HELL IN HEAVEN?  MAYBE HEAVEN IS A TRAP TO LURE  YOU TO EVERLASTING MISERY?

Salvation refers to how God heals you of any moral flaws and thus makes you fit to enjoy eternal life with him and the angels after you die. This teaching is summarised as Heaven.

The Christian thinks that as God is the only source of good, that if we are with him for all eternity in Heaven we will be totally fulfilled. Heaven is all about love that endures forever. It is the final triumph over love over evil. The happiness of Heaven is a side-effect of the love.

Some religions see Heaven or eternal happiness as a reward for a good life or even worse for just saying a prayer or getting a few sacraments. A baptism and a couple of masses getting Heaven for you makes it very cheap! Others say the eternal life is a gift and any additional benefits such as happiness or the high level of happiness are rewards.

Gift or not Heaven amounts to a carrot for you cannot get to it if you prefer evil and sin to God. Even just evading the unending punishment of Hell is a carrot too. It is the real carrot compared to all the rest. If you promise any carrots to people and/or deliver they may of course be more morally compliant. The result will be that their moral valuing, their love of virtue and their self-image of themselves as moral beings, will lessen for it will become more and more about the reward. They will end up needing more carrots before they will do anything good.

Comparison is a scary thing. If you are happy in Heaven because of what the alternative is that is not real happiness. It is relief.

Will all love in Heaven be perfectly mutual? Incredibly Christianity says that not all in Heaven will have the same degree of glory. As love is the glory of Heaven it follows that they cannot all love each other the same. The Church says you will not be perfect like Jesus is but will be as perfect as God allows you to be. If person x can only reach level 10 of love then that person will get that level and thus be perfect under the circumstances though person y can reach level 50 and be more perfect. Heaven is just a scam for it is not about perfect love as in perfect love but perfect enough love. The love lacks love so it is still a place of evil. The Church says that all who go to Heaven get rewards and those who lived bad lives and repented in the end will get little. This seems to describe the grades of love. A very loving life on earth means a near-perfect life of love in Heaven. So you are as perfect as God allows your love capacity to be and it also depends on how much love you showed on earth. Life in Heaven is not perfect at all and thus you can imagine people there who will be suffering terribly at the thought of how people suffer in Hell.

If Heaven is a good thing to strive for you would expect it to be the goal for one who wants to love perfectly forever. It is not and a sign that Christianity is an immoral religion. Islam is worse for its Heaven is not about love but about pleasure.

Reason says that being with God does not necessarily make you happy and fulfilled simply because God is not the only source of good. Good would still exist even if there was no God. If there was nothing at all, that would be good in the sense that there is nobody around to suffer.
 
Most people assume that Heaven means a place of supreme contentment and happiness – that is a realm almost too good to be true because they have extracted the doctrine of Heaven from its context, its gruesome and bloody context.
 
Heaven for Christians is being with God forever. Since it is the possession of God for all eternity and God is the supreme good who has made us for himself it follows that it is the best thing that can happen to us. But what is best is not necessarily what is the most pleasant.

The Catholic A Catechism of Christian Doctrine says that God made us to enjoy him forever in Heaven. That sounds charming and comforting. Some say what it means is that we will enjoy God there not that we should enjoy him there. But God would not make us happy there if he shouldn’t.
 
It is a sin to desire the happiness of Heaven for that is desiring happiness instead of sacrifice. The soul is to will what God wills instead. It is a sin to be encouraged or consoled by the thought of Heavenly bliss for that smacks of self-interest instead of God-centeredness. Many atheists say that Christianity is such a con that it still packages Heaven like some kind of advertisement to attract people who will give it their lives and their money.
 
Now let us prove that if we are made to abide in the presence of the Almighty for all eternity then that eternity surpasses not our sweetest dreams but our worst nightmares.

It is obvious that if we suffer on earth it is so that God will make us better people through it. We are given weakness so that we might grow in courage. We are given suffering friends so that we might assist them. None of the virtues we gain on earth will be of any use to us in Heaven if there is no suffering or sin there. If Heaven is a godly place then it follows that it is actually worse than earth. It is a place racked with suffering and iniquity as well as righteousness. That means that the presence of God in Heaven would only be a block to goodness for the presence is supposed to give happiness - a happiness for which we will willingly abandon sin. Those who sin are said to do so for they do not understand how great and attractive God is.
 
Love - as interpreted by Christians - seems to be the only thing that is not sin. Love is sacrificing for God.
 
If love is sacrifice then Heaven must mean suffering forever for the love of God. And not only suffering forever. Suffering to the limit.
 
Theologians may reply that if they would suffer forever but do not that is enough. But they say you cannot love without proving that love. Action is necessary.
 
It might be answered that God has no need to make them prove it. The contents and hidden things of the heart are as clear to him as a summer day. Then if that is true then why does he allow temptation to happen? Why does he test people? Nobody knows what anybody will do in a situation unless they are put into that situation.

If God is goodness that means that God is what is supremely attractive. He is the supreme source of our happiness. We cannot be fully happy unless we are fully united with him in Heaven. There is an assumption in that doctrine. It assumes that God doesn’t do anything to us to prevent us experiencing that happiness just like he makes it possible for some people to be desperately unhappy despite having unique blessings. So if Heaven makes you happy then it follows then that believers who have the right concept of God should live holier lives than people who don’t for they are drawn towards the goodness they see in God and we always do what we see as good. Therefore any evil they do is God’s fault and the religion’s fault. Why? Because they must have failed to dispense the accurate sense of the goodness of God that results in goodness. The pope, in a sense, is to blame if one of his priests commits murder even though the pope condemns murder. His condemning only makes him far worse. And so it is with God.
 
If God is goodness itself then anything that is not goodness itself should not be loved like he is. All goodness comes from him so you cannot love a person for being good for you should love good for good comes from God and is God. You must not see the person but God. The God doctrine logically implies all this. You must not see yourself but God. You must not love yourself or others but God only. When God won’t let you really love yourself how can you trust him to make you happy in Heaven? It would be mental to stake your eternal future on loving him. If it is right to see only the good that God is and not the good in yourself then it is right for him to torment you in Heaven. It would be wrong for him not to for if you have to sacrifice self-esteem, and for the rational self-esteem is the only thing that counts at the end of the day, then it is only right that you should suffer forever. You would need to suffer forever to keep self-esteem at bay so that you willingly embrace suffering just to please him to prove that you love him for nothing and that the love is centred on him alone and nothing else and not even on happiness. When you are supposed to love God and not to avoid the pains of Hell, the pains of everlasting torment and despair, it is clear that your happiness is not to be valued and it is a sin to value it. Why? Because if you love God like that you would suffer forever if he requested it and when it is okay to want that it is okay for it to actually happen.
 
Jesus Christ prophesised unending and indestructible happiness for his devoted followers. He was not a true prophet and had no right to promise things he didn’t know about. And neither was Muhammad who turned Jesus’ boring and totally alien or spiritual Heaven into a raunchy harem filled with earthy pleasures. 
 
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