A Problem with Heaven & Hell

Christians generally love the idea of heaven and hell. In fact, most relish in the belief that their "faith" is a winning lottery ticket to live forever in the Chocolate factory of the one, almost as much as they enjoy the thought that their enemies (i.e. atheists and anyone who ever 'bullied' them by doubting the veracity of their "beliefs") will burn for all eternity in an Auschwitz pizza oven of the other. 

Ignoring that their "beliefs" in such places are supported with even less evidence than most of their other claims, such Christians feel that simply believing in the existence of these two final destinations are necessary for keeping people "moral" in this life, by the promise or threat of final and eternal justice in the next. 

Naturally, most people  never envision that their own children, or their own parents, ever end up in the oven, even if those parents or children were serial killers or school shooters. For such a thought would, if actually considered with any real degree of empathy, so cripple the child or parent emotionally while here on earth, that it would be difficult for them to think of such a "god" as all that different from a sadistic serial killer like BTK. 

To avoid this, the "believer" goes to church, where the professional priestly class assures them not to worry, for their loved one is either with God in heaven, or if not, is quite deserving of the hell they have chosen to suffer in for all eternity. Luckily,  Catholics have "purgatory," which allows the best of both worlds.  For purgatory is a place where a person can expect all of the suffering of hell, while retaining enough confidence in an expectation of eternal rewards in heaven to keep them coming to church. It's like a diet version of hell. It's hell-lite.

That Catholics never seem to protest the idea that they may well be expected to inhabit this temporary furnace of suffering souls, nor ever consider that they might in fact object to the kind of "justice system" that requires them or their loved ones to be imprisoned in such a place for an extended period of time, beggars the imagination. 

Yet such Catholics nevertheless think that ideas of heaven & hell, and those who are finally adjudicated to live forever in either one, will nevertheless always be in accord with their own sense of justice. For their own sense of justice is one that accepts whatever "justice" God wishes to impose, however arbitrary and capricious it may seem to everyone on the planet. This is like Noah simply accepting that, if God wanted to kill everyone and everything on the planet with a flood, then there can be no question that they all damn well deserved it.

Of course, I have never heard a single Catholic priest explain what it was, exactly, that all of the animals who did not make it on to  Noah's ark, had done, that warranted they be swept away with all of those damned "humans" God had created. Presumably, God could kill all of these animals because they have no souls. But if they have no souls that were corrupted by original sin, then why kill them all as well? Why, in other words, impose such suffering on animals who, by virtue of being soulless, were incapable of pleasing or displeasing their creator?

Putting all of that aside, however, one is still left to wonder what solace a mother of a school shooter can take, when her religion leads her to suspect that the child she raised and loved so dearly, may well be the only person stuck in hell for all eternity. At this point, all the priest can do is promise them that, if their child is indeed in hell, the parent can rest assured that it's because God has justly decided they should be, on the one hand, and that God will mostly likely wipe all memory of that child from the memory of that parent if and when that parent is fortunate enough to reach heaven, on the other.

Of course, God only wipes their memory of that child from the mind of the parent, not to alleviate the suffering a parent might have at the thought that their child being tortured for all eternity, but to alleviate how uncomfortable that parent might be in living forever with, and even singing praises to, the very "god" who had created that "hell" in the first place.   

As for dealing with the cross in this life of not being sure either way where their child might be, that's just one of those "mysteries of faith," and the high price for a lottery ticket to heaven.