The Torture of Heaven
I’ve been married for 17 years. For 16 of those years I became increasingly concerned about entering heaven. The thought of entering heaven and not being with my wife was hard for me to accept. I didn’t like to think about it. I would distract myself anytime I started thinking about.
I considered asking pastors and other religious people their thoughts but I knew they wouldn’t have the answers I wanted. Because no one had the answers I sought. Apparently you have to die before you get your answers. Which often lead me to wonder why any religious person thought they had any answers since they obviously hadn’t died yet.
When we were first married it wasn’t something that I even thought about. But the more often we went to church the more I began to worry that she would spend eternity with her first husband. The more I learned about divorce and vows the more I thought she had promised her life to her first husband and our marriage wouldn’t be valid to God. I was concerned that her first vows were unbreakable and that we wouldn’t be together once we had made it into heaven.
You can imagine the torture this thought process can cause in a person. There are probably thousands of people who wonder the exact same thing right now. The only comfort I can provide to them is that gods are not real and the Bible and Quran are works of fiction. The lack of evidence for any god is everywhere and the evidence for the existence of any god is nowhere.
Once I realized the truth about gods and works of fiction I immediately knew that many of the worries I had throughout my life were total wastes of time. Imagine the countless hours that people continue to waste worrying about things that don’t exist.
Tags: Heaven
This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Bible, My Journey, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I remember having similar thoughts about heaven as a child. Who will be there? Will my mom and dad recognize me? How could it possibly be forever? What would I do with all that time?
I remember sitting at a picnic table when I was about 6 or 7, crying my eyes out to my mother about this. She had no answers then, and has only platitudes now.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
“why any religious person thought they had any answers since they obviously hadn’t died yet.” Perhaps they rely on a combination of things which point to a belief in heaven. Should we rule out the stories of others like Don Piper (author of 90 Minutes in Heaven), our deep and almost universal desire to live beyond this life, science and quantum physics which seems to point to dimensions beyond our physical and material world, and the stories of our scriptures and faith tradition which point us to something beyond this life,
December 11th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Glenn, yes we should rule out feelings and emotions because that’s all religion and belief in gods is. Why should I care that millions of people believed the same inaccuracy for thousands of years. I could say the same about the Earth being flat.
Millions of people believed that the Earth was flat for thousands of years. Is that enough for you to continue to believe? I didn’t think so.
Scientology is a good example of crap being made up that people will believe and that only happened in the last 50 years. 200 years from some morons might still believe in Scientology because of their parents.
People make stuff up that other people believe, I’m not one of those people.
February 4th, 2009 at 11:24 am
ironically, no human has all the answers to anything – science or religion. made up answers are crappy. I think it is okay to say you don’t know. it presents a challenge to find out. but even if you’ve exhausted all resources, it is never okay to just make up an answer to help you sleep better at night.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Interesting post; but I just wanted to clarify that according to Scripture no one will be married in heaven. The Sadducees (who also denied there is a heaven) had a similar question for Jesus in Matthew 22:23-33. The Latter-day Saints do believe in eternal marriage; orthodox Christianity does not because of the above passage.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Does it not say that God is the Bridegroom?
August 14th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I can honestly say that, as a Questioning Christian, I don’t think about who I will spend my eternal life with in heaven. I guess I’m pretty sure that my ex-husband will be going to hell for the life he gave away…..my son. So, that leaves my current hubby. As for now, my belief is that I will be in heaven with whom I WANT to be in heaven with.
August 15th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Since there is no such thing as heaven, hell or ultimate justice just try to be happy and make others happy while you’re here because this is all you get.