How Can Heaven Be Paradise If Some Of Our Loved Ones Are In Hell?
This may well be the hardest question in the whole of Christian apologetics, and I think there are bound to be aspects to this that we won’t yet understand (as one would expect). But I think what makes it hard is that it is asked with something vitally important overlooked – after all, nobody who really asks ever considers just how awesome and powerful God is, for in fact, those who usually ask are those who don’t believe in Him in the first place. I think that for the Christian who has experienced the supreme power and Omni-benevolence of God, this question isn’t so difficult. But this is only my opinion, I state with no authority, just as how I see the situation.
As I see things, Heaven would not be Heaven if it were conditioned by our previous earthly imaginations. If we are thinking about Heaven in the right way, there are two things which render this objection unpalatable. In the first place, and, I think, most importantly, God has a greater claim on each individual than we do – and if one thinks of Him not as a static outer-being but as a supreme personality, a vast mind with whom one can have a relationship, then clearly our loved ones are as created by Him as we are, and are therefore far more His than ours. In fact, you are far more God's than you are yours. Everything you have is both God's, and yours because of Him. In your Heavenly status you will be shown that that which was yours on earth now belongs fully to God. And wherever our loved ones end up - whether it is with our Creator or not, their real position in relation to us and Him will be closer to Him than to us In other words, the real relationship between ourselves and our loved ones will be reflected perfectly from Him; we will no longer see things through a mirror darkly, we will see with perfect clarity that our loved ones were God's gift to us on earth, and that, in our Heavenly position, any knowledge of their chosen separation, cannot, in any way, cross into the paradisical realm that we are experiencing with God.
Moreover, and this is not very often congenial to the modern minds, but I doubt whether everyone (including husbands and wives) will continue to know each other in Heaven as they do on earth – you won’t need to – it’ll all be about how awesome God is. In assessing this, we are really looking at a demarcation between love in an earthly sense and love in the eternal sense; for I suspect that any love on earth will have only a pale comparison to that in Heaven. I suppose in comparison, it would be like meeting in adult life the boy or girl you had a crush on in middle school; he or she would now be a total stranger, in your mind, divested of anything that resembled that schoolboy crush. What you’ve moved into far transcends anything once felt, and this must be infinitely truer with the heavenly existence.
And this may not be known by everyone in the earthly realm, but the supreme love of God must be in operation in areas of life that you or I cannot imagine. Central parts that make love truly special are the parts which make room for Christ to do His work; the parts where we are able to appreciate fully, the Christ in our beloved - and they are, by their very nature, the parts that are Him. I should imagine that we cannot see fully what we are loving, either through our beloved or through His presence inside us, until we get to Heaven; that is, in Heaven we shall know fully what we, at present, only know in part.
Moreover, I would also say that with the God we know in Christ (ever seen in the book of Revelation how stupendous His full glory will be?) Heaven will be so awesome (and beyond our current imagination) that our current perception of 'co-existence' will be swept away into something more magical than that which linear concepts currently elicit. So if a consistent answer is attempted one really ought to rephrase it not so much as ‘our’ loved ones in separation, but rather ‘God’s’ loved ones in separation. The very essence of Heaven must, as far as I can see, consist of a perfect harmonisation of our own spirit being and of God's presently indescribable perfection. In which case it will, I presume, be impossible to imagine any other existence outside of the perfect paradise that we are experiencing – yet also we would be in a state that experiences the full (and I mean FULL) nature of God’s awesomeness and therefore would have no reason to worry about the others He loves (which may have once been our earthly loved ones) who have chosen to be separated.
And just as a man cannot appreciate the true delights of literature or poetry until he has learned to read properly, how much more true that if one comes to know God he will realise the answers to the questions that bedevil him (pun intended)
I must say though, even though to be in God's presence will be so awesome that our earthly existence cannot really be recognisable, this does not mean trivialising our earthly existence, for in fact, earth is a wonderful taster and a glorious preparation for an even fuller knowledge of God if one chooses Him.
This may well be the hardest question in the whole of Christian apologetics, and I think there are bound to be aspects to this that we won’t yet understand (as one would expect). But I think what makes it hard is that it is asked with something vitally important overlooked – after all, nobody who really asks ever considers just how awesome and powerful God is, for in fact, those who usually ask are those who don’t believe in Him in the first place. I think that for the Christian who has experienced the supreme power and Omni-benevolence of God, this question isn’t so difficult. But this is only my opinion, I state with no authority, just as how I see the situation.
As I see things, Heaven would not be Heaven if it were conditioned by our previous earthly imaginations. If we are thinking about Heaven in the right way, there are two things which render this objection unpalatable. In the first place, and, I think, most importantly, God has a greater claim on each individual than we do – and if one thinks of Him not as a static outer-being but as a supreme personality, a vast mind with whom one can have a relationship, then clearly our loved ones are as created by Him as we are, and are therefore far more His than ours. In fact, you are far more God's than you are yours. Everything you have is both God's, and yours because of Him. In your Heavenly status you will be shown that that which was yours on earth now belongs fully to God. And wherever our loved ones end up - whether it is with our Creator or not, their real position in relation to us and Him will be closer to Him than to us In other words, the real relationship between ourselves and our loved ones will be reflected perfectly from Him; we will no longer see things through a mirror darkly, we will see with perfect clarity that our loved ones were God's gift to us on earth, and that, in our Heavenly position, any knowledge of their chosen separation, cannot, in any way, cross into the paradisical realm that we are experiencing with God.
Moreover, and this is not very often congenial to the modern minds, but I doubt whether everyone (including husbands and wives) will continue to know each other in Heaven as they do on earth – you won’t need to – it’ll all be about how awesome God is. In assessing this, we are really looking at a demarcation between love in an earthly sense and love in the eternal sense; for I suspect that any love on earth will have only a pale comparison to that in Heaven. I suppose in comparison, it would be like meeting in adult life the boy or girl you had a crush on in middle school; he or she would now be a total stranger, in your mind, divested of anything that resembled that schoolboy crush. What you’ve moved into far transcends anything once felt, and this must be infinitely truer with the heavenly existence.
And this may not be known by everyone in the earthly realm, but the supreme love of God must be in operation in areas of life that you or I cannot imagine. Central parts that make love truly special are the parts which make room for Christ to do His work; the parts where we are able to appreciate fully, the Christ in our beloved - and they are, by their very nature, the parts that are Him. I should imagine that we cannot see fully what we are loving, either through our beloved or through His presence inside us, until we get to Heaven; that is, in Heaven we shall know fully what we, at present, only know in part.
Moreover, I would also say that with the God we know in Christ (ever seen in the book of Revelation how stupendous His full glory will be?) Heaven will be so awesome (and beyond our current imagination) that our current perception of 'co-existence' will be swept away into something more magical than that which linear concepts currently elicit. So if a consistent answer is attempted one really ought to rephrase it not so much as ‘our’ loved ones in separation, but rather ‘God’s’ loved ones in separation. The very essence of Heaven must, as far as I can see, consist of a perfect harmonisation of our own spirit being and of God's presently indescribable perfection. In which case it will, I presume, be impossible to imagine any other existence outside of the perfect paradise that we are experiencing – yet also we would be in a state that experiences the full (and I mean FULL) nature of God’s awesomeness and therefore would have no reason to worry about the others He loves (which may have once been our earthly loved ones) who have chosen to be separated.
And just as a man cannot appreciate the true delights of literature or poetry until he has learned to read properly, how much more true that if one comes to know God he will realise the answers to the questions that bedevil him (pun intended)
I must say though, even though to be in God's presence will be so awesome that our earthly existence cannot really be recognisable, this does not mean trivialising our earthly existence, for in fact, earth is a wonderful taster and a glorious preparation for an even fuller knowledge of God if one chooses Him.
I believe that in our heart of hearts we have never wished for anything else. It may not always be tangible, but all the things that have ever subliminally affected your soul have been but indications of it - thwarted sightings, promises, expectations never quite reaching fruition, melodies that drift away just as you were beginning to enjoy them. But if the wind were ever to blow into the soul; if there ever came a sound that did not drift away but stayed in your presence, the delight itself, you would certainly know it. Without any reservations, you would excitedly proclaim, 'This is why God created me'. All the things that influence us on earth are merely things which God is using to preserve our soul. Both joy and tribulation are the tools He uses to fix us; for every moment of pain, disobedience, anxiety, laughter, pleasure, and love, He is making us into the creatures that He wants us to be.
Every day of your life a euphoric intangibility has been present within your own recesses; it has lingered just beyond the clutch of your awareness. And this is precisely what our creaturely position is in relation to God. We do not have to earn salvation; our eternal destiny is conditioned by our own attitude towards salvation; by our own efforts to know the One who created us. That is why our final judgement is going to be necessary; for only then will we be fully aware of our eternal destiny and how our decisions in life. Either Heaven will be ours - it will be ours in the sense that we knew all along that we had it - the faint sound will become a melody of paradise; or else, we will see that we never made the effort to know Him, and, similarly, we will know that the Heaven which should have been ours but was lost was never very far from us when we were on earth.
At present, you have experienced only the desire of it. Nothing you have ever witnessed has been anything more than an abstraction of Heaven - a thought or emotion that could connect you to the Spirit inside you. Even if you are a non-believer, you will know exactly what I am talking about; for this starved organism is calling you out of your earthly self. It is not like the feelings a man might have for his earthly beloved - you cannot try to keep it, you cannot try to treasure the feeling; for as soon as you try, it will be gone. Remember, the thing I am talking about is not an experience; it is a brief hint of the relationship between yourself and God.
Just as a city cannot be seen in its entirety unless viewed from above, the earthly desires which are most beneficial to us can only really be known when we know God. And here is another one of those paradoxes in Christianity; the freedom of questioning must continue to grow within the mind, but those who do not know what it is that they are questioning, will be those who plan their lives around transient moments, thus impeding the growth. There is something stifling about the idea of finality, because there is nothing more soul-destroying than being in a state of stagnancy and inertia. And I'm afraid, abstract intelligence will never be enough. For those who intellectually abstract their emotions for the pleasurable purposes of self-denial have really overlooked the true delights of the revelations that follow.
This is a little part of what Christ meant when He said that we must become like children; the instruction is twofold. Firstly we should be reliant on God in the same way a child relies on a parent, and secondly, we should enquire just as children enquire about the world they live in. Blessed are the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3) - for they are the ones who have best co-ordinated the reliance and the enquiry.
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. Romans 10:9-10
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