Hello all, new guy here. I asked this on an older forum I belonged to and surprisingly, not a lot of Christians were up to the task of answering it, so I thought I might throw out a line and see if there's any takers here. It looks like there's some potential for good discussion with some of these posters, I'm looking forward to responses. In short, I have a lot of questions about the Christian heaven, and as a former Christian, some of these questions helped me realize I don't believe any of this because it makes no sense to me. Here we go:
A woman lives her life entirely with the idea that she's accepted Jesus as her savior and will be admitted into heaven upon her demise. But she didn't marry a Christian, in fact, she married a Jewish man. They lived happily, contributed to their community, did charity, and decided that their religious differences weren't enough to deny their love for each other. They had children, one of who followed his mother's religious example, but two others grew older and decided they didn't believe in any gods at all. None of them are objectively evil, and all of them were well loved by those they came into contact with. Now, this woman dies, and ends up at the pearly gates. There she's told she is definitely able to get to heaven! Great news! Eternal joy and happiness with Jesus, PLUS she gets to tell her husband she was right, AGAIN. "Oh no," says St. Peter, "I'm afraid you don't get to tell him that. He was Jewish. He isn't going to be here." What? thinks the lady...Does this mean I'm going to spend eternity without the children who were the light of every day? "Not all of them, one will be here." This is where my questions come in:
A woman lives her life entirely with the idea that she's accepted Jesus as her savior and will be admitted into heaven upon her demise. But she didn't marry a Christian, in fact, she married a Jewish man. They lived happily, contributed to their community, did charity, and decided that their religious differences weren't enough to deny their love for each other. They had children, one of who followed his mother's religious example, but two others grew older and decided they didn't believe in any gods at all. None of them are objectively evil, and all of them were well loved by those they came into contact with. Now, this woman dies, and ends up at the pearly gates. There she's told she is definitely able to get to heaven! Great news! Eternal joy and happiness with Jesus, PLUS she gets to tell her husband she was right, AGAIN. "Oh no," says St. Peter, "I'm afraid you don't get to tell him that. He was Jewish. He isn't going to be here." What? thinks the lady...Does this mean I'm going to spend eternity without the children who were the light of every day? "Not all of them, one will be here." This is where my questions come in:
- If her family can't get into heaven, will she miss them, and thereby experience less than perfect happiness for all eternity?
- If her family CAN get into heaven, then what's the point of being a Christian or the Jesus myth?
- If she gets into heaven and doesn't remember her family enough to miss them, is she still actually HERSELF?
- If her family can't get into heaven, but she's told "We'll make you copies that you'll never know the difference, except they're all Christian, so they're improved!" isn't that creating a situation where heaven has dishonesty built into it?