Would You Want to be in Heaven if People You Loved were in Hell?

[atanu]

Not to derail @Sunstone's characteristically brilliant thread (that OP was positively novelistic and a gripping read!) but I was very struck by how close your understanding of hell is to that of the church father Origen of Alexandria (c. 184 – c. 253) writing in his De Principiis (Book II).

Origen explained in his exegesis of the Bible, as you do so well in the above, that hell is a psycho-spiritual state of ignorance and its attendant consequences upon the soul, rather than a judgement imposed externally by God involving literal hellfire:


CHURCH FATHERS: De Principiis, Book II (Origen)

4. We find in the prophet Isaiah, that the fire with which each one is punished is described as his own; for he says, Walk in the light of your own fire, and in the flame which you have kindled. By these words it seems to be indicated that every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into some fire which has been already kindled by another, or was in existence before himself. Of this fire the fuel and food are our sins, which are called by the Apostle Paul wood, and hay, and stubble.

And I think that, as abundance of food, and provisions of a contrary kind and amount, breed fevers in the body, and fevers, too, of different sorts and duration, according to the proportion in which the collected poison supplies material and fuel for disease (the quality of this material, gathered together from different poisons, proving the causes either of a more acute or more lingering disease); so, when the soul has gathered together a multitude of evil works, and an abundance of sins against itself, at a suitable time all that assembly of evils boils up to punishment, and is set on fire to chastisements; when the mind itself, or conscience, receiving by divine power into the memory all those things of which it had stamped on itself certain signs and forms at the moment of sinning, will see a kind of history, as it were, of all the foul, and shameful, and unholy deeds which it has done, exposed before its eyes: then is the conscience itself harassed, and, pierced by its own goads, becomes an accuser and a witness against itself.

And this, I think, was the opinion of the Apostle Paul himself, when he said, Their thoughts mutually accusing or excusing them in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my Gospel. From which it is understood that around the substance of the soul certain tortures are produced by the hurtful affections of sins themselves.

8. But the outer darkness, in my judgment, is to be understood not so much of some dark atmosphere without any light, as of those persons who, being plunged in the darkness of profound ignorance, have been placed beyond the reach of any light of the understanding...​

This ancient Alexandrian Christian understanding of the metaphorical nature of hellfire and the 'outer darkness' as a state of being, characterised by ignorance and the pain of conscience wrestling with one's mistakes in life, was complemented by the near-contemporary Eastern Christian belief expressed by the Syriac Church Father Saint Isaac the Syrian (a 7th century father, venerated as a saint in both the Catholic & Eastern Christian churches) that heaven and hell are both postmortem encounters with the Love of God, albeit experienced differently as a result of the different conditions of souls:

‘Those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and more violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to suppose that sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love.. is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful. That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion – remorse.’

[St. Isaac of Nineveh, ‘Ascetic Treatises’, p 326]​

This was echoed by a number of the medieval Catholic mystics:

"Even though the eagle, king of birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the same"

(Blessed John of Ruysbroeck (The Twelve Beguines, XII), 1363)

​

After the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has reaffirmed the doctrinal primacy of this ancient Origenist understanding of hell as a state of being rather than a place of punishment:


Heaven, Hell and Purgatory

Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him...

At the General Audience of Wednesday, 28 July 1999, the Holy Father reflected on hell as the definitive rejection of God. In his catechesis, the Pope said that care should be taken to interpret correctly the images of hell in Sacred Scripture:

"The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject (n. 1033)."


28 July 1999 | John Paul II

It is precisely this tragic situation that Christian doctrine explains when it speaks of eternal damnation or hell. It is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life....

“Eternal damnation”, therefore, is not attributed to God's initiative because in his merciful love he can only desire the salvation of the beings he created. In reality, it is the creature who closes himself to his love.
​

You are always so thorough.

 

[VoidCat]

PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Discuss your views with them. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.​

The OP is optional because it doesn't really add anything to understanding the questions. Skip to the questions at the bottom if you don't want to read it.​

"[Go to] Heaven for the climate, and Hell for [the] society." -- Mark Twain​

My mom was a Christian. She was also born in 1918, and she was decidedly 'Old School'. Old School as in she had her suspicions that even Paul was a bit too nouveau and upstart for her taste.

Somehow mom reconciled her instinct for things ancient with her membership in a relatively new church. God's Own Christian Church, the Presbyterian Congregation of America, Scotland, and Heaven. And she was particularly enamored of the comfortably old fashioned Presbyterian Doctrine that only adults -- and never children -- were intellectually and emotionally mature enough to make a personally valid and binding decision to become Christians.

Hence, she forbade me and my two brothers from arriving at any firm conclusions about whether God existed, whether Jesus was his son and humanity's savior, whether we wanted to become Christians, etc. -- she forbade us from making those decisions until we had -- to paraphrase her -- "arrived at a state of intellectual and emotional development when such decisions will no longer be meaningless."

In short, children were just too immature to make binding commitments. Period. Full Stop.

I was a rather dutiful lad in some ways, and I never, ever, even once challenged my mother's authority nor her rule against my arriving at any firm convictions and/or commitments. I always took care to think in purely provisional terms about religion through-out the whole of my childhood. Always. Except for that one time.

The time I became a Christian.

It happened in middle school. Two young, twenty-something missionaries from Tennessee arrived in our small Illinois town to save as many of us as possible. They decided to focus their efforts on saving the young people, and they rented a hall above a hardware store, decorated it, furbished it with tables and chairs, installed a concessions counter, and named the hall, "The Upper Room".

A kid magnet if there ever was one, since the town was too small for there to be many other places for middle school and high school kids to go in the evenings. The Upper Room was packed evening after evening from the week it opened onward.

One night, I got into a conversation with Lindsey. Lindsey was a year older than me, a pastor's son, and widely known to be a brilliant student who had never earned less than an A for any course he'd taken since first grade. He had studied C. S. Lewis and he knew well how to present the case for Christianity. It only took me three hours to forget all about mom and begin seriously entertaining the notion of converting.

I took his arguments home with me and thought about them for days. I even elaborated upon them to make them as tough as possible -- just to be sure they could stand up no matter how they were assailed. In the end, I decided Lindsey's conclusion that Christianity was the sole true religion simply could not be defeated.

Almost immediately after my conversion, I discovered that Judy -- the Judy -- was already a Christian! She was brainy, beautiful, and artistic. Three things I have always found irresistible in women. Three things almost ranking up there with a propensity to dance naked. I'd had a crush on Judy since third grade, and the moment I learned she was a fervent Christian, I set myself upon becoming just as fervent as she.

It all of it came tumbling down a month later. All of it. And in the course of a single night.

By then, my family knew of my conversion. None of them -- not even my mother -- tried to oppose me. I suppose she must have harbored secret reservations about my making such a youthful decision, but if she did, she kept them to herself.

Then one night, I decided I would proselytize my family at our dinner table. After all, I thought I knew what was best for them.

The episode came to an end when my younger brother posed the question, "What if you get to heaven only to discover the rest of us are in hell?"

That stopped me in my tracks. I had no answer for him. None. And I didn't get to sleep that night until just before dawn. Instead, I lay awake running his point through my head, trying to frame it in the toughest way possible, and slamming into one wall after the other. I could find no way around his thought that did not smack to me of BS, of kidding myself.

In the end, I felt forced to this conclusion: If it was true that my family would end up in hell and I in heaven, then I must refuse heaven in order to be with them in hell -- for I would be incapable of tolerating heaven if they were suffering in hell. To be sure, I still believed in Christianity. I wholly believed it was true. It was just that I wanted nothing to do with it, if having anything to do with it would lead to my family in hell and me in heaven.

Naturally, I prayed to God, sincerely thanked him for his grace and offer of salvation, told him of my thoughts on the matter, and wished him a fond adieu (if it was true my family might end up in hell with me in heaven). Or something very much along those lines. It's been ages since that night, and I have no doubt forgotten the details. The next day, I apologized to my mom and told her I would suspend judgment until I was properly mature enough to make a genuinely meaningful decision. She asked me what had changed my mind.

"Stuff", I said. "Nothing worth talking about." Terse. But what can you expect from a 13 year-old.


Would you want to be in heaven if people you loved were in hell?

Would you want to be in heaven if all the dancing girls were in hell? That is to say, would you want to be in heaven if anyone -- anyone at all, regardless of your relationship to them -- were in hell?

I have a good friend on here whose not a christian.Because of this I began to question christianity.I did not like the idea of him in hell. He's too good of a person. Too kind. So no I don't want anyone in hell. Hell's one of the reasons I became a pagan.

 

[Kenny]

PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Discuss your views with them. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.​

The OP is optional because it doesn't really add anything to understanding the questions. Skip to the questions at the bottom if you don't want to read it.​

"[Go to] Heaven for the climate, and Hell for [the] society." -- Mark Twain​

My mom was a Christian. She was also born in 1918, and she was decidedly 'Old School'. Old School as in she had her suspicions that even Paul was a bit too nouveau and upstart for her taste.

Somehow mom reconciled her instinct for things ancient with her membership in a relatively new church. God's Own Christian Church, the Presbyterian Congregation of America, Scotland, and Heaven. And she was particularly enamored of the comfortably old fashioned Presbyterian Doctrine that only adults -- and never children -- were intellectually and emotionally mature enough to make a personally valid and binding decision to become Christians.

Hence, she forbade me and my two brothers from arriving at any firm conclusions about whether God existed, whether Jesus was his son and humanity's savior, whether we wanted to become Christians, etc. -- she forbade us from making those decisions until we had -- to paraphrase her -- "arrived at a state of intellectual and emotional development when such decisions will no longer be meaningless."

In short, children were just too immature to make binding commitments. Period. Full Stop.

I was a rather dutiful lad in some ways, and I never, ever, even once challenged my mother's authority nor her rule against my arriving at any firm convictions and/or commitments. I always took care to think in purely provisional terms about religion through-out the whole of my childhood. Always. Except for that one time.

The time I became a Christian.

It happened in middle school. Two young, twenty-something missionaries from Tennessee arrived in our small Illinois town to save as many of us as possible. They decided to focus their efforts on saving the young people, and they rented a hall above a hardware store, decorated it, furbished it with tables and chairs, installed a concessions counter, and named the hall, "The Upper Room".

A kid magnet if there ever was one, since the town was too small for there to be many other places for middle school and high school kids to go in the evenings. The Upper Room was packed evening after evening from the week it opened onward.

One night, I got into a conversation with Lindsey. Lindsey was a year older than me, a pastor's son, and widely known to be a brilliant student who had never earned less than an A for any course he'd taken since first grade. He had studied C. S. Lewis and he knew well how to present the case for Christianity. It only took me three hours to forget all about mom and begin seriously entertaining the notion of converting.

I took his arguments home with me and thought about them for days. I even elaborated upon them to make them as tough as possible -- just to be sure they could stand up no matter how they were assailed. In the end, I decided Lindsey's conclusion that Christianity was the sole true religion simply could not be defeated.

Almost immediately after my conversion, I discovered that Judy -- the Judy -- was already a Christian! She was brainy, beautiful, and artistic. Three things I have always found irresistible in women. Three things almost ranking up there with a propensity to dance naked. I'd had a crush on Judy since third grade, and the moment I learned she was a fervent Christian, I set myself upon becoming just as fervent as she.

It all of it came tumbling down a month later. All of it. And in the course of a single night.

By then, my family knew of my conversion. None of them -- not even my mother -- tried to oppose me. I suppose she must have harbored secret reservations about my making such a youthful decision, but if she did, she kept them to herself.

Then one night, I decided I would proselytize my family at our dinner table. After all, I thought I knew what was best for them.

The episode came to an end when my younger brother posed the question, "What if you get to heaven only to discover the rest of us are in hell?"

That stopped me in my tracks. I had no answer for him. None. And I didn't get to sleep that night until just before dawn. Instead, I lay awake running his point through my head, trying to frame it in the toughest way possible, and slamming into one wall after the other. I could find no way around his thought that did not smack to me of BS, of kidding myself.

In the end, I felt forced to this conclusion: If it was true that my family would end up in hell and I in heaven, then I must refuse heaven in order to be with them in hell -- for I would be incapable of tolerating heaven if they were suffering in hell. To be sure, I still believed in Christianity. I wholly believed it was true. It was just that I wanted nothing to do with it, if having anything to do with it would lead to my family in hell and me in heaven.

Naturally, I prayed to God, sincerely thanked him for his grace and offer of salvation, told him of my thoughts on the matter, and wished him a fond adieu (if it was true my family might end up in hell with me in heaven). Or something very much along those lines. It's been ages since that night, and I have no doubt forgotten the details. The next day, I apologized to my mom and told her I would suspend judgment until I was properly mature enough to make a genuinely meaningful decision. She asked me what had changed my mind.

"Stuff", I said. "Nothing worth talking about." Terse. But what can you expect from a 13 year-old.


Would you want to be in heaven if people you loved were in hell?

Would you want to be in heaven if all the dancing girls were in hell? That is to say, would you want to be in heaven if anyone -- anyone at all, regardless of your relationship to them -- were in hell?

Now, THAT, is a tough question. I'm not sure we can really answer that in light of what we know, our limited understanding and our lack of knowing what is to come.

Be that as it may, let me give it a shot.

1) In my case, I led my brothers, my sisters, my nephews, my nieces, my children, my mother, my father, my aunts and everybody else that was in my extended family to the knowledge of Jesus... but that doesn't answer about the dancing girls (although we do reach out to dancing girls)
2) We have no understanding about God's love.

• He may be saving the dancing girls
• In a dream, I had an encounter with God's love and that was so profound and indescribable that my love for my wife because irrelevant... so we don't know what it is like to be in God's presence in light of what happens in Hell.
• If scripture says "He will wipe away every tear" -- there must be something that pales the hurt that we don't understand
• Jesus wept, maybe God is hurting more than we are? Jesus was betrayed, beaten, beard plucked, thorn pierced, nail stuck, crucified.... but said "Father forgive them".. is it possible that people we didn't think were going to be in Heaven, will be in Heaven?

So, for me to say "I don't want Heaven because someone may not be there" would be like me saying "I don't want a house because someone willfully wants to be homeless... so I'll just become homeless too".

Well... for what it is worth (as a finite human being with a finite mind and a finite understanding) that is my two cents.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Are we just talking a generic version of "good afterlife" and "bad afterlife?" Or is this question specifically geared toward the heaven/hell dynamic of Christianity? My first guess would be that it is geared toward Christianity's version of this afterlife dichotomy, since there's heavy reference to it in the "Mark Twain" passage in the OP.

My reason for asking is to figure out how "bad" this "hell" (apparent bad place) is versus "heaven," (apparent good place) and who I might find myself in the company of were I to find myself in either. If the heaven were headed up by the God portrayed in The Bible - then I'd rather just be obliterated. I would not want to find myself in the company of that butthead for even one moment if I could at all possibly avoid it. Obliteration would be a more than welcome alternative.

But, if it was that "hell" was just a form of purgatory, or wait-state before people's souls were re-entered into "the system" (or some such nonsense) to try and "get it right" another time, then I wouldn't mind at all being in the "good place" while others I knew were "re-taking the test." Or whatever. It's all ridiculousness.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

So, for me to say "I don't want Heaven because someone may not be there" would be like me saying "I don't want a house because someone willfully wants to be homeless... so I'll just become homeless too".

This is a good point, and is not easily brushed aside. It may sound wonderfully "honorable" to say that you wouldn't partake of whatever "comforts" heaven offers in death while others are suffering in hell - but we do the same sorts of things all the time in this life: We experience liberty and freedom while others do not have theirs. We eat while others starve. We sleep in warm, cozy beds while others face the harshness of the elements. And as many a poet has asked - are you so sure you would do everything differently/better in another life?

 

[Windwalker]

The thought at this time of a loved one of mine in Hell and me in Heaven, is painful. But in that day, when much becomes clearer, and the physical bonds are severed, even if a family member is in Hell, I think my relationship with God and Christ will so override the memory of the loved one, to the extent that sadness or pain will not be present.

That's an interesting view of heaven. To me though, that sounds a bit like being hooked up to an IV with morphine in it that makes you forget you've had both your legs amputated. I personally can't imagine that good feeling would last for long once the reality of that situation managed to take hold. Unless we consider heaven to be a place of escape where all will be forgotten because we're essentially under anesthesia all the time?

I can see where that vision of heaven might work for some to process the horrifying idea of their parents being sent to hell for not believing the things they adopted from their religion. God will make me forget those I loved, because the pain of loss is too much for me to bear. But then, people do that in this lifetime already through all manner of escapism, drugs, alcohol, sex, money, etc. In hindsight, I wonder if I'd told myself that once I'd get to heaven, I'd forget about my family being in hell because they couldn't believe the things my church taught me, that that would have made a difference for my faith, and I wouldn't have rejected it because of that?

 

[Messianic Israelite]

PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Discuss your views with them. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.​

The OP is optional because it doesn't really add anything to understanding the questions. Skip to the questions at the bottom if you don't want to read it.​

"[Go to] Heaven for the climate, and Hell for [the] society." -- Mark Twain​

My mom was a Christian. She was also born in 1918, and she was decidedly 'Old School'. Old School as in she had her suspicions that even Paul was a bit too nouveau and upstart for her taste.

Somehow mom reconciled her instinct for things ancient with her membership in a relatively new church. God's Own Christian Church, the Presbyterian Congregation of America, Scotland, and Heaven. And she was particularly enamored of the comfortably old fashioned Presbyterian Doctrine that only adults -- and never children -- were intellectually and emotionally mature enough to make a personally valid and binding decision to become Christians.

Hence, she forbade me and my two brothers from arriving at any firm conclusions about whether God existed, whether Jesus was his son and humanity's savior, whether we wanted to become Christians, etc. -- she forbade us from making those decisions until we had -- to paraphrase her -- "arrived at a state of intellectual and emotional development when such decisions will no longer be meaningless."

In short, children were just too immature to make binding commitments. Period. Full Stop.

I was a rather dutiful lad in some ways, and I never, ever, even once challenged my mother's authority nor her rule against my arriving at any firm convictions and/or commitments. I always took care to think in purely provisional terms about religion through-out the whole of my childhood. Always. Except for that one time.

The time I became a Christian.

It happened in middle school. Two young, twenty-something missionaries from Tennessee arrived in our small Illinois town to save as many of us as possible. They decided to focus their efforts on saving the young people, and they rented a hall above a hardware store, decorated it, furbished it with tables and chairs, installed a concessions counter, and named the hall, "The Upper Room".

A kid magnet if there ever was one, since the town was too small for there to be many other places for middle school and high school kids to go in the evenings. The Upper Room was packed evening after evening from the week it opened onward.

One night, I got into a conversation with Lindsey. Lindsey was a year older than me, a pastor's son, and widely known to be a brilliant student who had never earned less than an A for any course he'd taken since first grade. He had studied C. S. Lewis and he knew well how to present the case for Christianity. It only took me three hours to forget all about mom and begin seriously entertaining the notion of converting.

I took his arguments home with me and thought about them for days. I even elaborated upon them to make them as tough as possible -- just to be sure they could stand up no matter how they were assailed. In the end, I decided Lindsey's conclusion that Christianity was the sole true religion simply could not be defeated.

Almost immediately after my conversion, I discovered that Judy -- the Judy -- was already a Christian! She was brainy, beautiful, and artistic. Three things I have always found irresistible in women. Three things almost ranking up there with a propensity to dance naked. I'd had a crush on Judy since third grade, and the moment I learned she was a fervent Christian, I set myself upon becoming just as fervent as she.

It all of it came tumbling down a month later. All of it. And in the course of a single night.

By then, my family knew of my conversion. None of them -- not even my mother -- tried to oppose me. I suppose she must have harbored secret reservations about my making such a youthful decision, but if she did, she kept them to herself.

Then one night, I decided I would proselytize my family at our dinner table. After all, I thought I knew what was best for them.

The episode came to an end when my younger brother posed the question, "What if you get to heaven only to discover the rest of us are in hell?"

That stopped me in my tracks. I had no answer for him. None. And I didn't get to sleep that night until just before dawn. Instead, I lay awake running his point through my head, trying to frame it in the toughest way possible, and slamming into one wall after the other. I could find no way around his thought that did not smack to me of BS, of kidding myself.

In the end, I felt forced to this conclusion: If it was true that my family would end up in hell and I in heaven, then I must refuse heaven in order to be with them in hell -- for I would be incapable of tolerating heaven if they were suffering in hell. To be sure, I still believed in Christianity. I wholly believed it was true. It was just that I wanted nothing to do with it, if having anything to do with it would lead to my family in hell and me in heaven.

Naturally, I prayed to God, sincerely thanked him for his grace and offer of salvation, told him of my thoughts on the matter, and wished him a fond adieu (if it was true my family might end up in hell with me in heaven). Or something very much along those lines. It's been ages since that night, and I have no doubt forgotten the details. The next day, I apologized to my mom and told her I would suspend judgment until I was properly mature enough to make a genuinely meaningful decision. She asked me what had changed my mind.

"Stuff", I said. "Nothing worth talking about." Terse. But what can you expect from a 13 year-old.


Would you want to be in heaven if people you loved were in hell?

Would you want to be in heaven if all the dancing girls were in hell? That is to say, would you want to be in heaven if anyone -- anyone at all, regardless of your relationship to them -- were in hell?

A relative of mine, my older brother died a few years ago and it was hard for me because, although I tried to encourage him to follow the path, and told him about the glories of the Kingdom, he pursued a life which was not spiritual. I wish I were able to get through to him and he hadn't had died, for even he had died but gotten baptised, I would think about his life with joy, knowing there is a resurrection.

All I have to conclude is that Yahweh is a righteous judge. We can be assured of that. Those who have done evil will experience the second death, and those that have kept the commandments of Yahweh will have proved their worth in keeping the instructions of the Heavenly King and earn themselves a place in Yahweh's Kingdom.

It's hard. You can't pray anyone in to the Kingdom like the Roman Catholics do, praying people from Purgatory in to Heaven. It doesn't work like that. Then again the Roman Catholic Church doesn't seem to care too much about what can be proven from the Bible.

I have come to the conclusion that we are on this walk on our own. You can't bring other people in the Kingdom with you kicking and screaming on the way. It's an individual walk. Although Yahweh's people are naturally loving people, we want all to be saved and it would hurt us to see people we know receive the distasteful death of Gehenna Fire, Yahweh has promised to wipe all tears from our eyes in Isaiah 25:8.

Yahweh and Yahweh's people don't get some twisted, sick pleasure from seeing people destroyed. We want all to be saved. But all have to make their own choice and as a result, they choose the way of life or death (Jeremiah 21:8). If you've had children, you might know that at a certain age those children start making their own decisions. You can't force them to follow your teachings, you have to let them make their own way, knowing you won't be around forever. It must be hard for Yahweh to see people meander off the Narrow Way, in to a way which is evil because He knows where it's going to lead. Therefore I have to conclude that Yahweh is extremely strong. He has seen all sorts of people come and go, reject Him and His way and he knows where they'll end up, though it is not Yahweh's will that any perish (Matthew 18:14).

This is my opinion, but if you truly cared about the people around you, you would make certain that you are measuring up according to the Bible, so that you can help and guide others in to the Kingdom (Proverbs 12:26). The way isn't to reject the Kingdom because some of your relatives or 'friends' refused to walk in the statutes of life. The way is to seek the Kingdom first (Matthew 6:33), and then all those things which you are anxious about will be wiped away. Yahweh created the mind. He can cause us to forget about those things which cause us pain, or lessen their effect. But I do say one thing, in eternity the joy which we will experience will far outweigh the suffering and pain of anything in this life. Romans 8:18 says: "18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us."

 

[Wandering Monk]

What a loving God, to give us such options!

 

[Link]

There is really two paths in life, by the two trees that try to win us over. Satanic tree - the tree of envy - deceives itself that it is good but is evil and it's cursed. The pure tree - the family of the reminder and their leaves (followers) - that has a pure source from God in sustenance, and is from God. That which is linked back to God (his face) and directed to him remains. Everything else will face destruction.

Good deeds appear the same of the leaves of the blessed tree and the heads of the cursed tree, but their intentions and reality are two different things.

Those who are in opposition to God and his rope, they may paint noble intentions as much as possible, of course, most evil people convince themselves they are good. But on the day the veils are removed, we will know then with mental clarity what evil was and what good was, and those who equated the two, would also perish.

 

[Link]

To understand and believe in hell, you have to look at the heart of evil. And to understand that, you have to understand the nature of the Anti-Christ. To understand that, you need to know the concept of Taghut (the idol) and Jibt (Sorcery) in Quran.

Look at the 9 headed Dragon in the eye and you will know this tree of hell - tree of envy, requires nothing but God's full wrath. But to know their opposition, you need to get mental clarity to God and his chosen ones and the oppression they and their followers always faced. From Habel being killed by Qabil to today, it's envy that is the reason why they have sanctions on us, and their rebellion to God has no bounds. Look at their hearts and look at what they do us, and all oppressed, and see what Quran has said about those living in ease, how they are tried, and look at the west (I live in Canada) and their cold hearts.

God guides to the truth and his actions are linked to the Glory manifested from his greatness through his names (a).

I swear, the oppressed, it's not natural what they have faced from their oppressors. God helps through his guides and kings to establish justice and guide by truth, consider it to be proven and clear, who is worse then who rebels against them or gives into the sorcery over the clear guidance of God?

 

[DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan]

Cool!

 

[Good-Ole-Rebel]

That's an interesting view of heaven. To me though, that sounds a bit like being hooked up to an IV with morphine in it that makes you forget you've had both your legs amputated. I personally can't imagine that good feeling would last for long once the reality of that situation managed to take hold. Unless we consider heaven to be a place of escape where all will be forgotten because we're essentially under anesthesia all the time?

I can see where that vision of heaven might work for some to process the horrifying idea of their parents being sent to hell for not believing the things they adopted from their religion. God will make me forget those I loved, because the pain of loss is too much for me to bear. But then, people do that in this lifetime already through all manner of escapism, drugs, alcohol, sex, money, etc. In hindsight, I wonder if I'd told myself that once I'd get to heaven, I'd forget about my family being in hell because they couldn't believe the things my church taught me, that that would have made a difference for my faith, and I wouldn't have rejected it because of that?

I didn't say we would forget. In fact, I said we would remember. So, the rest of your post means nothing to what I said. Get that right, and then reply.

Good-Ole-Rebel

 

[Windwalker]

I didn't say we would forget. In fact, I said we would remember. So, the rest of your post means nothing to what I said. Get that right, and then reply.

Good-Ole-Rebel

I didn't say you would forget. I didn't imagine you were saying that. What I said, is it sounds like you'd remember, like knowing your legs have been amputated but you don't care because you're being pumped with an IV of something like morphine to keep you from not caring about them. That's what I said. I see that as an escape from pain, not actually dealing with how you actually feel. So, now that you've got that right, you can reply to that if you wish.

 

[Good-Ole-Rebel]

I didn't say you would forget. I didn't imagine you were saying that. What I said, is it sounds like you'd remember, like knowing your legs have been amputated but you don't care because you're being pumped with an IV of something like morphine to keep you from not caring about them. That's what I said. I see that as an escape from pain, not actually dealing with how you actually feel. So, now that you've got that right, you can reply to that if you wish.

You stated in your 2nd paragraph what you understood I was saying. "God will make me forget those I loved, because the pain of loss is too much for me to bear." Again, I didn't say that.

Till you get this right there is no need for me to reply.

Good-Ole-Rebel

 

[Windwalker]

You stated in your 2nd paragraph what you understood I was saying. "God will make me forget those I loved, because the pain of loss is too much for me to bear." Again, I didn't say that.

Till you get this right there is no need for me to reply.

Good-Ole-Rebel

Ok, yes, so I did. Strike that, and go with what the point of the post was, which is you saying God will make it so you don't care, or it won't bother you much, like giving you nitrous oxide, while you are having your teeth pulled out, or having your legs amputated, but it won't bother you because you're being drugged. "I'll be too happy, to be bothered by knowing my loving parents are being tortured eternally, because I'll be here and be so happy it won't bother me," is what that sounds like.

Maybe that's why I said in passing that you'd forget about them? I'm really not sure. Not caring is like forgetting about them. That all sounds like the opposite of love to me, but that's just my personal opinion.

 

[MJFlores]

I believe everybody who died since the beginning are in their graves.
Except for 3 people, nobody went to heaven and nobody is suffering in hell.

I missed my mother and brother who died, last 2011 and 2018 respectively
I know that they are in their graves and won't be resurrected until Judgement Day
Same is true with my grand parents and other people I loved and know.

So there is nothing to worry about - everybody is asleep in their graves.

As long as the sky is blue, we will return to the earth which we came from.
Until one day we will awake either for a reward or for that fiery hell.
But when that time comes, our memories have long faded away.

Psalm 146:4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
His spirit departs, he returns to the earth;
In that very day his thoughts perish.

 

[Good-Ole-Rebel]

Ok, yes, so I did. Strike that, and go with what the point of the post was, which is you saying God will make it so you don't care, or it won't bother you much, like giving you nitrous oxide, while you are having your teeth pulled out, or having your legs amputated, but it won't bother you because you're being drugged. "I'll be too happy, to be bothered by knowing my loving parents are being tortured eternally, because I'll be here and be so happy it won't bother me," is what that sounds like.

Maybe that's why I said in passing that you'd forget about them? I'm really not sure. Not caring is like forgetting about them. That all sounds like the opposite of love to me, but that's just my personal opinion.

The comparison to a 'drug' is yours not mine. So, argue with yourself over that.

What I have said is, for a Christian, that things change when you die. Both location wise and inward wise. You experience a complete severance from that which you had with Adam, which affect your affections. Your ties to that which you had on earth are broken. You see and understand more clearly and perfectly your experiences on earth. It is not a 'drug'. It is an understanding of reality with God.

If a family member of mine rejects Christ, goes to Hell, in that day, I will not be burdened with grief over it. I will understand it and why it was just and necessary. My affections and bonds are completely at that time with my brothers and sisters in Christ. (Matt. 13:50)

Jesus Christ could experience this while on this earth as He was without sin and in perfect fellowship with God. Did He love His mother Mary? Yes. But not to the extent that it affected Him with God. (John 2:4) "Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?"

And He could just as easily reject all His earthly relations based only on the human connection. (Matt. 13:46-50) How could He do that? Because He was in perfect relationship with God. His affections were rightly directed. And in that day the Christians, and the believers will be also. I believe we will always have the memory. But we will know as we are known, by God.

Think of the most evil person you can. You can use Hitler if you like, everyone else does. Stalin is a good pick. But there are many others. Did anyone ever love them? Sure they did. Does that love negate the evil they did? Did Adam and Eve love Cain? Of course they did. Their love for Cain doesn't change what Cain was. God knew, but Adam and Eve didn't. But in that day, Adam and Eve will be in perfect agreement with God with no grief or burden.

Good-Ole-Rebel

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I find all these topics difficult, since there's such diversity amongst beliefs. One man's hell is another man's everyday life.

But...
If we're talking about a fairly common view of heaven, I'd go a little further.

1) I'd possibly be the loved one who didn't make it (my parents and sister are at least somewhat believers) so it seems unlikely I'm in heaven and my loved ones aren't.

2) If loved one was not allowed into heaven, I'd have to assess how reasonable it is. Let's say one of my girls grows up to be a serial killer. Or a Laker fan.

3) Heaven always strikes me as an exclusive club where the bouncer is basing entry on some set of moral values. Makes a nice change from 'shoes' but just like the bouncer, his power to prevent my entry...or the entry of loved ones...does nothing to legitimise the choice to me.

I'd end up judging the split, and almost certainly disqualifying myself. Or regretting my weakness. One or the other.

 

[exchemist]

PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Discuss your views with them. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.​

The OP is optional because it doesn't really add anything to understanding the questions. Skip to the questions at the bottom if you don't want to read it.​

"[Go to] Heaven for the climate, and Hell for [the] society." -- Mark Twain​

My mom was a Christian. She was also born in 1918, and she was decidedly 'Old School'. Old School as in she had her suspicions that even Paul was a bit too nouveau and upstart for her taste.

Somehow mom reconciled her instinct for things ancient with her membership in a relatively new church. God's Own Christian Church, the Presbyterian Congregation of America, Scotland, and Heaven. And she was particularly enamored of the comfortably old fashioned Presbyterian Doctrine that only adults -- and never children -- were intellectually and emotionally mature enough to make a personally valid and binding decision to become Christians.

Hence, she forbade me and my two brothers from arriving at any firm conclusions about whether God existed, whether Jesus was his son and humanity's savior, whether we wanted to become Christians, etc. -- she forbade us from making those decisions until we had -- to paraphrase her -- "arrived at a state of intellectual and emotional development when such decisions will no longer be meaningless."

In short, children were just too immature to make binding commitments. Period. Full Stop.

I was a rather dutiful lad in some ways, and I never, ever, even once challenged my mother's authority nor her rule against my arriving at any firm convictions and/or commitments. I always took care to think in purely provisional terms about religion through-out the whole of my childhood. Always. Except for that one time.

The time I became a Christian.

It happened in middle school. Two young, twenty-something missionaries from Tennessee arrived in our small Illinois town to save as many of us as possible. They decided to focus their efforts on saving the young people, and they rented a hall above a hardware store, decorated it, furbished it with tables and chairs, installed a concessions counter, and named the hall, "The Upper Room".

A kid magnet if there ever was one, since the town was too small for there to be many other places for middle school and high school kids to go in the evenings. The Upper Room was packed evening after evening from the week it opened onward.

One night, I got into a conversation with Lindsey. Lindsey was a year older than me, a pastor's son, and widely known to be a brilliant student who had never earned less than an A for any course he'd taken since first grade. He had studied C. S. Lewis and he knew well how to present the case for Christianity. It only took me three hours to forget all about mom and begin seriously entertaining the notion of converting.

I took his arguments home with me and thought about them for days. I even elaborated upon them to make them as tough as possible -- just to be sure they could stand up no matter how they were assailed. In the end, I decided Lindsey's conclusion that Christianity was the sole true religion simply could not be defeated.

Almost immediately after my conversion, I discovered that Judy -- the Judy -- was already a Christian! She was brainy, beautiful, and artistic. Three things I have always found irresistible in women. Three things almost ranking up there with a propensity to dance naked. I'd had a crush on Judy since third grade, and the moment I learned she was a fervent Christian, I set myself upon becoming just as fervent as she.

It all of it came tumbling down a month later. All of it. And in the course of a single night.

By then, my family knew of my conversion. None of them -- not even my mother -- tried to oppose me. I suppose she must have harbored secret reservations about my making such a youthful decision, but if she did, she kept them to herself.

Then one night, I decided I would proselytize my family at our dinner table. After all, I thought I knew what was best for them.

The episode came to an end when my younger brother posed the question, "What if you get to heaven only to discover the rest of us are in hell?"

That stopped me in my tracks. I had no answer for him. None. And I didn't get to sleep that night until just before dawn. Instead, I lay awake running his point through my head, trying to frame it in the toughest way possible, and slamming into one wall after the other. I could find no way around his thought that did not smack to me of BS, of kidding myself.

In the end, I felt forced to this conclusion: If it was true that my family would end up in hell and I in heaven, then I must refuse heaven in order to be with them in hell -- for I would be incapable of tolerating heaven if they were suffering in hell. To be sure, I still believed in Christianity. I wholly believed it was true. It was just that I wanted nothing to do with it, if having anything to do with it would lead to my family in hell and me in heaven.

Naturally, I prayed to God, sincerely thanked him for his grace and offer of salvation, told him of my thoughts on the matter, and wished him a fond adieu (if it was true my family might end up in hell with me in heaven). Or something very much along those lines. It's been ages since that night, and I have no doubt forgotten the details. The next day, I apologized to my mom and told her I would suspend judgment until I was properly mature enough to make a genuinely meaningful decision. She asked me what had changed my mind.

"Stuff", I said. "Nothing worth talking about." Terse. But what can you expect from a 13 year-old.


Would you want to be in heaven if people you loved were in hell?

Would you want to be in heaven if all the dancing girls were in hell? That is to say, would you want to be in heaven if anyone -- anyone at all, regardless of your relationship to them -- were in hell?

The question seems artificial and most unlikely to arise. It appears inconceivable that one would be able to love somebody who was going to hell.

 

[Glaurung]

Upon receiving the beatific vision a person's will becomes completely aligned with God's. Combined with the ceaseless joy that the direct vision of God affords it would be impossible to feel any pain of loss regarding damned loved ones. (Who upon entering Hell become incapable of love). Wilfully damning yourself to be with those you loved would be pointless as one of the punishments of Hell is an all consuming hatred you are compelled to feel towards God and all others.