This article hardly surprises me: Belief in Hell, According to International Data, Is Associated With Reduced Crime. The findings summarized in the article also don’t make me happy. I would advise against any major effort to scare sinners away from Hell because that doesn’t mean they will necessarily go to Heaven. If they do go to Heaven only because of fear of everlasting punishment, Heaven might turn out to be Hell for them. Some Christian thinkers from the Middle Ages knew this and supposedly had a joke: Heaven and Hell are the same place. I’ll let you think about that way of phrasing matters.
Mark Twain said somewhere that he couldn’t imagine a Heaven compatible with Christian beliefs where Americans would be happy. Americans have typically been responsive to warnings of Hell, at least for the period of a revival meeting and sometimes for as long as a strong-willed preacher or priest ruled the local community of worship. Even Americans not so inclined have certainly been aware of the warnings about a Hell which is a place of eternal punishment. Who wishes to go to such a place? Not I. Not anyone I know. Most Americans I know are convinced they are going to Heaven because they are basically good people, at least not active criminals or sinners. Most of those Americans lead lives where they engage in a lot of activities, many of them part of a good human life, but they avoid worship and formal prayer and the like. Some who enjoy watching football games extending over an elapsed time of three or four hours will complain about any church service which goes much over a half-hour or so.
Those Americans, typically considering themselves Christians even if they rarely worship in any community, believe (quite falsely) that the promises of Christ can be met only if we are born with immortal souls (whatever those are in the minds of `believers’). Most clergymen and teachers in Sunday Schools or CCD programs will reinforce that belief. Apparently, few with faith have faith enough to believe the God who created Tom once can re-create him in Heaven. And so we immortal human beings have to go somewhere when we die. Heaven or Hell. If you flee Hell out of fear of eternal punishment, then surely you flee toward Heaven, a place of eternal bliss.
Actually, in the thought of Aquinas and other Medieval thinkers, most clearly as interpreted by the poet Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy, it’s the outer circle of Hell, `limbo’, which is the place of eternal life with the sort of physical comfort which all healthy human beings will seek and many will nurture as the common element of nearly all their desires. Those Medieval thinkers speculated upon such an arrangement because of Aristotle and other pagans who were men of high virtue, of moral discipline. They were not God-centered men and couldn’t possibly appreciate, maybe couldn’t even feel a hint of, the spiritual bliss which is the `atmosphere’ of a life shared with God. So it was that Dante depicted the ancient Greek philosophers in that outer circle of Hell, enjoying moderate physical pleasure and walking about as they continued their discussions of metaphysics. Maybe there’s a region of that outer circle where someone could move from a television viewing room to a theme-park to sports stadium.
Personally, I think we’re born as human animals, clever creatures who are cousins of the great apes. We have no immortal nature nor any part which survives our physical death. If I can enjoy Heaven, then the same God who created me once will re-create me, resurrect me if you will, and I’ll share the life of Jesus Christ. That is, I’ll be a part of the Body of Christ for time without end, being fully a part of that Body while still being a man and a particular individual. I’ll be me but, by an ongoing gift, I’ll share in being God by being a member of the Body of Christ.
I’ll put that aside and return to speaking about the more typical American beliefs. They think they will survive death and, thus, if they behave, they’ll go to Heaven and be rewarded by a less troubled version of earthly life. For example, those who spent their spare time offering themselves up as passive consumers will apparently expect Heaven to include the most comfortable sofas you could imagine, those sofas being set in front of large-screen televisions displaying a non-stop stream of infinitely pleasing shows. I could make similar statements of those who are obsessed with sports or amusement parks, those who think rock-and-roll concerts are the greatest of all pleasures, those who like to turn other cultures or entire continents into theme-parks, those who read or listen to good music but only that which is well within their comfort zone.
Comfort-zone. Passivity. I doubt if such is part of the life of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, nor will we be able to tolerate life without end if Heaven is what John Newton seemed to anticipate in Amazing Grace: we’ll be ever worshiping and singing hymns as we join in the Heavenly Choir facing God…
No. If we were to face God for time without end, Heaven itself would turn into Hell. Worship of God would itself turn to tedium and even wretchedness if we remained men outside of God, even if we were near to Him (whatever that could mean).
Heaven is bearable only if we can actually share the life of God who is timeless rather than eternal but He took on eternal life in relationship to His own Creation when He incarnated His Son as a man, as a creature doomed by human nature to the grave, to an end. We share the eternal life of the Creator rather than the timeless life of God in His transcendence. At this point, I’ll give credit where due: the Eastern Orthodox have always viewed our life after death in terms of divinization of our mortal selves. They never made the mistake of believing, implicitly or explicitly, that life after death is some sort of infinitely pleasurable DisneyWorld.
To zag now that I’ve zigged, I suspect that those will be resurrected into Heaven who can enjoy it, even if they were morally undisciplined and seemingly allergic to most forms of worship during their mortal lives. In some way, anyone who will be able to enjoy sharing God’s life has to at least render God the justice of acknowledging Him as our Maker — see Justice: The First Step Towards God. From that point, we need to develop a true sense of life, we need to learn how to live by actively engaging God through His Creation, a Creation which includes churches and synagogues, prayer groups and bible-study groups, but also includes many other thoughts of God manifested as forests and lakes, human technology and human arts and letters. Let us prepare for Heaven by responding actively to God’s Creation so that we shape ourselves to encapsulate the thoughts He manifested in created being of all sorts.