If only the saved go to heaven, doesn't that make heaven a hell for the people who love non-saved people?

Question

Could you, honestly, live in heaven while you knew people were being tortured for all eternity in hell, especially people you knew?

If you, like I, could not find pleasure in such a place (and I hope no good people could!) what would the Abrahamic deity have to do to make heaven a paradise for you? Would be give you a spiritual lobotomy- making you not care (and thus not yourself)? Would he make you think your family and friends were there by deception, while they were still suffering? Would he bring them up to heaven with you, even though they were not saved? Would he do something else?
I think the first two possibilities are the work of a god that is evil, and the last, well, all it would take was one person in heaven that loved all mankind for everyone to be saved.

People are considered saints in Christian mythology for taking the suffering of others upon themselves-Are we to believe that in heaven they just stop caring?

Answer 1

You bring up a very interesting question. One one hand, you go to heaven, whilst your loved ones suffer (assuming they were not saved), while on the other, you don't care about your previous loved ones, which, in my eyes, is just as cruel.

They say that when you go to heaven, you do not remember this life - Are we to then, forget our identities, our very selves? What makes us "exist" at that point? If our spirit does not remember our past life (which is VERY cruel, and if so, I do not want any part of heaven), then how are we to know whether or not we should be there?

This is another point that brings skeptics of the religion joy, because it's a catch 22 - You have to be saved to go to heaven, where you'll be happy, but if your loved ones are not saved, you will not be happy - Does that not make heaven, in fact, a place where one does is not necessarily happy in their "everlasting life"?

Interesting, very interesting. Thanks for bringing such a question to light, and a new way of thinking for all you Christians out there.

Answer 2

No you couldn't be happy if people were in a burning hell,but there not. I burning everlasting hell was made up by ignorant people. Those souls that do not make it to heaven are blotted out . How God is a consuming fire that will permanatly erase the exitence painlessly of those that don't make it. So much so that it will be as thogh they never really did exist,that is why there will be you in heaven.Read Rev chapter 3 vese 5 as well as also psalms 69 verse 28 it reads Let them be blooted outof the Book of the living,and not written with the righteous. Check out the meaning of the word blot in Hebrew or greek. It means erased from time immortal.

Answer 3

Would a loving God really torment anyone for an eternity NO NO NO! The doctrines of hellfire and the immortality of the soul is false. When God told Adam the penalty of sinning what did he say? If you eat the fruit I'll make you burn forever. Nope. You will positively die. You will return to the dust I made you from. In other words, you will just cease to exist. The penalty for any sin is death, not eternal torment. It was Satan who said you positively will not die. But the Bible says very clearly that the soul can and does die. Ezekiel 18:4 etc. It is not an immortal entity that can survive the body at death. We ARE living souls, we don't HAVE souls. In the Bible the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades are commonly mis-translated as hell, when they really referr to the common grave of mankind.

Answer 4

Yes...i will love the life given to me in Heaven. I believe in heaven all will be revealed to us. We will fully understand the love and motivations of God. The Hell you speak of is nothing more than a separation from God. He will be out of their eternity, which is what they wanted in the first place. If this was not the case, then they would have accepted his Free gift while on this earth. I cant pretend to understand it now, because i cannot. I cant even wrap my head around the concept of eternity. Nor can i grasp the the concept of the size of the universe. Perhaps im ignorant, or am limited in my understanding by the enviroment I live in. In heaven, that enviroment will change, and I will fully understand. And that is a time for me that will be of great rejoicing.

Answer 5

Nobody really knows what happens in the afterlife. People believe a lot of different things, but has anybody come back from the afterlife to talk about heaven? No. Do you think that God wants people to suffer. I dislike that interpretation of God. We cannot comprehend God. God is the great Mystery. Don't worry about the afterlife, if there is one. Just be a good person now and try to help people who are living in hell right now.

Answer 6

Well, if God is all-powerful, maybe those who make it to Heaven have their memories erased, kind of like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch. It doesn't seem possible to explain the 'eternal glory' theory any other way. Maybe everyone in Heaven exists in a state of pre-frontal lobotomization...

Answer 7

Hell is where evil is once and for all finally destroyed. The ones going there will not renounce evil and will not be missed. Being saved is more complex and more simple than you state. On the cross Jesus promised salvation to the thieves hanging there with him.

Answer 8

Everything from our life on Earth will dissapear. We won't know of the suffering of those people in hell, yet they will know of our happiness in heaven.

Answer 9

I read in the Bible somewhere that those in Heaven will not remember this life

Answer 10

I've always wondered that too! My mother in law gets mad at me because she has to worry I won't be in heaven with her.