Well, in terms of heaven and hell concepts, all “evil” is not equal – if we use the Dante’ version of hell. (Not every “evil” rises to the level of, let’s say Hitler, but could still land you in Hell)
Thus Person A lives a good life and then dies and goes to heaven. Person B is so distraught about A’s death that they commit suicide. Many believe suicide is a “go to hell” offense.
Is Person A then to be doomed to a sad existence in heaven due to B’s suicide, which landed B in hell?
Why not ? A God who’d send you to eternal torture for suicide obviously isn’t interested in justice or compassion.
You might like to read C. S. Lewis’ short story/novel/book thing, The great divorce, for one take on this problem.
Ditto…
but to add my own two cents- IF the case presented by the OP is valid (a big IF, IMO) -
the Blessed Souls will have perfect insight into the Mind of God
as much as a Blessed Soul might have loved a now-Damned Soul in mortal life, God loved that Damned Soul even more
the Blessed Soul will know & understand why the other Soul is now Damned before God.
I totally & absolutely disagree with the idea of a Heavenly Mindwipe. As Ayn Rand had John Galt say of ‘Galt’s Gulch’- “No one stays here by faking reality… in any way, whatsoever.” The Blessed Souls will retain all memories, as painful as they now seem, because in that Heavenly State, the Blessed Souls will also know how the sufferings of mortal life wove together to be redeemed in the Divine Plan.
To be blunt, that’s just silly. No one who felt love or even mild compassion would ever damn someone for any reason; no mere finite mortal can ever do anything that deserves inifinite punishment.
Suffering cannot be redeemed. You also assume that the “Blessed Souls” will care why they suffered; I sure wouldn’t.
Ignorance is bliss.
If, as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Hell is other people”, it follows that Heaven is the lack of them.
So there we have it.
You and God up in Heaven sitting and staring at each other for eternity (kinda like the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing, although God probably won’t erupt at any moment into a mess of slavering mouths, groping tentacles and vicious claws. (I’m not altogether sure of Catholic doctrine here, so I could well be wrong on that.)
To add on this with my understanding the Person A will feel what they felt for Person B for everyone who is in heaven, and God but to such a greater degree that the strongest feeling Person A had towards Person B is less then the weekest feelings Person A has torwards their heavenly companions.
Also the truths of the universe will be known, the uglyiness of sin will be clearly visable and Person A will be disgusted at the sins that he/she did while on earth and greatful that they have been cleansed. Looking at people who are still in a state of sin will be hard to do, sin will be very ugly and Person A (cleansed) will really see person B as they really are, a abomination - no feelings to this person will remain.
My humble O
Of course, in Christian doctrine, one doesn’t have to be evil to be sent to hell. They merely have to not be Christians. I suppose this is why they tell believers not to marry outside of their faith.
And yeah, I wouldn’t be happy without the person I love. I fail to see how ther could be some form of “greater” love that includes not caring about the suffering of those you loved before.
So that whole “hate the sin, love the sinner” thing I keep hearing about is a big farce, then?
That seems accurate.
Is the ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ in the Bible?
I take it more as thou w/ no sin cast the first stone. When we are in a state of sin we are all ugly, all unworthy of entering the kingdom of God - if we are equally ugly it’s not a big deal. Remember that the Father turned away from His Son when Jesus took on the sins of the world, God Himself didn’t even want to look at sin.
Is your explanation in the Bible? I don’t remember there being a lot of discussion as to what heaven was like or how it operated (save for the flying, multi-eyed beasties).
Scrawled on the walls of Heaven: HELL WAS MORE FUN.
–Dawn: Lucifer’s Halo
Heaven can be seen as sort of the lesser of two hells. You get to play into the grandiosity of the religion’s head, instead of shuffling painfully through a relatively lawless land where your fellow hell-denizens can treat you like a kitten treats a bug.
The parts about sins on earth are to my understanding, including the ‘thou w/o sin cast the first stone’, and Jesus’ words ‘Father, why have you forsakest me’, though these are not exact quotes.
Also I beleive the hate the sin love the sinner is a interpertation of how we are suppose to treat our fellow man hear on earth - and that is taken from thou w/o sin cast the first stone, among other things.
There is some mention of heaven ‘Mansion with many rooms’ and the like, plus the Garden of Eden may have been part of the Kingdom of God as described, it still may exist as stated though since we are not worthy to enter it we have lost our ability to see it over the generations (a theory I have).
As to the love that is greater then man is capable of, I can’t think of a passage that supports that, but it is what I need to put in to make the Bible work at my current understanding of it.
Or Simply Red, as the case may be.
I, for one, welcome our impending oblivion.
Simply Red covered that? There is no God.
All of a sudden, I’m reading the lesson of that story in an entirely new way.
It’s not, “have compassion, we’ve all done some bad things.” It’s, “Self-righteous? Here, let me help you pick out some rocks.”
I know Christians that don’t believe anyone’s being sent to hell.
I don’t remember when I’ve laughed so hard. Thanks for that! 