Building Heaven on Earth, Part 2

I am often challenged by the question of Heaven and Hell. I know that my Catholic faith teaches that when I die I will go to either Heaven or Hell. Or maybe if I was just okay but not real good I would go to Purgatory. Does purgatory still exist?  Maybe it went the way of some of the saints I learned about as a kid and then later found out they were not real. I also remember something about a place called limbo. I think it was the place where babies who died before they were baptized went. The theology being that you had to be baptized to get into Heaven but it would not be fair to punish infants with eternal damnation. You can see how this can all be very confusing. Getting in and out of Purgatory sometimes reminds me of the Baseball Hall of Fame. A player has a good career, they retire and after 5 years they are eligible for the Hall of Fame. Almost no one gets in on their first ballot. But some get in after several years of not getting enough votes. They have not done anything more, not hit one more home run. Their qualifications are exactly the same as their first year of eligibility. So why did they not get in their first year of eligibility but ten years later were qualified? This kind of reminds me of Purgatory. I am not good enough to get into Heaven when I first die, so I am sent to a place called Purgatory. There is nothing I can do while there to get into Heaven. Nothing has changed. I can’t go back and live a better life. Then after a period of time I am, for whatever reason, suddenly qualified to enter Heaven. I have been told that you get out of Purgatory because people on Earth are praying for you. That doesn’t seem quite fair. If I get more likes on Twitter and Facebook then I get out quicker than if I died without a lot of friends to pray for me?

Heaven is usually identified with absolute joy and happiness, the ultimate paradise. A place where you will be at peace for all eternity. If this is true, how come we spend so much time and energy trying to avoid going there? I mean we hook people up to machines just to keep them alive, keeping them from experiencing eternal joy. I remember when my mom was getting older and was starting to fade. My siblings and I were with her one day. She looked at us and said: “I know you are all praying for me to get better, but I want you to stop. I am praying for God to take me home and I do not want him to get mixed messages.”

As a kid of probably 11 or 12, I was in Religion class where the teacher was doing her best to explain Heaven and Hell. She described how if we were really good and obeyed all the commandments we would go to Heaven when we died. But if we were bad, if we did not follow the commandments, if we stole, cheated, maybe lied, then we would go to Hell when we died. She went on to explain what Heaven and Hell were like. I raised my hand to ask a question. I was one of those inquisitive young minds who drove teachers crazy, so I can imagine what she was thinking when I raised my hand. When she called on me I said I was trying to understand. I asked, “So if I am really good, I will go to Heaven and if my brother is bad, he will go to Hell?” The teacher had a look of relief and replied, “Yes Patrick you get it.” I went on to say, “But if my brother is in Hell and suffering, I will not be happy in Heaven.” She went on to explain that he has a choice and if he is in Hell it is because he made bad choices. I argued that why my brother is suffering in Hell is irrelevant. What matters is that my brother is suffering and I could not be happy knowing that my brother was suffering. I could tell that my teacher was getting frustrated with me. She finally said that I would be experiencing so much love and joy being close to God that I would forget all about my brother who was suffering. I know myself pretty well. If I am walking down the street and see someone in need or suffering, my first impulse is to stop and help them. I could never be filled with joy when my brother is suffering so that will be someone else in Heaven, not me.

There is a theology that believes we will not only remember our sisters and brothers who are in Hell but we will take joy in their suffering. We will approve of God’s decision to torture his children because those children deserve it. Theologians like St Thomas Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards, and most recently J.I. Packer have suggested this awareness of their suffering and torture is a cause for joy. Edwards made this case, saying in his sermon Why Saints in Glory Will Rejoice to See the Torments of the Damned:  “When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so exceedingly different from it.” The theory is, they deserve to suffer and we should take great joy in their suffering because it glorifies God. After all it was their choice. If they only made better choices when they were alive, they would not be suffering and tortured now.

I have a difficult time imagining spending eternity in a place where we sit around, probably with a glass of really good wine, getting joy out of watching our brothers and sisters suffering and being tortured. Would we all have a smug look on our faces and a feeling of superiority thinking, they deserve to suffer they could have made better choices. Would we have the “I told you so” attitude? Though I do often have the occasion to hear and talk with folks here on Earth who believe that the poor are poor because they made bad choices and woman are raped because they made bad choices. During the current debate on the Affordable Health Care a number of elected officials said that people get sick because they make bad choices and the rest of us should not have to take care of them. So maybe it is not so unusual a concept after all. A number of studies have shown that people experienced happiness when someone they were jealous of or despised had something negative happen to them. The phenomenon is known as “Schadenfreude.” So maybe we are creating a Heaven that is just like Earth instead of the other way around.

I am sure I am missing something but based on this theology Heaven will be a place where there is a cruel, judgemental, petty God surrounded by people who take great pleasure in watching others suffer. I often will discuss God with my friends who are Athiest. I tell them I also do not believe in the God that they reject. Now let’s talk about the kind, merciful, loving God whom I know.

Peace and All Good