Why Heaven and Hell?
Steven Gledhill, BA CADC
Mental Health/Addictions Counselor, Founder & Author @ FREEdom from MEdom Project
It’s often asked, “How can a sovereign, loving God send anyone to hell? How is that love?”
It’s a fair question.
What is heaven? What is hell? What if hell is merely the absence of good? You would find nothing that is good in hell. What if heaven is everything good and right… absolutely everything? You would find nothing bad or wrong in heaven. What if you could go to heaven until you did something wrong or bad and then, oops, to hell with you? Wouldn’t you be living in constant fear in what is supposed to be heavenly bliss? What kind of heaven would that be? So how can heaven remain without flaw with flawed people living there? What if a loving God had a viable solution to such an unsolvable dilemma?
While I have an idea, I do not really know or understand what or where hell is. There are a great deal of people suffering in the world for one reason or another who feel like they are experiencing hell right now. There is so much hate and evil in the world. We’re all in the world together, carry the burden of injustice, jealousy, and resentment, doing evil to one extent or another, and then blame a sovereign, loving God for its consequences.
What if hell is best described as an existence without good, where evil is given free reign to breed, grow, expand, and abound, seeking to overwhelm and overcome everything in its path? What if hell is the ugly, painful, miserable condition of this world without the presence of love at all? What if possessing free will leads to selfish thinking and behavior? What if selfish thinking and behavior result in the opposite of giving, which is taking? What if the essence of giving is love, and taking produces jealousy, resentment, injustice, and ultimately hatred… until it is evil?
What if heaven is freedom from hatred and evil into all that is loving and good without measure? What if heaven is freedom from all displeasure, discomfort, disturbance, and disharmony into fulfilling peace and contentment? What if heaven is freedom from conflict, anxiety and stress into the experience of what is truly unconditional love between every single one of its inhabitants? Are you kidding me… who wouldn’t want that?
What if there was a sure way out of hell into heaven? What if the only condition behind freedom into that kind of living is having a relationship with the most honest, sincere, compassionate, generous person that ever lived? What if that is all it costs? What… that’s too much?
Why are there conditions at all?
People in relationship with each other expect honesty and trust and loyalty if they're going to expect the best out of the relationship. Without conditions and standards relationships are unmanageable, unstable, and miserable until they fail and die. Parents expect to have trustworthy relationships with their children in order to trust them enough to bless them to the full with the best of their resources. And parents expect their little ones to submit and obey before giving them the stuff and privileges they want and believe they deserve. Spouses expect undivided loyalty and commitment for the relationship to thrive. Otherwise, the relationship fails to survive.
Conditions and standards are essential and make sense in all relationships. Why would relationship with God be any different?
Why would God set it all up like that? I don’t know. Ask him! Because if that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. It doesn’t matter if we think relationship with the life-giver costs too much. It doesn’t matter if having a relationship with the creator of the universe who loves what he has created sounds unfair. The reality is that our world is in free-fall into self-indulgent entitlement, and evil and hatred have a clear advantage. If God is goodness and love, and this world is consumed with evil and hatred, the contrast between these realities couldn’t be more stark.
Which side are you on? You best make the right choice about it. Or else, just continue to live with what you already have until the hatred and the evil in the world catches up with you, if it hasn’t already.
If you believe that God doesn’t exist, then I suppose you best pray that he does, and that heaven is real. Because the alternative is truly hopeless and worthy of every fear you’ve ever had.
by Steven Gledhill for FREEdom from MEdom Project
Executive Director at Veterans Impacting Communities Organization
8 年Awesome! This post illustrates the greatest solution humanity is in need of, a "right relationship with our Creator" Who loves us all unconditionally! We are living in times whereas humans have broken union with God by choosing sin over righteousness. Jesus lived as the ideal human. He loved God above all else, obeyed Him always, and loved His neighbor as Himself. We can live today because He died in our place. That alone constitutes "the greatest love!"
Registered Healthcare Practitioner | NZRN AThR
8 年"Which side are you on . . ." 'The Apostle Paul employs the term apologia in his trial speech to Festus and Agrippa when he says, "I make my defense", Acts 26:2: "King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate to stand before you today as I make my defense against all the accusations of the Jews". A key to the purpose of your article, as someone who is not religious, is that it is about relational processes that are dialectical, in the context of mythology or belief structures for practitioners providing mental health treatment to those who do not understand a life situation of their own.
Psychotherapy and Training
8 年Steve, I was taught these fantasies throughout childhood and am saddened you have chosen to encourage others to share in these fantasies.