Does it bother anyone? If you know someone you think is going to hell, does it eat away at you, or do you learn to just learn not everyone is going to realize the 'truth' or whatnot? Are you supposed to feel bad for those people, or happy they are getting justice or something?
I'd come to a realization that the experience of heaven is a cop-out. It's a looking-out-for-number-one perspective, where it's completely devaluing the impact and power of oneself, saying one isn't worthy of salvation, and depending on a deity to save them regardless of how much they've hurt themselves or others. After I left the Christian community, I looked back at how much I absolved myself of responsibility to other human beings because I was trying so hard to beg for mercy from God and spreading the word to others who hadn't yet accepted Jesus as their lord and savior.
I think it's also a closed door to ever having the opportunity to help others and experience what the joy of generosity is like. If I were in heaven, with no pain, no suffering, and no cares outside of glorifying God, I would not know what it was like to give a full weeks worth of groceries to a struggling family, and seeing the look of utter joy and gratitude that they will be able to eat all because of that gift.
So, when it came to the realization that I was trying to experience eternal bliss, that I was putting my faith in a deity to forgive me, and to recruit others into the same club because I felt that no happiness could exist outside of "being a Christian and saved", it had me in a position where I was far more judgemental of people simply based on their professed religious belief and not at all on who they are as a person and what their life experience had been like up to that point.....none of that mattered at all, just as long as they were Christian.
I became a much more forgiving person when I left the Christian community, more so when I realized my lack of belief in a deity at all, and even more so when I stopped believing in an eternal heaven and eternal hell after death.
My answer is that when I identified as a Christian, dust1n, I know that I would have quietly thought to myself that I would hope you'd find your way to Jesus, but that I would celebrate in God's righteousness and justice for the rules and that non-believers would get their rightful punishment for not believing. IOW, I'd turn off any compassion and nod solemnly toward God being just.
Therefore....I would not have felt sad at all.
It still is a reason why I personally cannot identify as a Christian with the heaven prerequisites firmly established, because to cope with the reality of people I know and love being tortured eternally in hell would require that I stop opening my heart in compassion for them. I came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an either/or false dilemma when it comes to compassion or justice. I have seen that forgiveness, understanding, and openness can be coupled with education, repair for past hurts, and resolve when knowledge and understanding are attained.
I have found that the latter is much more transformative than worrying about who is going to be smiling forever in heaven and who is going to be screaming in pain forever in hell. I've seen many more lives touched and transformed long term and positively when the Heaven and Hell Doctrines are never considered.
