How can relatives/friends of people who go to hell be happy in heaven?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jerome100
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Because, in Heaven, we will be completely at peace. Not missing them doesn’t mean we never loved them or still won’t love them. We won’t be attached to them. Loving someone and being attached to them are two different things. Real love honors freedom, and real love is able to let go when our loved ones exercise their freedom in such a way that it takes them away from us. We can still love them, but we can’t posses them. Attachment is actually a form of emotional enslavement.

We will understand fully, when we’re in Heaven, that those we loved chose their own destiny. And while we hope in our hearts they can be with us in Heaven, or at the very least, can be purified in Purgatory and later join us, their choices are still theirs to make while they’re here on earth. We can’t control that.
 
I wouldn’t touch that question with a ten foot pole.

OTOH, they know better. Then they chose sin.
OTOH, only God can judge
Whatever He decides will be right and just.

We aren’t called to be superficially friendly and affable and toss out a few good deeds when it’s convenient for us.
We’re supposed to do His will because we live Him, and He is worthy of that love.

And how do you know what mischief that “little bit” of sexual experimentation has done in the world? All sin drags a tail behind it. How many people were given bad example? What sexual infections may have been spread? Or whatever.
 
Last edited:
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
I wouldn’t touch that question with a ten foot pole.

OTOH, they know better. Then they chose sin.
OTOH, only God can judge
Whatever He decides will be right and just.

We aren’t called to be superficially friendly and affable and toss out a few good deeds when it’s convenient for us.
We’re supposed to do His will because we live Him, and He is worthy of that love.

And how do you know what mischief that “little bit” of sexual experimentation has done in the world? All sin drags a tail behind it. How many people were given bad example? What sexual infections may have been spread? Or whatever.
Click to expand...
I have in mind the scenario of the young man or woman who, for instance, goes off to the state university, maybe 2-3 hours away from home, that is known to be a “party school”. Some of the things you hear:
  • My professor said everything is relative and there is no absolute truth.
  • You have to be tolerant of what other people do and believe.
  • People have all sorts of different ideas.
  • It’s modern times.
  • Everybody does it.
  • I never got to have any fun growing up.
  • I want friends.
  • I don’t want to do anything to drive my friends away.
  • God is love.
  • If [such-and-such] is wrong, there must be a lot of people in hell.
  • They change things in the Church all the time.
  • The Church will eventually “come around”.
  • [Such-and-such group] are liberated now!
Pondering all of this, I am thankful that my son wants to go to the nearby community college when we finish homeschool. Much cheaper, the education quality is pretty much the same, and he won’t be thrust into a brand new place, away from home, with a tidal wave of peer pressure and his old troglodyte dad far, far away.
 
Haha “troglodyte dad”. 😆😆😆

I like the phrase “knuckle-dragging Neanderthal”, myself.

I have kiddos in that age group myself, and I go 😱😱😱 at some of their startling statements.
And pray and penance hard.

We’re back to only God can judge.

And we must never play fast and loose with our eternal salvation.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Haha “troglodyte dad”. 😆😆😆

I like the phrase “knuckle-dragging Neanderthal”, myself.

I have kiddos in that age group myself, and I go 😱😱😱 at some of their startling statements.
Click to expand...
My son’s current “catchphrase” is “OK, boomer” — he’s picked that up from the media. I had to look it up online, to see what the connotation is (it basically means your generation doesn’t know a blooming thing, not the first time that sentiment’s ever been expressed).

The genie is out of the bottle, but that is why I often lament allowing so much media into the house in the first place, and wish I had followed the lead of more traditionally-oriented Catholics (SSPX et al) and placed a fatwa on the casual use of electronic media. But then again kids raised in such homes very often go buck-wild when they get their first whiff of “freedom”, and scenarios such as I described above start unfolding. I had SSPX friends in upstate New York where TV reception was difficult, and I offered to fix them up — I used to sell antenna systems — so that they could get something. They said no thanks, we just use our TV for videos and we want to keep it that way. Their kids turned out OK, the oldest son is now in the SSPX seminary.

There is no easy answer.
 
Yeah, exactly.
The bad ideas are out there, and because of the way the internet is structured, any kookoo idea out there will have a forum devoted to it.

Protecting your kids from being exposed to bad things is impossible, but I’ve tried to keep the lines of communication open enough so we can talk about things.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
As kind of a side note, I’ve always been a little baffled by the comment you will commonly hear in Catholic circles, “people freely choose to be in hell, if they go there, it is because they want to go there, and it is because they have rejected God” (or words to that effect). If we are to believe what the Church teaches about mortal sin — which is what makes you worthy of hell in the first place — then it seems there are many people who go there, or may go there, who are really not all that bad. They just organized their lives, and chose behaviors that they didn’t want to give up, that put them outside the friendship of God, but it’s not as though they really wanted to be outside God’s friendship — they just wanted to keep committing the sin, and didn’t want to give it up.
Click to expand...
Interesting, because that’s the only explanation that makes sense for me. Hell does not make sense as a punishment, only as a consequence. Our time and our actions on this earth are finite. If the most sinful man who ever lived had a billion years to perfect his sin, he still could not earn eternal damnation. But if God throws open the gates of Heaven for someone and they choose not to enter, where else is there to go?

Also, the most important element in ‘choosing hell’ is the choice. The idea is not that unlucky souls can end up in Hell by the happenstance of dying before they have a chance to repent. The idea is that it is really bad to be in a state where, if God presented himself directly to you, you’d seriously consider choosing something other than Him. That is what locking the gates of Hell from the inside entails.
 
When Christ comes again, we will know that all things have come to an entirely just conclusion. Maybe part of the Beatific Vision is gaining the serenity to accept things as they are. We can’t be happy even in this life if we obsess over things that aren’t in our control and worry over decisions that are other people’s decisions to make and not our own. In this life, peace comes from having faith that God can be trusted.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
I have in mind the scenario of the young man or woman who, for instance, goes off to the state university, maybe 2-3 hours away from home, that is known to be a “party school”. Some of the things you hear:
  • My professor said everything is relative and there is no absolute truth.
  • You have to be tolerant of what other people do and believe.
  • People have all sorts of different ideas.
  • It’s modern times.
  • Everybody does it.
  • I never got to have any fun growing up.
  • I want friends.
  • I don’t want to do anything to drive my friends away.
  • God is love.
  • If [such-and-such] is wrong, there must be a lot of people in hell.
  • They change things in the Church all the time.
  • The Church will eventually “come around”.
  • [Such-and-such group] are liberated now!
Pondering all of this, I am thankful that my son wants to go to the nearby community college when we finish homeschool. Much cheaper, the education quality is pretty much the same, and he won’t be thrust into a brand new place, away from home, with a tidal wave of peer pressure and his old troglodyte dad far, far away.
Click to expand...
You didn’t actually keep your son from having friends, having fun, or learning that God is love. You son even knows what passage of Holy Scriptures says that:

Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world. You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them. We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
1 Jn 4: 1-8

I went to a state school. At the time, it was literally in US News and World Reports as a party school. It was farther than 3 hours from home, but the Newman Center was across the street. The parish church was walking distance from campus. I still knew nonsense when I heard it. Your son would, too.
 
Last edited:
Matthew 12:32 seems to suggest that persons have two places to consider heaven/hell:

"And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. "
 
PetraG said:
You didn’t actually keep your son from having friends, having fun, or learning that God is love. You son even knows what passage of Holy Scriptures says that…

I went to a state school. At the time, it was literally in US News and World Reports as a party school. It was farther than 3 hours from home, but the Newman Center was across the street. The parish church was walking distance from campus. I still knew nonsense when I heard it. Your son would, too.
Click to expand...
I would certainly hope so.

The passage from Scripture that you cited (deleted here for space considerations) is beautiful. I printed out and will use it in our religion class.

And I’ve just got to say it, the comeback of “they change things in the Church all the time” can be laid right at the feet of those who, in recent years, have felt it necessary to make every possible change they could make. A Catholic classmate of mine in college blithely noted one time “well, everything changes”.
 
@0Scarlett_nidiyilii There is of course, the Overarching WILL of
God, whether one goes to heaven or not… I think that sobbing
over a hardened unrepentant sinner is NOT what God wants us
to do, THE BEST we can do is to pray: “God, grant to so-and-so
CONTRITION for their sin(s) so that they can confess and find
redemption from the Blood of Christ” See 1 John 2:1-2; 1 John 5:16b
There ARE two types of sins according to Church teaching, venial
and mortal. As for Venial sins, we CAN and MUST pray for redemption
and forgiveness to God for them!! See 1 John 5:16a
 
Last edited:
If two souls who were friends in this lifetime, one so virtuous as to get to Heaven and one so bad as to go to hell, were to be unable to profit from the faith of the good one, I imagine God will simply erase the memory of the bad one from the mind of the good one to perfect his or her happiness.
If the good one were to be even a righteous or a saint, I imagine they would be explained why their friend ended in hell and be offered abundant graces from God the Father in order to no longer think against God’s Judgement of their friend.
These are hypothetical answers I made in order to answer this OP.
My own personal view of things is that one soul cannot get to Heaven until they completely accept God’s will over their own’s, including God’s decision to condemn a friend or a relative. That is to say that God has to be first in your heart in order to get to Heaven. That’s hard but… this is what I gathered from the Bible and Church teaching…
 
This was an excellent reply, very comforting for me and others, I’m sure.
 
There was an interesting idea put forth by CS Lewis that if a soul in Hell was to repent and accept God’s invitation into Heaven, they were only ever really in Purgatory. The implication was Hell was only Hell for those who kept it’s gates locked.

It’s an interesting thought, since it bridges the idea of a merciful God and an eternal Hell nicely. It is worth noting, though, that Lewis was only exploring the idea not advancing it as any kind of truth. Indeed later in the same book he takes great pains to describe everything as a kind of dream representation of Heaven and Hell. (The Great Divorce was mostly an exploration of the reasons one would choose to turn away from God, so that makes sense).

He does tackle the idea of what someone in Heaven feels when a loved one is in Hell, now that I think about it.
 
Hi Cat! Welcome, and I’m glad you got something out of my remarks. When I learned that history myself, I too was very comforted by it.
 
As the Catechism says, at the end “We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvelous ways by which his Providence led everything towards its final end.” (CCC 1040).

We will understand how their sufferings are just and appropriate, etc. and in accordance with God’s perfect will.

In the Summa, St. Thomas discusses the following, relevant questions here:

Do the saints see the sufferings of the damned?
Do they pity them?
Do they rejoice in their sufferings?

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5094.htm
 
God doesn’t “condemn” anyone. WE choose hell, and God honors our choice. If not, then free will is meaningless. WE can condemn ourselves. God isn’t vindictive or vengeful. Those are negative human traits. Justice, yes. Mercy, yes. Love, definitely! But He’s not out to condemn us.
 
Genesis315 said:
We will understand how their sufferings are just and appropriate, etc. and in accordance with God’s perfect will.
Click to expand...
I second this. Now we see things through a glass darkly, but then we will have exalted knowledge to fully understand the mercy and justice of God and there will be no room for doubt.
 
This is how C.S. Lewis addresses the topic in The Great Divorce.
“To demand of the loveless and the self-imprisioned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven…Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves one creature in the dark outside. But watch the sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in the Manger the tyrant of the universe.”
Click to expand...
This answer is given in response to the question of how a woman can be joyful when she’s just seen her husband reject happiness and choose damnation.

It is truly sad when a loved one chooses damnation, but we will have God, we have have our fullness, and their choice will not prevent us from embracing Him in the fullness of joy. We will likely have some form of pity for the damned, but it will not be in a form that impacts our own joy.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top