The OP did leave the description of the various afterlives undefined…
Married Dopers: You're in Heaven. Your spouse is...elsewhere. Do you forgo Paradise for his/her sake
It wouldn’t be heaven if she wasn’t there…
It’s Quest Time!
Everyone seems to be treating this hypothetical as “heaven vs not-heaven”. Like N-H is just a cloud somewhere, with the “cool kids”.
What if the only other place to go outside the pearly gates is the true fire and brimstone hell. The hell of Dante and Niven. A place they skin you alive*, where tear the flesh off your bones, where you sit in a pit of boiling blood forever. The pain never goes away, the torment never ends. There is no escape, ever.
How many of you would choose that?
I mean seriously, it’s a hypothetical fairy tale, but at least go with it. “Don’t fight the hypothetical”, as someone once said. Would you choose true eternal damnation?
*yes, I know. You’re already dead. So doing this won’t kill you. it just hurts. A lot!
I’m leaving, with or without permission.
What’s the point of saying “with or without permission”, when you already have permission? 
I’m starting a movement in heaven that we open it up. Heaven should be for everybody.
Yeah, because the Lord of Hosts has a history of heeding the will of the masses. :dubious:
Even Hitler? Kiddie rapists? Pol Pot?
Maybe I agree with the sentiment in general, if everyone gets a proper attitude, just seeing if you thought this through.
It’s bothered me for some time that it might be the case both places are a kind of hell, or heaven. God’s place is one where you’re physically comfortable, but you also know that you’re His bitch and that’s your shame for all eternity. Satan’s House o’ Flames is physically awful, but you will always know your soul belongs to you. Of course, Pride is at the heart of that interpretation, and we all know how the big G feels about Pride–keeps you out of His presence, don’t it.
I’m saying that if My Beloved is elsewhere, God’s permission has nothing to do with whether or not I’m leaving to be with her.
Sort of defeats the concept of heaven doesn’t it. I had a family member say that they’d miss me in heaven. I said you can’t remember the people from life on earth. Otherwise you’d not have the always joyful view that some denominations sell.
But, to play the hypothetical, I gave here 15 happy years, she’s on her own.
And the law of gravity has nothing to do with why you aren’t an interplanetary traveler.
I need some time to think about it and more information. Are their detailed rules on the other afterlives? How many will let me waltz in? Will any of them prevent me from leaving again? Are there any tools available for me to locate or contact her, or will I be searching these infinite planes by hand? What are the odds on this quest?
I like to think I would go to find her, but I would be giving up a lot and would want to maximize my chances of success. It would be tragic for me to start looking in Elysium only to find that she wasn’t there and I was now stuck there, quest over, have a nice afterlife.
If there is a god, and he is ultimately responsible for giving humanity the capacity to make bad choices, then it seems pretty heartless to keep anyone out of an eternity of heaven for earthly misdeeds that He himself chose to let us commit.
Heaven is, pretty much by definition, a place of perfect happiness. If I am perfectly happy then I will not want to go looking for her, now will I? If I am not perfectly happy, then I am also not in Heaven and I suspect that nothing is what it seems.
Yeah, even Hitler, Pol Pot and Dick Cheney.
Well, maybe Jesus or Mary could talk to him. He’s been known to bend when it’s them making the request.
That gangster’s hell didn’t really look at that bad. Didn’t he have room service and beautiful women at his disposal? Oh boo hoo, I keep winning…:rolleyes:
It was a trick question!
You enter the afterlife in the form you had the exact instant before you left corporeal life. Therefore you’ll probably be in heaven on life support, with advanced cancer and non-communicative. Unable to track down an errant spouse, or even understand the concept.
It’s one of the great ironies of life that people work so hard to get the best possible placing in an afterlife full of mushed car accident victims.
God, what a dick.
I didn’t vote, because I can’t conceive of a heaven that accepts my partner but not me. I can easily see it the other way around though. And yes, he’d go “below” to search for me, though I’d wish he wouldn’t, for his own sake . . . though glad we can be together, no matter where.
Rābiʻah was a woman. She lived in Basrah, Iraq in the 8th century, and to this day she is a beloved inspiration for millions.