How can we be possibly be happy in Heaven?

This thought jumped into my head whilst I was rsponding to DocBill on another post and has been preying on my mind since, it basically goes like this:How can anyone be happy in Heaven knowing that some of their loved ones are being tortured in Hell?I can only speak about my own situation with any authority so here's how I imagine it will pan out in regard to my own family.My mother died when I was 14 and she believed that Jesus was Lord and Saviour, she was hard working, honest and well thought of in the community. She wasn't very old when she died, only 59, and I am obviously guessing but I suspect that if the New Testament is true then she will be at peace forever, no more pain and suffering for her.But, my father died a couple of years later and he was a bit of a gambler, not a heavy gambler, he just liked a bet on the horses and he liked a drink too. He worked very hard for many years in an iron foundry and he always made sure his family were taken care of, so I dont know if he is in heaven or not, lets for the sake of argument say he is.Then there is my brother, he died 3 years ago and he was only 49. There is no way on this earth that he is in heaven, going by traditional Christian soteriological beliefs. He drank a lot, took drugs, and done may other things that I dont wish to repeat, but most of all he thought that God was a fairytale, he was undoubtedly a non-believer, so he will be destined for Hell.Then there is gonna be me! There is no way that I can bring myself to believe in the 'Jesus as God' salvation trip. Well I say no way but I suppose there are certain conditions that might change my mind, but it is difficult to imagine that happening. I have disected the Bible too much to take it seriously, but I do acknowledge that it is an extremely interesting and unique collection of literature.So I am destined for the big burny fire, and the question I would like to ask is: How can anyone be happy for all eternity in Heaven knowing that some of the people they love dearly will be suffering eternal torment? I see this as a problem, can you imagine how heartbreaking it must be to know that your children will be in the lake of fire while you are rolling about on fluffy clouds?Brian.

Good point.Coming to think about it, wouldn't we start to resent God for sending them to Hell, I mean if he got things right in the first place then we could all live in peace and harmony forever.I think this is just another example that shows that the Bible wasnt really thought through that well. The authors were obviously just interested in getting theological ideas across to their readers, they ceratinly weren't deep, critical thinkers, there are far too many flaws in logic for the Bible to be completely true.Maybe it is time for schools to start teaching the Bible as a piece of literature only, and perhaps it can be used in history classes as an example of ancient propaganda techniques.Brian.

Thank you very much for the reply.I am glad you escaped the madness.Your reasons reinforce my opinions regarding the fundamentalist mentality and thankyou for sharing your experiences.A Chrsitan friend of mine suggested that God may give us selective memories when we get to heaven so as save us from further pain. Although this isn't exaclty ideal, it is one of the better suggestions that I have heard.Thanks again.Brian.

It sounds as if Mr. McCormack has a very over active imagination.A guy with Christian parents about to expire and hears his mum praying, I wonder what kinda dreams that sparks off in someone's mind?Can these stings produce an halluciogenic effects?Brian.

And in this condition, if Mr. McCormack witnessed a crime do you think that his evidence would be accepted by a court of Law?Brian.

Yes he didnt validate it from scripture but we were really only having a casual chat.The verse about the snakebite nonsense is at the end of Mark's gospel. The verses from 9-20 were added very late to the gospel, no early versions of the text contain these crazy tests.I think most bibles actually have a footnote explaning that these verses are very late editions.Your stories are typical of the intellectual contortions displayed by some people in order to believe that the Bible is true.Brian.

Hi Mike It isn't a problem for me Mike, I am just curious as to how God deals with this obvious logical problem.Imagine for a moment Mike that someone you really love is not a Christian, could you really have eternal happiness knowing that they were in eternal torment in Hell?Maybe it is the utilitarian in me, but I seem to think about other people as well as myself. Maybe I am too nice to be a Chrisitan Brian.

HI,Yes not for me either, I like the idea of the extinguishng of my existence. You would get driven mad with boredom, especially with all the restrcitions on what you can do in heaven too.Brian.

HI Phil,No problem, im pretty busy here myself as well.Brian.

Brian : Well I do have ‘an’ understanding of the issue, but what I requested was how other people ‘understand’ it.As for ‘such bad feedback’, I tend to disagree as I consider ANY feedback at all as positive. If someone takes the time to reply to a message of mine, I fully appreciate his or her time and effort. Prozac related some of his/her life experiences, to me these are valuable, that someone would take time to think back and put into words what they experienced and pass it on to me, makes me very thankful.I realise that Prozac’s replies may be negative in some people’s opinion, but this is reality, where good and bad things happen. Ok, since you have read a ‘vast number’ of my posts, you will have a good idea of why I have my opinions about the Bible and God. Do you think that, for example, that my opinion about the Bible being unreliable as a source for reconstructing accurate history is totally unfounded, or do I have a sound basis for my scepticism?The reason I have a ‘firmly-established’ position is because I have researched these issues for myself, I have not just sat and allowed myself to become indoctrinated with any old garbage. I question things, and I try to do it as objectively as is humanly possible. These studies have led me to conclusions that I am very happy with and if anyone has to go invoking the supernatural to convince me otherwise then of course I am not going to take them seriously. This is a bit confusing, you appeared to have already reached the conclusion that: 'the vast number of posts of yours that I've read plainly tell me that nothing that you hear will make you change your mind’, so if I said that I was interested in your answer would you believe me?Give me some indication that you are willing to listen to my point of view over this and I will be more inclined to speak about it with you. I am free to listen to whomever I wish anyway, I really don’t need your permission, but I would like as much input as possible, so you answer would be appreciated as much as anyone else’s, thanks. Well I will have to take your word for this as I haven’t been there myself, but I am very sceptical about second hand stories. Could you please give biblical references for this please, I would like to examine them myself?This ‘new understanding of reality’ in what way makes us forget about our loved ones in Hell?Is there a chance that this ‘new understanding’ could give us a greater insight into how Hell works and therefore make us even more unhappy? Sorry, but we need to define happiness ONLY in relation to the question I asked. I’d say that in the context of the question that the definition of ‘happiness’ is very clear. In context it asks if we can be have true peace and contentment knowing that some of our loved ones are suffering in Hell. You appear to miss the point of the question. I specifically asked if people could be happy in heaven knowing that their loved ones were suffering in Hell. All other little ‘add-ons’ that you have provided are not part of my original question, I specifically narrowed the question down to one point. This has absolutely nothing to do with my question. Yes they are also meaningless in regard to the question I asked as well. Thanks for clearing this up then, it confirms my opinion that I am too nice a person to be a Christian. It may be well and good that this is Heaven because I am here and God is present, so who cares about anyone else, sounds a very selfish attitude to me. Maybe we need to look at the definition of ‘Heaven’, could it be, ‘a place where I am happy with God and to Hell with everyone else?’ Well probably because we don’t think about these people every minute of the day, we have many other things in our lives to deal with. For example, taking care of the people we love, looking after our family, being with the people we care about most because we don’t want to be parted from them. Although, through my job. I do actually think about these people who need help for at least a few hours every week.
The difference here is that these people, although we all get very sad when images of them are broadcast, they are not out family or our loved ones; it is heartbreaking that these people are dying in terrible ways but there is that distance between us, they are not as close to us as our family. In the time it has taken me to write this reply to you probably dozens of children have died of starvation or disease, but we are not in deep mourning about that, but if, hypothetically speaking, your mother or wife died you would be devastated. My mum died when I was 14 and for the next 4 years I was a total mess, I hardly even remember anything that happened during that period, that’s how distraught I was, I would obviously not be in the same condition if someone I didn’t know died. Yes they are very crude.Unfortunately for your position we only have an earthly definition for these things, your God doesn’t appear to address the problem at all. Thank you for sharing your theory with me, I will add it to all the other theories and consider it, I appreciate you sharing your beliefs on the topic. It isn’t sufficient for me because:1. You haven’t provided any Bible references to support answer.
2. Your examples are very crude and do not even address the issue.
3. You have not said how our new knowledge of reality would make us happy, for all you know we could be even more devastated and even more unhappy with this new knowledge. Why is God keeping secrets? Well we have dictated everything else that God does so why not this?Thanks again for your post. If you could give some references to the texts that support your viewpoint it would be appreciated. Also, if you could say why you think this new knowledge makes us happy I’d be interested, and, in future, if you could address the question instead of going off on tangents then we could save a lot of time and effort.Brian.Edited for formatting issues![This message has been edited by Brian, 09-09-2003][This message has been edited by Brian, 09-09-2003]

Hi, Whether it was ‘bad feedback’ is a matter of opinion, Prozac’s post contained information related to my question, hence it was valuable content which took time to compose. Yes, indeed it would (although it could probably call their bluff if this was a cry for help), however, this example has nothing to do with Prozac’s post. This I am interested in. In relation to the Old Testament, if you any references to archaeological evidence, non-biblical texts or any anthropological evidence that you feel supports the historicity of the Old Testament, then I would dearly love to see them. A bibliography would be fine, I should be able to pick up any material of a decent academic standard from the libraries I use.Evidence for Jesus is something I am not really interested in, and anyway, if the Old Testament is unreliable then it follows that the New is as well. If you really wanted to discuss the reliability of the Old Testament, I’d be happy to open a thread on the topic. As I am sure you will agree, everyone is subjective to a certain degree, however, anything that I write from my research is scrutinised by my advisor at university, so he does try to keep me balanced. Yes, this is a danger on a theological level, and indeed I know ‘in my heart’ that there is no God, I know this just as strongly as you know in your heart that there is a God. But on a historical level, I conclude that there really is no doubt amongst scholars that the early history of Israel as portrayed in the Bible is grossly erroneous, I could not come to a conclusion like this if there was convincing contrary evidence, trust me I have looked for it. If you can provide contrary evidence then I will seriously consider it, but I really think I have read almost everything from the maximalist camp.
Anyway, we are all guilty of bias, I do not doubt that you are on a mission to support your conclusion that God is behind everything in the universe, nothing at all will ever convince you otherwise, if I am wrong about this then tell me what would convince you that there is no God. I just don’t see the point of it, why have a conclusion then continue anyway, you already know what the outcome would be? Probably just one of my faults. This verse doesn’t imply how we are going to be happy when our loved ones are in Hell, it does say that the imperfection will pass, but the perfection could be that we are chuckling away along with God whilst our loved ones fry. God’s idea of perfection is obviously different from ours, it could be that His perfection is a severely twisted one.Also, I am not convinced that Paul ever let go of the ‘child’ in him, he seems a very gullible man to me. Doesn’t He? Why would he bother remembering them, they are lost to Him remember, they have made their choice, there is no free will after you die (Crashfrog). I cannot imagine how this could possibly be true, we may understand, for example, that these people deserve to be eternally tormented, but for it not to trouble you is beyond me. I can deal with my mother’s death because I believe that her existence is extinguished and she isn’t in pain anymore, but I cannot imagine that God having a valid reason for frying her would ever be acceptable to me. But I do see where you are coming from and it is a good answer, thanks. Yes but I don’t think anyone is happy when very closed family and/or friends are the objects of this suffering and death, as I said, we can cope because these people are not immediate family. Well this will be a good trick if He can pull it off, I don’t see how understanding will in anyway ease the pain. I understand that my mother may have died from cancer because she smoked all her life, it doesn’t mean that I say ‘oh well she got what she deserved!’
Is there a chance that this ‘new understanding’ could give us a greater insight into how Hell works and therefore make us even more unhappy? But this still could make us unhappy, to see things as they really are might be a total nightmare. Yes I feel that the concept of Hell has changed drastically throughout the evolution of the Bible, I think that Plotinus’ Neo-Platonism certainly gave Christianity a great weapon for spreading the faith. Well IF this is the understanding we come to then the question is redundant, but there is no indication in the Bible that this is the case. It is difficult to imagine that I am going to hate my brother, who will no doubt be in Hell as we speak, just because he decided that God isn’t for him, although I concede that this new understanding would allow me to do so.Understanding that they are enemies of God might help us to understand why He has decided to torture them, but will it wipe away all those memories of your mum kissing your knee where you fell, her loving hugs when you wake from a bad dream, the sacrifices she made so you could have a safe and loving home, taking her breakfast in bed on a Sunday morning, opening Christmas presents together, holidays together, the list is endless, and God wants me to think of her as an enemy. This is horrendous, I will keep my memories and God can do what He wants. (sorry for the mini rant!)It just seems so utterly pointless, God knows everything, He knows before the first man was created exactly who is going to spend eternity with Him and who isn’t, this nonsense in the middle is just shows how incompetent God is. Cut out the middle man and let God have His ego massaged by his robots now, instead of all this silly messing about. Yes, but this usually involves a little more than them telling you that your God doesn’t exist. I really do not see how this analogy can be supported by scripture. When on earth God promotes loving you enemies, ‘do good to those who hate you’, then all of a sudden we hate these people? It looks as if God’s chosen people are not that nice at all. If this is accurate, yes it does. However, it creates a few other dilemmas! LOL Oh I realise the intention behind the preaching, what I don’t appreciate is the ‘over the top’ condemnation when someone rejects the gospel. What I don’t appreciate is people stopping me in the street and asking me if I have ‘Jesus in my life,’ and when I say ‘no’ they start to tell me about Christian beliefs as if I hadn’t heard it before, and when you inform them that you know all about the Gospel, they continue anyway, and being a polite person I end up listening to it all again! Although they do not always get it easy after their spiel is finished. I am sorry about your mum, the pain does lessen some, but I still get upset about it at certain times of the year, and this is 25 years later. I suppose this is some comfort for you, she will be safe and happy now. My dad died a couple of years after my mum, I think I was still mourning so much for my mum that it ‘softened’ the pain a little. Yes but it is precisely this love that Jesus promoted that we have to suddenly have to do a 180 turn on when we are in heaven. I am getting more understanding as I get older, but there are some people I dislike. Although I don’t actually hate anyone, I believe I do have the capacity to hate. Well you haven’t convinced my yet that He does address this. This has still to be demonstrated though Better still, try explaining the Trinity to 33 fourteen year olds who are not interested! lol Well if there is a God it will certainly be a surprise for me! I have never been convinced by this argument, it implies that God is not omniscient. A being that knows everything cannot actually ‘test’ anyone, because He knows what that individual will choose anyway. I should have explained this more. In my opinion, man has written the Bible and God is a figment of man’s imagination, therefore we actually control ‘God’. When something is discovered, certain people say that God decided it was time for us to find this. My opinion is that we are giving credit to an entity that we have created, hence my claim that we dictate what God does and doesn’t do. Your post was excellent and very much appreciated, it has gave me a much better understanding of the subject. Although I will admit that it is a good answer, it is one that I have difficulty in believing as Truth, although you did state that it is our limited understanding that causes this.Thanks again.Brian.

Hi, I hope you and your family are well. That’s fine, I didn’t mean to hog your time with the long reply, it is just that us isn’t often someone from the ‘opposing’ camp is as articulate as you. That’s fine, there is no hurry even if it is two or three weeks that’s no problem. Of course this is only from a Christian and, to a lesser extent, Muslim viewpoint. Jews do not see any sign of Jesus at all in their Bible, to them the messiah is still to come.I would also venture to say that the prophecies about ‘Jesus’ in the Hebrew bible are tenuous at best, argument from prophecy has long been abandoned as a worthwhile task, the sources are simply too limited and too unreliable. Nope, not clear to any Bible student. A student of the Hebrew Bible can study that without even considering Jesus. There are literally thousands of courses in universities that teach some aspect of the Hebrew Bible and never mention Jesus. There are many things to study in the Hebrew Bible without considering Jesus, for example, you could study the origins and the development of the Hebrew Bible, you could study source criticism, documentary criticism, documentary hypothesis, archaeology and the Hebrew Bible, the list is endless.Granted IF you were studying the Bible from a Christian perspective you could find many alleged links to Jesus in the OT, however, it is not only Christian that study the OT, the OT is not the sole property of the Christian. Of course you know that the Hebrew Bible was around for a very long time before the NT, that Christians see Jesus in it is fundamental to their faith, but it isn’t everyone that shares this belief, so they can study another aspect of the Bible, such as how many people wrote Isaiah’s book, which can be done independently of the NT. Yep, makes sense; however this depends on what it is the detective is investigating. For example, if I were to investigate the historical accuracy of Conquest Of Canaan, then the NT would be of no use to me, I would use the text that is closest to the time of the event, hence the NT is never used for investigating this event. Sorry, but I strongly disagree on this one, it is a non-sequitur. You need to verify your primary sources first, the OT is closest in proximity to all the events described in the OT than the NT is. If I were looking for evidence of King David I would look at texts that may be contemporary to him, not some inscriptions that were written more than a thousand years later. The longer the gap in time between the sources and what they are portraying then the less reliable they are. Archaeologists would claim that the Tel Dan Stele was proof that King David was real (in truth, very few actually do), but they would never think that the mention of King David in the NT is proof that such a character lived.Many events in the NT are said to be related to the OT, takes as an example Jesus’ flight to Egypt as a parallel of the Exodus, the ‘out of Egypt’ prophecy, if the OT version of the account is false then the prophecy in the NT is false. Jesus may well have been to Egypt but that the Israelites were never there means that it wasn’t done to fulfil anything.Think of it this way, the OT would have been available to whoever it was that wrote the gospels, they could simply have been making things up to make it look like Jesus fulfilled prophecies that were in the OT. Given that the vast majority of the events in Jesus life are ignored by Jesus' contemporaries then this is a possibility. I mean, who else witnessed the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, or the cleansing of the temple, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the dead walking the streets when Jesus died, no one noticed this except whoever wrote the Gospels, there are no independent witnesses.
If the sources that the gospel authors used contain only myths or ideologies, then the NT is based on faulty sources. Hence, if the OT is erroneous then some, not all, of the NT is as well. I have considered this. But this only applies to certain areas of research, the Hebrew Bible can be studied without even the slightest thought for the NT, it depends on what you are hoping to prove/disprove. Well I hope not! But it does get graded by an external assessor, and my advisor is a very famous scholar in the field that I am researching, so he should know the pitfalls. Nope,but what you are asking me to believe, in my opinion, is that that two plus two equals five! Well of course I agree, if I had the same experiences as you or had the same agenda as you then I would no doubt have found these certain points. In fact, I may already have found these points but dismissed them as fantasy, who knows? Oh I am a stickler for evidence and reasoning, this is why I know that the Hebrew Bible’s record of many events is erroneous. This is not based on any personal crusade, but only on evidence, or, more accurately, negative evidence of the historical events portrayed in the Hebrew Bible. The spiritual stuff can be argued over all day without agreement, but the cold hard facts of archaeology and history are harder to deny. I understand this, but something extraordinary would have to happen in my life for me to even consider placing God before anyone or anything. I do know that such things do happen, whether it is actually God or a psychological episode is arguable. I had a friend who we all expected to die from drug abuse but he is now a born again Christian and working for a church in England. Something obviously happened to change his life, he says it was Jesus, I am more inclined to put it down to his imagination. If God exists then he has to be far beyond us in every department. But why can’t God understand that some people need more convincing than others, he has to know that some of us reject him by using the talents he gave us, some of us didn’t deliberately set out to deny Him, we have reached our conclusions by using our abilities as best we can, why condemn us if we are too stupid to see God in everything?I am short of time here too, so I need to get going, if you would like to discuss the historical evidence for the OT, then can I suggest that we open another thread so as this one can remain on topic?Thanks again for your time and information.Brian.[This message has been edited by Brian, 09-10-2003][This message has been edited by Brian, 09-10-2003]

Hi, Well I am an atheist.
Evolutionist.
I regard the Bible as a great collection of ancient literature, but it is only literature, it is not an accurate record of history or science. Can you suggest a better approach? I was a Xian for 20 years and believed that I communicated with God on a regular basis. I have no immediate desire to enter the world of self delusion. God cannot comprehend the superior intelligence that we have, we are so superior to God that trying to communicate with Him is pointless God does not understand us because God is not playing with the full deck.Brian.