Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 September 22

= September 22 =

Heaven and hell
In the view of various religions (those that believe in heaven and hell), what happens in the following scenario: Two people love each other, one goes to heaven and the other goes to hell. How does the soul in heaven cope with the fact that their loved one is in hell? I'm not looking for individual opinions on this, but what various religions actually believe from their specific viewpoints. 121.45.102.242 (talk) 13:29, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think the subject of how people cope with something is typically part of a well-defined doctrine or dogma in any church/denomination that I am aware of. The Bible seems to imply that the love of God is ultimately more important than the love for ones relations. Jesus i.e. said the following concerning this: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:37) and "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26) - Lindert (talk) 16:03, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I wonder how hating one's parents squares with "Honor thy father and thy mother"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:04, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * A web search on "hate his own father and mother" (with the quotes) turns up a bunch of people who attempt to address this with mixed results. Another popular theory is that when you have two different authors in two very different cultures writing different books with over a thousand of years between them there are going to be contradictions between them. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:50, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Even so, the Ten Commandments would have been well-known to the authors of the Gospels. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:21, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Jesus quotes a bunch of them in the Gospels, including honouring your father and mother in Matthew 19:19. As the wise man said, "the Bible says a lot of things." Adam Bishop (talk) 00:38, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. Hence the futility of trying to apply logic to religion. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)


 * A google search on [ heaven married ] shows a number of websites that attempt to answer the above question. The Bible says:


 * Luke 20:27-36 New International Version (NIV)
 * 27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question.
 * 28 "Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.
 * 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless.
 * 30-31 The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children.
 * 32 Finally, the woman died too.
 * 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"
 * 34 Jesus replied, "The people of this age marry and are given in marriage.
 * 35-36a But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels.
 * 36b They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection."
 * --Guy Macon (talk) 17:17, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The OP made a presumption which is not yet itself established, known as a plurium interrogationum. Questions that follow on from not-yet-established presumptions (i.e. questions of the form "When did you stop beating your wife"), are not meaningfully answerable.  In this one case, the OP's presumption that what the soul cares about in heaven is in any way connected to what the soul cared about on earth has not been established, so any questions that follow on assuming it is are flawed. -- Jayron 32 22:57, 22 September 2018 (UTC)


 * If a soul upon dying gets a whole new set of values, in what sense is it the same person? I'd be surprised if any religion teaches that. —Tamfang (talk) 06:07, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't know why this was hatted as unanswerable. The OP clearly states "I'm not looking for individual opinions on this, but what various religions actually believe from their specific viewpoints." This is totally answerable by pointing the OP to specific texts from various religious groups which describe their understanding on the matter. --Lgriot (talk) 12:11, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * As Jayron pointed out, the premise is flawed. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:19, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know why it was closed. I certainly didn't do it, and think that closing it was a bad idea.  -- Jayron 32 13:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I closed it, based on your argument that the premise is flawed. I've now re-opened it. Have at it! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:20, 24 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Dante's Inferno is always worth reading (the Mark Musa translation is best). For one thing, it gives an insight into medieval explanations of situations like this. Mostly (see Canto V) it sees such an attachment as itself sinful, placing Earthly attraction above the only just goal of mankind, slavish attendance to the Church's teaching. So both would have condemned themselves (for that act alone) to one of the nicer suburbs of Hell. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:35, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * How did those Christians ever manage to reproduce? Anyway, I'm reminded of this line attributed to Mark Twain: "Heaven for climate, hell for society." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
 * There is a vast Blogosphere of Blogs into which one-liner monosynaptic subjective Opinions that do not answer the OP's question could harmlessly disappear. DroneB (talk) 17:20, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The OP asked a question that's based on a false premise, so all bets are off. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:44, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Established religious doctrines that stipulate alternative "heaven" or "hell" afterlife consequences imply that a person has continuous self awareness after bodily death, so knowing the consequences will function as a warning of impending divine reward or punishment. The OP posits a scenario that is credible within such a belief system, and poses a question that may be addressed in such a system. The OP's question of "how to cope?" is better met by pastoral advice than by encyclopedia references, but a major distinction can be made between the following religious doctrines.
 * God's judgement is final. This is a fundamentalist interpretation of the judaeo-christian Bible and two examples of such selective judgements are that of Cain versus Abel (OT Genesis 4:3-5) and that of "two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left" spoken of by Jesus (NT Luke 17:34). There is no appeal against the judgement of being "cursed, into everlasting fire" (NT Mat 25:41). The only "coping" permitted is unconditional acceptance of God as final arbiter.
 * No fate is final. This characterizes the Buddhist cosmology of a vertical continuum with the heavens existing above the human realm, and the realms of the animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings existing beneath it. Rather than persist in cyclic rebirths, Buddhists strive to escape by reaching enlightenment (nirvana). Regarding love attachments, the Buddha taught that craving which leads to re-becoming, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for disbecoming, is the source of suffering (the 2nd Noble Truth). Therefore the only enlightened way to cope with love is in expressing unconditional Loving-Kindness and Compassion (bodhicitta) that is fully developed when one treats all living beings as if he or she was or had been (in former lives) their own mother. DroneB (talk) 15:44, 27 September 2018 (UTC)