Board index ‹ Heaven and Hell

[Osterizer]

Let's say I went to heaven. How could I be in paradise, bliss, eternal happiness knowing that there are millions of souls being brutally tortured? Also, let's say I make it to heaven but a loved one of mine didn't, how could I be in everlasting happiness without their presence, and with the knowledge that they will suffer eternally?

[jimwalton]

I would say there are several lines of thought in response to your question.

1. Those who go to heaven will know God, because we will see him as he is (1 Jn. 3.2; 1 Cor. 15.29). We will understand his ways and his thoughts. Since we will have a complete understanding of how love and justice really can work together and are not mutually exclusive, we will know that everyone who is in hell chose to be there, and that God's letting them go there was the just thing to do, and we will agree with God about it.

2. People that you know are in hell right now, and yet not only does that not keep you awake at night, it doesn't even persuade you to take the path that leads to heaven. Hell is not in the front of our minds now when we are surrounded by the agonies of life, let alone when we will be surrounded by the glories of heaven.

3. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.19-31, the rich man seems very aware of Lazarus in heaven, but Lazarus doesn't seem to be aware of the rich man in hell.

4. During his ministry, Jesus didn't run around screaming at people in a wild panic, "Get saved NOW or you're GOING TO HELL! Believe me on this one!!" One would almost think it's all he would talk about, given the eternal consequences. Granted, he did talk about it an awful lot, but he accepted the concept and reality of justice with a sense of equanimity. People make their choices, and each will get what is absolutely fair, deserved, and chosen.

5. I'm quite confident you misunderstand hell. The "brutal torture" of hell is not burning fire, but separation from God. I'm quite convinced that hell isn't fire, but fire is just an image of awfulness used to show us what separation from God will be like. The Bible is quite clear that there are degrees of punishment in hell (that's VASTLY different from levels of hell like Dante's "Inferno"). If fire is the literal punishment, there is no such thing as degrees of punishment. Fire is fire, and it's all the same. Hell is separation from the presence, love, mercy, grace, and justice of God. Your suffering will not be physical agony but spiritual emptiness and separation, a fate far worse than fire. That's what hell is. People who go there are people who have turned their backs on God and don't want anything to do with Him, such as yourself (since you identified yourself as an ex-Catholic atheist). For those who are in heaven, knowledge of you getting what you have freely chosen and deserve in all fairness will not keep them in a state of suffering.

[Bagel Man]

> I'm quite confident you misunderstand hell. The "brutal torture" of hell is not burning fire, but separation from God.

What?

Jesus refers to hell as "Gehenna", a garbage dump that burned day and night outside Jerusalem during his time. "Unquenchable fire" makes an appearance in Mark 9:43.

So while you sit up there in Heaven, or even as you sit here on Earth you must know people in Gehenna. How you can be satisfied with that massively disproportionate punishment is beyond me, and I'd invite you to hold your own God up to some standards of moral decency that he hasn't written, even for just a second, he is truly evil.

I can understand how you don't mind people being "without God" because you see it all the time, and believe me, as an example myself, I'm doing just fine. Seems like a crazy interpretation of "Gehenna" to me.

[jimwalton]

The Bible uses five main pictures to speak of hell, only 1 of which is fire (Gehenna).

1. Darkness (Mt. 8.12; Jude 13) and separation (Lk. 13.27-28; 2 Thes. 1.7-9)
2. Suffering and Remorse, described in 3 different ways:
- Weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt. 8.12; 22.13; 25.30; Lk. 13.28)
- fire (Mt. 13.42, 50)
- cut to pieces (Mt. 24.51)
3. Punishment (Mt. 25.46; Rev. 14.11)
4. Fire (Jude 7; Luke 16.24)
5. Death and destruction (2 Thes. 1.7-9; Rev. 20.14)

When you focus in on just one of the images, you create a false representation of what the Bible teaches. While fire is a common image, it's not the only one, and we need all the depictions together to understand the whole picture.

As far as "standards of moral decency", the only morality is to be found in true justice that is fair and not disproportionate. If you want a God who doesn't act against rebellion and evil, then you want a God who is evil himself. Only true fairness and justice represents moral decency. If you want a police force that never arrests anyone, and a judge who never convicts anyone, you want not what is fair, moral, and proportionate, but what is weak, insensitive, and dishonorable.

As I mentioned, punishments in hell are proportionate to the infraction. There are degrees of punishment. As the Bible teaches, as opposed to your malformed view, hell is proportionate, fair, and just.

[Triple B]

> People that you know are in hell right now, and yet not only does that not keep you awake at night, it doesn't even persuade you to take the path that leads to heaven.

As an atheist, I don't know anyone is in hell right now. If I did know that for certain, it would absolutely keep me awake at night knowing my loved ones were in hell, and it would absolutely sour me to the God who put them there.

[jimwalton]

So what you're implying is that if God were really God and if he were truly good, he wouldn't have any standards of right and wrong, reward for obedience, punishment for rebellion, or justice that gave people what they both chose and deserved? To me, you've created a god who is weak, immoral, prejudicial, unfair, dishonorable, weak, and insensitive. If you're after a god who lets anybody do whatever they want, and everyone gets a prize at the end, you've created a system of tremendous corruption and atrocity. Remember, the Bible teaches that hell was not created for people, but for the devil and his angels, but people in their rebellion against God, denying that he exists and that he is holy and righteous, will choose to be separated from him for eternity in like manner as the devil and his angels. What's "sour" is a perspective where all standards are ignored, morality is flatlined, and justice is countermanded.

[Flux Capacitor]

Are we currently separated from God?

[jimwalton]

Yes, anyone who has not made a decision to align their life with God's in a love relationship is still separated from him, as we were all born separated from him. We all have a choice to align with him or to continue in our separation.

But in this life we are all still recipients of what is called "common grace". We all still enjoy sunshine and rain, the produce of the earth, joy and laughter, beauty, and things like encouragement, success, friendship. In eternity, in the complete separation from the life of God, people will be separated from these things as well. In eternity, the joy of his followers is made complete, and the separation of those who are in rebellion against him is also made complete.

[Han Solo]

> Hell is separation from the presence, love, mercy, grace, and justice of God. Your suffering will not be physical agony but spiritual emptiness and separation, a fate far worse than fire.

I don't even believe in a spirit, much less a god, meaning I am separated from his love, mercy, grace, and justice (though I have a huge problem with the idea of perfect justice and perfect mercy being together). So does that mean that I (an atheist) am right now experiencing what your version of hell is like?

[jimwalton]

> Am I right now experiencing what your version of hell is like?

No, not really. Just in one sense of it. Anyone who has not made a decision to align their life with God's in a love relationship is still separated from him, as you say, as we were all born separated from him. We all have a choice to align with him or to continue in our separation.

But in this life we are all also still recipients of what is called "common grace". We all still enjoy sunshine and rain, the produce of the earth, joy and laughter, beauty, and things like encouragement, success, friendship. In eternity, in the complete separation from the life of God, people will be separated from these things as well. In eternity, the joy of his followers is made complete, and the separation of those who are in rebellion against him is also made complete.

What does perfect justice and perfect mercy being together look like? The Bible describes a situation where there is one ultimate choice: The choice to align with God, who is life, and therefore to choose life, or to refuse to align with God, which is a choice against life, which is therefore death. There is no middle ground. Humanity chose and continues to daily choose against life, which is the choice of separation from life, which is death. Jesus came, as the Bible teaches, to fulfill the legal requirements both of life and death, and in a legal transaction, bear death for any who want to align with God. He freely took their legal punishment as an act of love so that they can have life. What is necessary is that an individual must choose it; love and life cannot be foisted on people without destroying what love is all about. Therefore mercy is extended to all who ask, and God in his justice grants it because the legal requirements of the law have been met in the death of Jesus. And therefore justice is extended to all: for all who have chosen life, they can find it because Jesus paid the price; for all who have chosen death, they will have what they have chosen and deserve because they have rebelled against the source of Life itself. Thus we have perfect love (sacrificial, substitutionary, freely given), perfect justice (all will get what they have chose and deserve), and perfect mercy (those who turn to life will have it through Jesus, and those who did not will not all be judged the same, but commensurate with their sins).