Of Heaven and Hell
I had some interesting discussions with my religious friend a while back about the Christian heaven and hell. After I read several chapters in the bible, I formulated several questions for her. This was a while back so I don't remember her specific answers, but I'll try my best to represent her views accurately.
Question
The book says heaven is perfect bliss and happiness, etc. But it also goes on to suggest that there are different "levels" of admittance into heaven. That depending on your faith and what you've done in your mortal life, you will be either greater in heaven or lesser in heaven. This is illogical. Heaven can not be perfect if there are to be levels of distinction. That implies that there are "less than perfect" parts of heaven, which would imply that these "lesser" heavens are not true heaven at all.
Her response
We can't know what heaven is like and I honestly don't know the answer to this question.
My thoughts
I appreciated the fact that she was willing to admit that she didn't know and can not know. But my question still stands. If the bible can make these claims about having "greater" treasures in heaven and also claim that heaven is perfect bliss, that seems logically incorrect to me. I was joking with my friend that if she and I both made it to heaven, she'd be perfectly happy with the giant golden palace given to her by God and I'd be perfectly happy with the little lump of coal God gave me. :)
Question
What are the absolute requirements for being "admitted" into heaven according to Christian teachings? List them for me because I'm confused.
Her response
1) Accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior*
2) God will judge you when you die and He is the only one that can decide whether you go to heaven or hell
My thoughts
I think I also brought up Jewish people, because obviously they don't accept Jesus. I think she said that they still get to go to heaven because they are bound under the old "agreement" with God. And if God is the ultimate judge, you could follow every single commandment (not just the 10, but the hundreds of commands God gives in the bible) and still not get in because He's an ass. My friend, who is a great person and a devout Christian, could be joining me in hell because she doesn't condemn me for being a non-believer, or she doesn't drag people to the edge of town and stone them to death for being gay/disobedient/etc. Of course everyone would prefer to believe that God is merciful and grants many more people into heaven than he rejects, but we can't know that to be true. He might be a hard-ass and a biblical literalist. After all, he was the one who allegedly wrote those religious texts.
Question
So God sent us Jesus because we couldn't be saved without him. But he didn't send him until 4000 years after he created man. Does that mean that every person prior to Jesus' lifetime went to hell?
Her response
Romans 4:1-3 and Romans 5:12-21
My thoughts
I forgot what she answered personally. I just read those verses she cited for me and I still don't know the answer to the question, but my guess is that the answer is "no".
Question
What about people born into native tribes that never even had the opportunity to read a bible, or meet a Christian, or even know what Christianity was? Are they all sinners that are going to hell? What wrong did they commit?
Her response
She had actually spoken about this with her former pastor and they both agreed that these tribes would get to go to heaven.
My thoughts
She has no basis for her answer other than she thinks it fits God's character. She wants to believe that God is good and thus wants to believe that he wouldn't condemn these people who haven't been exposed to Christianity. With religion, it seems to me that many people are biased in there beliefs because they believe to be true what they wish to be true, which is not a good way to determine what is true and what is not. Wishing for something to be true does not make it so.
Another thought is, what if a Christian minister came to the village and began preaching the word? What if the villagers, cemented in with their pagan beliefs, refused to accept the minister's claims as true? Do they know go to hell for not accepting Jesus? If not, at what point is one "exposed" enough to Christian teachings that their rejection of those teachings merit them eternal damnation? What about myself? Have I been exposed enough that I deserve to go to hell? Maybe I wasn't damned before because I knew so little about Christianity, but am damned now that I have undertaken a serious study of it and rejected these claims as false? If that were the case, wouldn't it be better to not expose anyone to Christianity at all? That way they are guaranteed at having a shot of going to heaven (recall, my friend is convinced that I am guaranteed to go to hell).
Question
What about children who died very young, before they had a chance to become Christian or be baptized? Are they going to hell too? Is it a sin to be born?
Her response
Honestly I can't recall. But I'm pretty dang sure that she said they would go to heaven.
My thoughts
It certainly seems that they would, since "sin" is something that we all inherit from our genealogy. I can't imagine going into a hospital and visiting the newborn area and pointing at all the days-old infants and shouting "Repent, ye evil sinners! Thou shalt be cast into the fires of hell!". Honestly, who on Earth and in their right mind could think that babies are born guilty? That's all Christianity seems to be to me. Its putting everyone on some big guilt trip for being who they are and continually having to ask forgiveness merely for being human and having faults like all other creatures. God was the one who allegedly created you with all your faults, so instead of asking forgiveness from him for being an imperfect sinner why don't you try condemning him for making you an imperfect sinner?
Question
Is heaven a place of eternal happiness, peace, and bliss? Can you really be forever happy there with God when you are up there and know that myself and many other people you've known in your mortal life are in hell, being tortured and burned and mutilated every moment of every day for the rest of eternity? Do you just "forget" about the people you knew in your life that went to hell, or do you just not care for them anymore? How can you be happy by yourself up in heaven knowing that people you once cared for are suffering in hell for all eternity?
Her response
Her answer again was that she can not know what happens when she gets to heaven.
My thoughts
Again I commend her honest response. Personally I think I asked a great question with this though. In heaven, you either lose all empathy with those you knew in life or you forget all of the souls that you once knew who are burning and suffering in hell. Or here's the third option: hell does not exist. Many Christians actually do disbelieve in hell (and for good reasons I might add). And if hell doesn't exist, maybe heaven doesn't exist either? And if heaven doesn't exist, how about going a step further and admitting that your God doesn't exist?
I know one thing for certain. If I was in heaven, I would be unhappy knowing that so many of my friends throughout life were being subjected to never-ending torture, and I would go up to God and tell him to stop it. I'd like to see a Christian agree with me on that, but I doubt many will. For to question or disagree with God is just something that they can't even contemplate doing.
Question
The book says heaven is perfect bliss and happiness, etc. But it also goes on to suggest that there are different "levels" of admittance into heaven. That depending on your faith and what you've done in your mortal life, you will be either greater in heaven or lesser in heaven. This is illogical. Heaven can not be perfect if there are to be levels of distinction. That implies that there are "less than perfect" parts of heaven, which would imply that these "lesser" heavens are not true heaven at all.
Her response
We can't know what heaven is like and I honestly don't know the answer to this question.
My thoughts
I appreciated the fact that she was willing to admit that she didn't know and can not know. But my question still stands. If the bible can make these claims about having "greater" treasures in heaven and also claim that heaven is perfect bliss, that seems logically incorrect to me. I was joking with my friend that if she and I both made it to heaven, she'd be perfectly happy with the giant golden palace given to her by God and I'd be perfectly happy with the little lump of coal God gave me. :)
Question
What are the absolute requirements for being "admitted" into heaven according to Christian teachings? List them for me because I'm confused.
Her response
1) Accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior*
2) God will judge you when you die and He is the only one that can decide whether you go to heaven or hell
My thoughts
I think I also brought up Jewish people, because obviously they don't accept Jesus. I think she said that they still get to go to heaven because they are bound under the old "agreement" with God. And if God is the ultimate judge, you could follow every single commandment (not just the 10, but the hundreds of commands God gives in the bible) and still not get in because He's an ass. My friend, who is a great person and a devout Christian, could be joining me in hell because she doesn't condemn me for being a non-believer, or she doesn't drag people to the edge of town and stone them to death for being gay/disobedient/etc. Of course everyone would prefer to believe that God is merciful and grants many more people into heaven than he rejects, but we can't know that to be true. He might be a hard-ass and a biblical literalist. After all, he was the one who allegedly wrote those religious texts.
Question
So God sent us Jesus because we couldn't be saved without him. But he didn't send him until 4000 years after he created man. Does that mean that every person prior to Jesus' lifetime went to hell?
Her response
Romans 4:1-3 and Romans 5:12-21
My thoughts
I forgot what she answered personally. I just read those verses she cited for me and I still don't know the answer to the question, but my guess is that the answer is "no".
Question
What about people born into native tribes that never even had the opportunity to read a bible, or meet a Christian, or even know what Christianity was? Are they all sinners that are going to hell? What wrong did they commit?
Her response
She had actually spoken about this with her former pastor and they both agreed that these tribes would get to go to heaven.
My thoughts
She has no basis for her answer other than she thinks it fits God's character. She wants to believe that God is good and thus wants to believe that he wouldn't condemn these people who haven't been exposed to Christianity. With religion, it seems to me that many people are biased in there beliefs because they believe to be true what they wish to be true, which is not a good way to determine what is true and what is not. Wishing for something to be true does not make it so.
Another thought is, what if a Christian minister came to the village and began preaching the word? What if the villagers, cemented in with their pagan beliefs, refused to accept the minister's claims as true? Do they know go to hell for not accepting Jesus? If not, at what point is one "exposed" enough to Christian teachings that their rejection of those teachings merit them eternal damnation? What about myself? Have I been exposed enough that I deserve to go to hell? Maybe I wasn't damned before because I knew so little about Christianity, but am damned now that I have undertaken a serious study of it and rejected these claims as false? If that were the case, wouldn't it be better to not expose anyone to Christianity at all? That way they are guaranteed at having a shot of going to heaven (recall, my friend is convinced that I am guaranteed to go to hell).
Question
What about children who died very young, before they had a chance to become Christian or be baptized? Are they going to hell too? Is it a sin to be born?
Her response
Honestly I can't recall. But I'm pretty dang sure that she said they would go to heaven.
My thoughts
It certainly seems that they would, since "sin" is something that we all inherit from our genealogy. I can't imagine going into a hospital and visiting the newborn area and pointing at all the days-old infants and shouting "Repent, ye evil sinners! Thou shalt be cast into the fires of hell!". Honestly, who on Earth and in their right mind could think that babies are born guilty? That's all Christianity seems to be to me. Its putting everyone on some big guilt trip for being who they are and continually having to ask forgiveness merely for being human and having faults like all other creatures. God was the one who allegedly created you with all your faults, so instead of asking forgiveness from him for being an imperfect sinner why don't you try condemning him for making you an imperfect sinner?
Question
Is heaven a place of eternal happiness, peace, and bliss? Can you really be forever happy there with God when you are up there and know that myself and many other people you've known in your mortal life are in hell, being tortured and burned and mutilated every moment of every day for the rest of eternity? Do you just "forget" about the people you knew in your life that went to hell, or do you just not care for them anymore? How can you be happy by yourself up in heaven knowing that people you once cared for are suffering in hell for all eternity?
Her response
Her answer again was that she can not know what happens when she gets to heaven.
My thoughts
Again I commend her honest response. Personally I think I asked a great question with this though. In heaven, you either lose all empathy with those you knew in life or you forget all of the souls that you once knew who are burning and suffering in hell. Or here's the third option: hell does not exist. Many Christians actually do disbelieve in hell (and for good reasons I might add). And if hell doesn't exist, maybe heaven doesn't exist either? And if heaven doesn't exist, how about going a step further and admitting that your God doesn't exist?
I know one thing for certain. If I was in heaven, I would be unhappy knowing that so many of my friends throughout life were being subjected to never-ending torture, and I would go up to God and tell him to stop it. I'd like to see a Christian agree with me on that, but I doubt many will. For to question or disagree with God is just something that they can't even contemplate doing.
Labels: Christianity, God, heaven, hell
posted by Tyler Olsen at 10:47 AM
3 Comments:
Hi - I found your blog from a forum on PhDcomics.com, which I found when I did a search on life as a PhD student in general. But I got here and found... something completely unrelated :)
I'm an Enginner and I like to think that I think analytically... and I believe in God. I guess I can sum it up as having had experiences that would take way more too many coincidences to explain.
I feel for your friend because I always have to consciouly switch my manner of thinking to be more analytical when I'm with my atheist friends, and explain things to them in a way they'd understand or with logic they'd respect and therefore accept. Problem is, faith wouldn't be called 'faith' if it could be taken into a lab and proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Sometimes my friends get me all defensive, and sometimes I come across to them as condescending, but we've still managed to remain friends by agreeing to disagree - and then I usually sneak in the fact that at least I'm humble enough to admit I don't have all the answers :P
Anyhow - you write well, and if you're still considering that PhD I think you have the right kind of mind for it. I also hope you find some answers/explanations that you can accept since you seem to be genuinely searching. Just because she can't answer all your questions should not discount what she believes... it's hard to explain something that can't be broken down to an equation.
Hi Owumi, thanks for stopping by. :)
Yeah, I try to explain things in a manner that my religious friend would understand. Like once she remarked "I don't know why God didn't give me a better voice" (she likes to sing). Rather than coming up with an answer based on genetics and embryonic development, I proposed "So is everything that you are good at is something that God wants you to do and everything you are bad at is what he does not want you to do? What if he purposely made you a bad singer to see if you could overcome the handicap, practice singing diligently, and be successful at it?". If there is a God, that's what I'd like to think that he would do, although I have no reason nor evidence to believe that he would act in that manner.
I appreciate that you are humble and admit that you don't have all the answers. Neither do I. What I've been sharing on this blog for the past couple of months are what I believe are the most-likely-to-be-true answers to the questions that I have had about these subjects. I never assert something or take a position on an issue that I do not have a good understanding of. To do so would be unintelligent, disingenuous, and downright stupid for me to do.
I certainly do not take the position that her inability to answer all of my questions immediately discredits her belief. Likewise, she can't discredit my lack of belief simply because I do not know with high certainty by what process the universe was formed. I never expected her to answer all of my questions, but I did expect her to have answers for all of her individual beliefs, which she failed to present me with. Like I mentioned in a previous post, when I asked her why she believed in the bible the answer she gave me was "I don't know, I just do", and she lets that book dictate how she should live every moment of her life. I was frankly dumbfounded when she said that.
Anyway you seem to have an interesting blog as well and I'll take a deeper look through it when I have time. It also looks like you are in Austin. If you're up to it, I'd love to meet you sometime to have a civil discussion about beliefs and religion. Especially since you are an engineer and might be able to convey your beliefs to me better than my other friend. I've been kind of sad not having any other theist friends that I can have a discussion of these matters with. If you're up for that please let me know. And if you're not I'll understand (I'm a little hesitant about having such serious discussions with someone that I've never met). I hope you'll share more of your thoughts on my blog posts in the future at least, thanks! :)
Sure I'd love to talk sometime, I do live in Austin, although I feel like I need to prepare :) You ask interesting questions.
I'm also currently in the middle of a passivee-aggressive debate with someone else... he doesn't ask direct questions like you do, but things always come up that need detailed explanations to justify my decisions.
So we can continue talking over blog and email for now, and maybe have coffee/lunch sometime in the future.
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