CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Heaven and Hell, and How I Find No Comfort In It

Saturday, March 05, 2011

this entry brought to you by talking heads, "psycho killer"


I was talking to a conservative, very Christian friend of mine the other day. She is the type of girl who goes to church every week without fail, doesn't swear, and is what you would expect when you think deeply Christian. This day she looked sleepy and glassy eyed. I asked her what was up; she said that today she'd gone to her first open-casket wake, and it was much more disturbing than she had expected.

Her husband's best friend since childhood died all of the sudden at the age of 32. He has had severe muscular pain and had been on pain pills for something like 10 years, and instead of getting a different dosage, he took one too many for too long, and died in the middle of the night. She said her husband has become really withdrawn since his death and hasn't said anything much lately, that he's just sort of pulled into himself. I told her, you know, that's common for guys. And she said "Yes, but he's not just a guy. He's my husband." And I understand that frustration, but a woman isn't going to just change that about her husband if that's the kind of guy he is, the person who keeps his feelings inside. Still, I understood her frustration.

Then she said that she and her husband have kind of been having problems with their faith lately. I asked her what sorts of problems. It's true that I'm an atheist, and very much a staunch one. But I consider this person a friend for the most part, and I know a lot about the Christian faith. I'm by no means an expert, but I know plenty enough to at least try to comfort friends on their faith, even if I don't agree with it.

She kind of sighed, and I could tell that she was really having a hard time wording what she was feeling.

"My husband's friend that died-- he didn't believe in God. And he didn't just not have any faith, he thought that faith was silly and stupid. Didn't treat it with any reverence at all."

She kind of stopped and searched for words. "The idea of not believing in heaven, it worries me. I don't want to just be gone."

I told her that, no matter what it is that you believe, whether you think you go to heaven or hell, whether you think there is just nothing, it doesn't actually matter in the end. What happens happens.

"I know," she said. And then, "But what if he's wrong?"

I thought for a moment and asked her, "Are you worried that he's not going to heaven? Or are you worried that he's going to hell?" And that might seem like the exact same thing, but I honestly feel like there's a distinction.

She paused and said "I'm worried he's gone to hell."

And I asked her, "Do you think he's gone to hell?"

"I'm not God," she responded.

"You know I don't have any faith, do you believe I'm going to hell?" I asked specifically this not to put her in a weird position or to judge her, but to ask if it was specifically this person's soul she was worried about, or it it was all non-believers.

"I'm not God," she responded immediately, even quicker than the first time.

"That's not what I asked. Do you, personally, according to your beliefs, do you believe I'm going to hell?"

She hesitated, sort of chuckled, sort of scoffed, I'd put her in a weird position.

"I know you think I'm a good person, or else we wouldn't get along like we do, or else you wouldn't be telling me about all this. I don't believe in heaven or hell, so if you believe I'm a good person but I'm still going to hell, it fundamentally makes no difference to me. I won't think worse of you for thinking that."

She hesitated more and said, "Chris, I can't sit here and look you right in the face and say I think you're going to hell."

I'm not positive if I got her to answer the question one way or another outright, but basically it became clear that she thought that yes, I would be going to hell. And I had meant what I said-- so long as she thinks I'm a good person, I don't care if she thinks I'm going to a place that I do not think exists. I didn't ask her if she thinks I deserve it, I asked her if she thinks it at all. And yes, I think it's shitty that Christians, if they are true Christian, and truly believe their dogma, think everyone who doesn't believe in Christ the Messiah is going to hell. I think that's a horrific philosophy, but I also acknowledge that it's a mainstream thought, and is perfectly within the norm. I could see how someone else could take offense in it, but I don't.

I said, okay, let's work backwards. You don't believe the Bible is literally 100% true.

"I do believe the Bible to be literal," she said.

This was strange because we'd had several discussions where she'd said the exact opposite, that the Bible is filled with parables and that some things just don't apply to us in modern times. I wasn't sure if I'd simply misunderstood her the whole time-- one cannot take the filter off of reality from their own eyes, so when I hear someone saying anything slightly atheistic, I automatically assume they don't actually believe what they purport to believe, but that's because I'm biased. I can't take that bias out of my thought process. So I wasn't sure if I was simply misinterpreting what we'd discussed before, or if this was double think on her part. I believe it's probably the latter-- she wouldn't be the first person to be contradictory in her beliefs. But either way, I didn't want to have a theological debate. It's not that I'm unwilling to have that with her, because I love talking about that with her, it's just that that wasn't what this particular discussion was about. This was about me trying to hopefully help my friend with what is a pretty fundamental struggle with religion, and I wasn't trying to use this opportunity to switch her over to my side.

"Okay then," I said. "If God is a loving God, and he loves your husband's friend, then it would be unjust for him to send a good person to hell."

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"It doesn't make sense in terms of Karma."

"I don't believe in Karma," she said. Of course she does, I thought, Heaven and Hell are just a different way of saying "Karma", it's just controlled by a God and not the universe, but again, this wasn't the point.

"Do you believe Gandhi went to hell?" I asked.

She sort of hesitated and said "I don't know."

"If there's a God," I said, "Then Gandhi would have had to have gone to Heaven, there's no way he wouldn't."

"And what if he didn't? What if you die and there is a God, and your philosophy is wrong?" she asked.

"Then I don't have a problem being judged falsely by the same thing that judged Gandhi that way. But it doesn't matter," I said, trying to return to my original point of comforting my friend. "If God is good, then good people will go to Heaven."

She said that just because people think someone is good by our standards doesn't mean they'll get to Heaven. She said she doesn't know what God judges of one person versus another, but that she thinks God expects certain things of us, regardless of whether they're good or not.

And you know what? She's right. That's what the Bible teaches.

This was a perfect, utter example of why I am an atheist, and why I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there's no God. I'm not discounting that I might be wrong and that there might be a God, but the truth is that if there is a God, I fundamentally do not care. I not only don't believe, I don't even want to believe. I did, at one point in time, but that time is long gone.

I've had believers ask me this before, "What if you're wrong and you go to hell?"

If I'm wrong and I go to hell, then fine. I lived my life, I made my decisions, and if somehow a good person isn't good enough, then whatever. But the more profound question is, what if I'm wrong and I go to Heaven? If there is a Heaven and there is a Hell, then that means that there are people, people that I love, in Hell, through some sort of technicality. Also, there are mass murderers in Heaven, all because they repented at the last minute. There are people who refer to themselves as Christians who say "Oh, there's no way mass murderers are in Heaven." But if you really believe the dogma, this is part of what you believe.

I find no comfort in this. The concept of Heaven and Hell terrifies me, not because I am afraid I won't get to Heaven, but because, through some idiotic technicalities, there are good people in hell and people who lived their entire lives as complete assholes or end up in Heaven because somebody prayed with them on their death bed.

But in reality, there is no Heaven and Hell. There never was. And I feel like I can say that with as much certainty as I can say about anything I have no proof of. The down side is that bad people do not get their comeuppance in the end in terms of some sort of enduring justice. You can only hope that they live in distress and mistrust of those around them in life, afraid of themselves and unable to truly have a real relationship with any meaning here on Earth. They won't be burned in hell like they deserve to, but you can hope that their time on Earth is unfulfilled.

But on the other hand, because there is no heaven and hell, there are no fucking technicalities. There are no good people in hell because they accidentally didn't do this one thing, or because they were never given enough proof to think otherwise. There are no villagers born on a mountain in Mongolia who literally die in the same village they were born, with no exposure to white people and, therefore, Christ, in their entire lives, and through no fault of their own, ended up in hell. That has never happened. There are no miserable hypocrites in heaven simply because they show up to church every week and confess their sins.

I didn't tell her all of this because my objective wasn't to argue my side, my objective was to comfort a friend in time of need. She had said that she'd been to funerals before, but this was the first time she'd been to one for someone who she knew didn't believe, and it really bothered her, all these thoughts of heaven and hell. And I just thought, in the time of someone's death, something that will bother anyone, will bring stress to anyone, a time where you need those around you, where you need to be in your grief, where you need to be there for those around you, do you really need this bullshit of these nonsensical concepts of Heaven and Hell on top of all of it? Ultimately, I don't want life to end with me as simply dirt in the ground either. It terrifies me. But the idea that some asshole is in Heaven because he tricked God from some clause in the Bible nobody's ever heard of terrifies me much more. Or that someone better than me goes to hell because he had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side of a river.

I'm not comparing myself to Gandhi, I'm really not. But it's somewhat comforting to know that no matter what, we all end up in the same place Gandhi went.
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with love from CRS @ 11:13 AM 

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