On Heaven and Hell

In my pursuit of procrastinating on my philosophy readings, I checked my Twitter, clicked some links from New Advent, and found this interesting article:



What Will Heaven Be Like?


These two questions in particular struck me:

9. What happens in hell?

Nothing.

10. What happens in Heaven?

Everything.

It reminded me of the conversations I used to have with a high school friend of mine. She's not a Catholic, not a Christian; on good days she is agnostic and on bad, atheist. She's one of my best friends and I love her dearly, but her views of heaven and hell are a little out of sync with reality. I think this article's answer to those two questions lies at the heart of her misunderstanding. I guess its because she views hell as a large gathering of all those "less-than-holies" - the people that couldn't get into Heaven or Purgatory. Of course, this would include a long list of non-believing bands that she likes (that I like...). Therefore, she believes that in Hell she will be surrounded by the music she loves - except for Anathallo, because they are Christian and I will get to listen to them in Heaven.


Let's look at Kreeft's answers one more time now.


NOTHING happens in Hell. God is nowhere in Hell and neither is anything He touches. Seeing that God is Love, I think it is a safe assertion that Love will not be in Hell either.


Unfortunately for my good friend, this means there will be no music.


But she does have a point about Anathallo being in Heaven, where EVERYTHING is going to be going down (in the good sense of that phrase, of course).


My hope for today is that the masses of people out there stop imagining this party-filled Hell. Hell is Hell. That inherently means that it will suck. (And also means that you can't listen to Bjork there, either..or maybe you will have to listen to Bjork for eternity.)