This is not a theological article, but a philosophical thought experiment, intended not to describe the honest beliefs of any groups or individuals but merely to play with concepts that are rarely approached critically and to hopefully encourage some thought.
Heaven, we are told, is a place of perfection. After death, provided we avoid landing ourselves in Hell, we are supposed to be blessed with eternal life in Paradise, where we will have perfect happiness with all our loved ones forevermore. Or so we think.
The most glaring problem with this image of Heaven is the existence of Hell. Hell is quite a problematic concept in Christian mythology in general, given all of Jesus’ emphasis on forgiveness and that sinners are not irredeemable; however, when considered along with its blissful counterpart, the outcome can stray from the territory of slightly awkward to downright disturbing – not the tortures of Hell itself, which could of course be considered disturbing in their own right, but as seen from the point of view of an inhabitant of Heaven.
It just so happens that elitism of the sort that existed in the time the Bible was written is not quite so prominent in our thinking today, and the concept of torture as punishment, quite justly, makes most of us slightly squeamish. People generally wave this fact off when considering Hell, generally with something in the direction of everyone who is in Hell truly having done what they were condemned there for, or that human authorities have no right to torture but God does (a sentiment I personally find rather disturbing as well, but let us not stray too far from the subject). However, this becomes increasingly awkward once you actually are dead and in Heaven. I have heard some notable man from the Middle Ages quoted as saying that the greatest bliss of Paradise is the thought of all the sinners burning in Hell. The concept of Hell works great if you share this sentiment with him; not so much if you are the average person of today, who will find this attitude quite appallingly selfish and sadistic.
In other words, the first problem of Heaven is the inevitable knowledge that other people, perhaps even people you know personally, are in Hell receiving some considerably less pleasant treatment than you are. I do not think I could personally be at rest in Heaven knowing that others less fortunate are at the same time being tortured, and cannot help thinking I would not be very comfortable in the company of anyone who does not see a problem with that. And Heaven cannot be a very perfect place if one is constantly bothered by such thoughts, can it? This is even worse if, as the Lutheran Church would have it, your fate after death rests exclusively on your faith, your actions in life be damned. Thus, if you have a friend who is not a Christian, you can expect to have to know of them in Hell, even if they were wonderful people, while lunatics who murder doctors in the name of God will be up there with you – to say nothing of if you are not a Christian yourself. This strikes me as grossly unjust, and if true, I cannot say I could easily enjoy myself in Heaven with a God with such skewed priorities, even if I and everyone I knew actually were Christians.
One of the more obvious solutions to this problem, of course, is to eliminate Hell completely, which many do in this day and age when it does not seem quite so natural to assume that an omnipotent, benevolent deity would have people cast into an eternal torture chamber for petty sins. Thus some have interpreted Jesus’ crucifixion as effectively allowing everyone but the most remorseless of criminals into Heaven. However, this Heaven, when taken literally as an actual place where people either are or are not, still has the other problem, namely the problem of people.
People age. They change. They have desires often in direct conflict with those of other people. It would be shallow to assume that Heaven is a blissful place merely for containing good food and no pain, death or disease; a person cannot ordinarily be truly happy without the company of others, and this is where Heaven becomes quite awkward again. You tell your child that she will one day see her grandmother in Heaven, but is Grandma happy in Heaven without her granddaughter? Or, to address the more important and insidious side of this point, will Grandma actually be interested in spending her time in Heaven making pancakes for her granddaughter? Will Grandma even be the person that the grandchild knows in the first place – after all, perhaps she hated being old and her idea of being happy in Heaven is to be in her twenties again, running off with the love of her life? And perhaps his idea of Heaven is to be with the girl he eventually left her for. It’s a no-win situation. And if people in Heaven are stuck like they were when they died, what about Alzheimer’s patients? Small children – will they never develop the full intelligence of an adult?
Somewhat more generally, if X only finds fulfillment in Y’s company but Y wants nothing more than for X to leave them alone, what happens in Heaven? Do people have free will in Heaven – and if so, how does God avoid arguments, insults, people hurting other people? And if we don’t have free will, just how heavenly can it be? What about those whose greatest ambition was to effect change on Earth – how can they be expected to selfishly appreciate the luxuries of Heaven when the mortal world is still filled with misery?
One could theorize that Heaven exists as our own private ideal world of sorts, in which all the people we know exist specifically to be with us, but this idea is rather disturbing as well if it is given some thought, simply because those are not your real friends and family; you are essentially being deceived by shallow copies of the actual people that exist only to please you. I would be very surprised if you could look me in the eye and tell me that you see nothing unsettling about this kind of Heaven. It is somewhat reminiscent of the film The Truman Show, where the titular character lives in a world created specifically for him, with everyone around him actors; while his life is fine, per se, I could only expect the average viewer to hope throughout the film that he will discover the lie he is living and break free from it. If Heaven were something to this effect, I can only cringe at the thought of ending up there.
Then what if Heaven were not really a place at all, but a state of mind: instead of experiencing anything in Heaven, we’d merely feel? This is getting pretty far from how most people would imagine Heaven, but I have heard this position argued. However, this Heaven seems like a very, very shallow one. If you are fully conscious, in fact, it could only be described as torturous: no matter how heavenly it would feel, the idea is just unquestionably extremely boring, and to be devoid of real mental stimulation while feeling meaninglessly good for all of eternity would be enough to drive anybody crazy. (I read a news article once about a woman suffering from constant orgasms; it was considered a handicap, and I cannot imagine her idea of Heaven would have her anything but rid of the condition.) If we are not fully conscious enough to appreciate the boredom and become restless, then Heaven could only be described as an extended drug trip – hardly what anyone could consider the epitome of perfection, and in fact quite defeating the point of afterlife to begin with: surely, if we are ever put into a non-fully conscious mental state for the rest of eternity, it cannot be that much different in principle from ceasing to exist altogether – I can hardly say I would miss the blissful feeling if I just skipped the entire afterlife deal.
But the most important image of Heaven to consider has to be the image of an actual place in some other plane of existence containing actual people (or manifestations of their souls) in perfect harmony with one another. It is how your average person will imagine Heaven to be, and it is the most flawed one, as it contradicts the idea of free will, which surely must be central to anyone’s idea of a perfect Heaven. You cannot put millions of people in a place with free will and expect them all to get along in a world of sunshine and rainbows. If people have free will, they can be unhappy, and without the contrast of truly bad outside conditions, the perfections of Heaven will quickly become mundane and cease to give any pleasure.
Can there really be a Heaven that is so much more perfect than the mortal world?
