The whole idea of being rewarded or punished by god goes against the very essence of christianity. People should love their enemies (even the worst of sinners) unconditionally only for the value of the act within itself, with no accountability to god involved, with no reward expected, even expecting punishment for it. Now that is true unconditional love. That message, which is the deepest christianity presents, still today is completely revolutionary and supernatural.
“But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.”
Christianity is a case of very low signal to noise ratio. If the principal message is love, and many would say that, it implies unconditional love. Now if we can love our enemy unconditionally and not expect nothing in return we become gods. In this context I would say that the whole point of debating the existence of supernatural gods, the afterlife, heaven, hell, punishment is simply noise. It is totally irrelevant. Why do we debate this ? exactly because we are “selfish” and are more concerned with ourselves than with others. We are self absorbed so to say, thinking only of what everything means to ourselves. Christianity is right when it implies the complete loss of the self, complete submission, but that is submission to love, to others. And actually all the supernatural problems become meaningless in this case. God exists only when we become him by pure unconditional love towards others and especially the worst sinners. In this case, if one could become like this, which is a very tall order, we could care less if god exists or doesn’t, if we are to be punished or not, these problems would disappear completely. In a way the bible then doesn’t even imply a supernatural god or afterlife. It is important only to the selfish who are worried only of themselves.