nature demands that He do something about sin. And He will. Someday ALL who die in sin will stand before Him. At that time, God will punish ALL sin. Jesus warned that when that Day comes, there will be no excuses, no appeals, no second chances, and no escape. There will be no mercy, for the day of grace (in which we now live) will have forever passed. There will be no way out of that dread Judgment.
The Bible says that all have sinned. No one is exempt. Ellen G. White sinned...Buddha sinned...Confucius sinned...Mary sinned...Mohammed sinned...Mary Baker Eddy sinned...Joseph Smith sinned...Lao Tze sinned...C.T. Russell sinned...Zoroaster sinned...L. Ron Hubbard sinned. The proof that “all have sinned” is the fact that sooner or later, death takes us all (“For the wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23). And not only that! “It is appointed unto men once to die, then the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
So if you’re counting on God to let you off the hook because you think your good deeds outweigh your bad ones...or because you really, REALLY have tried to be a nice person...or because you go to church...or because you try to pray...or because you say you don’t believe in God...or simply because He is a God of love, then when you die you will be in for the shock of all eternity.
You see, we have a tendency to judge sins on a sliding scale of our own creation. To our minds, it is perfectly reasonable to see some sins (murder, rape) as major sins which SHOULD be punished. But other sins (lust, taking God’s name in vain, ‘borrowing’ items that don’t belong to us and ‘stretching the truth’), we tend to write off as not all that big of a deal, really. But God doesn’t use our moral standard of measurement. If He did, He, like us, would condemn some sins while letting others off the hook. That would make God a corrupt, unfair, unjust Judge, which would make God Himself guilty of sin.
But that’s not our God! He doesn’t use our sliding scale of judgment because He, as our Creator, knows something about us we do not know: we are not sinners because we sin...we sin because we’re sinners. In other words, it’s not so much what we DO that makes us guilty, but what we ARE! We sin because it's our nature to sin. We are born into it, we are steeped in it, and no man-oriented religion on earth can help us escape from it (though they all claim to do so). ALL sins, no matter how minor WE may think they are, WILL be punished. NO EXCEPTIONS.
So while God will punish all unrepentant murderers and rapists, take no comfort in that fact. For the very justice that demands He do so will also drive Him to punish all who have not repented of "minor" sins like lust, lying, covetousness, greed, and refusing to give Him His due as our loving Creator.
A religious person once got into a Christian's face. With finger wagging, the religious person shouted, "How DARE you scare people with all this talk of Hell! MY God would NEVER send anyone to Hell!" To which the Christian responded, "You know what? You're right. Your god will never send anyone to Hell because your god does not exist."
