SAINTS ARE HAPPY IN HEAVEN WHILE PEOPLE ROAST IN HELL!!
The Christian faith is reluctant to admit that it thinks your happiness in heaven is made better by the thought that your wife and child are roasting in Hell. It hopes you will enjoy that! In fact if there is a Hell, believing such a thing is guaranteed to put you in it!
Jesus said virtually nothing clear about Heaven. And he didn't seem to like the subject. But he spoke a lot about Hell. Believers say it was to warn us. But warning aside, why concentrate so much on it? Was Jesus in fact enjoying the subject? Surely attracting people to Heaven is even more important than warning them about Hell? Hell is believed to be everlasting punishment and agony. It is that Jesus talks about. The doctrine that sin continues in Hell forever and Hell is the place where sin happens forever is never mentioned. A true warning would be concerned about how Hell is the free embrace of eternal evil. Jesus' warnings about the agony are odd in the light of his doctrine that we must love God in freedom and spontaneously. We are to love God for God and not because we want to avoid punishment. The man regarded as an early Pope, Clement, in the second letter of Clement, gloats about people suffering in Hell. A popular text that hoped to get into the New Testament, the Apocalypse of Peter revelled in the torments of the people trapped in Hell. Modern Catholicism enables and tolerates the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas that part of the pleasure of Heaven is seeing how people suffer in Hell.
The Church says that whoever rejects God or his Church is in fact rejecting a
caricature for they are so wonderful and attractive. It follows then that the
damned don't make a choice against God at all but against a caricature of him.
Whatever a Christian can say, they cannot say that Hell exists because God
respects free will and the freedom of a person to reject him. Christians don't
believe that Hell is a doctrine that respects free will at all for they are the
ones saying that God is never rejected but only a mockery of him is. They use an
excuse to justify Hell that they don't believe in - they are a lot more
vindictive than they pretend. If they have to lie to justify the doctrine then
the saints must do this as well!
The apostles were brought before the Jewish courts and charged with slandering
the Jewish leaders. The apostles were saying that the Jews had crucified Jesus.
Acts 5 says that the apostles were delighted and pleased to have had the honour
of suffering humiliation in the name of Jesus. Note that they did not say they
were glad because the maltreatment would have some good results but it was the
humiliation and the suffering they enjoyed. If people are allowed to enjoy their
own pain, then they can enjoy seeing others suffer too! And especially if the
other people are in Hell forever!
The whole New Testament is supposedly divinely inspired. But only the Book of
Revelation claims that the author collaborated directly with Jesus to produce
it. This book teaches that Hell is not the absence of God and Jesus for the
damned are tormented in their presence (Revelation 14:10-11). God is present
with them to torment them - perhaps it is like being exposed to a sun that is
too bright and hot for you.
THE EXCUSES:
The notion that the saints are happy in spite of knowing what people suffer
there is problematic for that suggests something is forcing them not to react
badly or they are deluded about how real their happiness is. The in spite of
implies they should be horrified but are not.
The saints do not know about the suffering or remember that they ever heard of
hell.
The saints suffer to see the damned suffer.
The saints will that the damned be free from suffering and released but they
have no feelings for God protects them from being sad. They love them but they
do not suffer at their suffering.
God forces the saints to hate the damned and enjoy seeing them suffer.
God allows the saints to freely hate the damned and gloat.
The other difficulty is, how can a truly good person ON EARTH be happy to
worship God and love their faith when they believe or think they know that
people go to Hell forever?
REPLY:
If it is true that truth leads to fairness and fairness allows love to happen then the saints have to know if the damned are in agony. If the saint regards even the devil as another self, as a being to be loved regardless of what they do, then the saint has to be horrified at what is happening in Hell. A loving mother suffers at her son being in jail though she may agree with him being there. That Jesus or nobody cared to refer to and comment on what Gehenna and everlasting punishment said about the people in Heaven including himself says it all.
