In my previous post I was left in a pickle. I argued that we should feel compassion for people in Hell. How then are we to feel perfect joy in Heaven? The problem is plain to see. Heaven is meant to be perfect, at least for those in it, and it is meant to be a place, or state, of perfect peace and joy. If those in Heaven feel compassion for those in Hell, then their perfect joy will be dampened (to put it mildly). How could anyone ever be fully content and happy if they knew that a loved friend or relation was suffering the torment of Hell? Surely, they couldn’t! So, Heaven risks not being all it’s cracked up to be. The problem is clear.
How can we respond to this problem? Well, one response would be to adopt a form of universalism, according to which everyone will eventually be saved. The problem with this response is that it is condemned as a heresy by most mainstream Christian denomination, including that to which I belong, and that it seems to disregard the many sayings of Jesus on the very real possibility that we might end up there.
Perhaps a better solution would be to argue that perfect joy and peace is compatible with compassion, and, indeed, the concomitant suffering that comes with it. At first this might strike many as absurd. Compassion, by its very nature, involves sharing in the sufferings of the sufferer. Therefore, compassion for those suffering in Hell is impossible for the perfectly joyous in Heaven.
Despite this, I still think this is a potentially fruitful line of thought. Perhaps it is just me, but there are some pains which I want to feel, including some which never completely fade. Here I am thinking of the sorts of pain we feel when we lose someone we truly love, for example. When that person dies, for example, we feel sadness, but at that moment would any of us choose not to feel sad? I think perhaps not. Perhaps during the most intense moments we do want the pain to be numbed, to at least some extent, but we wouldn’t want the sadness to completely disappear. Would we? We want to feel sad, and it is entirely possible to feel that sadness whilst also, in a sense, being ‘happy’. I can think of at least three or four losses, causing deep sadness, in my own life of which I would say this. I won’t go into the details. The point is that at first the pain was intense and yet, in some sense, I wanted to feel it. Each day the pain lessens, and changes in its colour and shading, but it never completely disappears. The pain is still pain and yet it has taken on a character it lacked at first which makes it less ‘unpleasant’.
Those pains have become a part of who I am, part of my story. I accept them as part of me and I would never choose to completely excise those pains because I feel I would be losing a valuable part of me. At the same time, I do not see these pains as an obstacle to happiness or inner peace. In many ways they simply enrich the moments of happiness and peace I do enjoy. They give those moments a shading and flavour they would otherwise lack.
I can also imagine that those who have committed truly heinous acts (here I am thinking of things like murder or rape), who have since repented and reformed, may feel the same way about the guilt they feel about those acts. Guilt is a form of suffering and yet they may never want that guilt to completely disappear. They may want it to lessen each day, and for it to change in its qualitative character, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they also feel that it is a part of them and their story, and that it will always be a part of them and their story.
Perhaps this experience is unique to me and merely reveals a pathological masochistic quirk in my own character, but if this experience is a shared one then perhaps this provides us with a model for how to understand compassion, and the concomitant suffering, in Heaven. We can be both perfectly happy and peaceful, whilst also feeling compassion, and the concomitant sadness, for those in Hell.
One potential counter-response to this line of thought is that it may be that I, and we, only feel like this about these pains because we have the hope that the loss which caused these pains will be healed in Heaven. We can only embrace the pain because we know it will be healed. Likewise, for the guilt-ridden reformed and repentant murderer, for example. Perhaps their acceptance and embracing of that guilt is only possible because they hope that in Heaven their wrongdoing can be made right. If this is the case, then it is unclear how we could feel this way about the pain caused by our compassion for the endless suffering of those permanently in Hell to whom we can never be reunited or reconciled.
I would make two responses. First, perhaps the experience of embracing a permanent pain or sadness is not unique to those who believe in an afterlife. If so, then perhaps our ability to embrace and accept certain permanent pains is not dependent upon our belief that whatever caused those pains will one day be healed, and, if so, perhaps it is possible for us to feel this compassion, and the concomitant pain, for those in Hell, even though we know this state of affairs will never be healed. (I use the word ‘healed’ simply because I cannot think of a better word. ‘Corrected’ or ‘righted’ risks implying that Hell is unjust, which, if it does exist, it isn’t, according to mainstream Christian theology.) Second, even if I am wrong in this, and it is only believers in the afterlife who can embrace permanent pains in this way, perhaps this still gives us a very approximate idea of how we might experience compassion in Heaven, even if the analogy falls apart on close analysis.
Another solution, which might save me from this pickle, is to embrace the option advocated by Von Balthasar. Perhaps we should embrace the hope that all will be saved, whilst avoiding the Scylla of certainty that all will be saved (universalism) and the Charybdis that some will definitely be lost.
This response is a ‘this-wordly’ existential solution. By this I mean it offers no technical explanation for the precise way it will all be worked out and actualized. Whether all will be saved remains unanswered. If all are saved, how this can be reconciled with God’s justice remains unanswered. If all are saved, how we are to understand the scriptural references to Hell remains unanswered. If some are lost, how we are to reconcile this with God’s love remained unanswered. If some are lost, how this can be reconciled with the perfect joy of those in Heaven remains unanswered. As a result, in many ways, this response offers no answers, and yet, in other ways, this solution may provide the most satisfying existential answer this side of the grave. Thus, in this world, when trying to understand how to relate to, and feel about, our fellow man, this might be the solution to adopt. We hope that all might be saved, whilst leaving the details to, and trusting in, God.