Will we Go to Heaven or Hell?

Today Martha began the discussion with an interesting question.  

Martha: Rabbi, after my brother's death, I have frequently had thoughts of heaven and hell. I have heard people saying that we will go either to heaven or to hell according to our deeds.  If it is so, this world must be a place to test our character. In fact, the prospect of going to heaven makes me happy, but the chance of being pushed to hell makes me tremble with fear. What do you think about it?

Rabbi: Before we can say anything more about heaven and hell, we need to agree on what we mean by these words. To begin with nobody has ever seen heaven or hell. Therefore, we do not have any verifiable facts about heaven or hell; what we have are beliefs.

By the word heaven, people usually mean a parallel world up in the sky. God and angels reside there. Saintly people in the past such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses live there. I would say this is an excellent way of explaining what heaven is to children. But the grown-ups must be able to think of heaven in a better way.

Earlier we discussed about the limitation of our senses. We perceive the world with our five senses, which determine its shape and nature. This means that the world that appears to us is only a part of the real world. The part of the world that we cannot perceive may be thought of as heaven. Looking at heaven this way, it is not up in the sky, but right here; only we don’t perceive it.

Heaven is that part of the world that we cannot see. So it is a limitation of our senses that makes us see the world in two parts—earth and heaven. But the inhabitants of heaven do not have such a limitation, and therefore, in their eyes, only one world exists. Thus for them, heaven is all there is, and earth is a part of it. This could also mean that we are already in heaven; only we don’t realize it.

Martha: I think this is a very enlightening perspective. But how do we put hell into this picture?

Rabbi: It seems we can’t put hell into this picture.  If heaven is all there is, how can there be any other place?  

Martha: So what is hell?

Rabbi: If we explain heaven as a place up in the sky, we can also easily explain hell as a large miserable place underneath the earth. That is the popular view of hell. But as I said earlier, this is a good way to explain to children. Adults will seek a better way of looking at it.

To include the picture of hell, we need a different picture of heaven as well. Earlier we used a literal meaning of the word heaven. Now we are going to use a metaphorical meaning. We usually hear a happy family called a heaven on earth. Heaven is used here as a synonym of happiness. Thus we may say that where there is love, joy, and peace, people experience heaven. On the other hand, where there is hatred, sorrows, worries, anxieties, and discord, people experience hell. We all experience heaven and hell while alive on the earth. Often we ourselves create heaven or hell in our own lives.

Adam and Eve were in heaven when they were in good standing with Yahweh. There was love, joy and peace in their life. But once they broke their agreement with God, they fell into hell. In the place of love, there was hatred. They began to place the blame on each other. In the place of joy there was guilt feeling and fear. In the place of peace there was discord. There was total disintegration.

Martha, I would advice you not to worry about where you will go after you die. Even if those places exist literally, you don’t have much control over what will happen to you. But I would advice you to find out where you are right now. Are you in heaven or in hell now? If you are in heaven now, you will continue to be in heaven even after you die. But if you are in hell now, there is no guarantee that you will be in heaven after you die.

Martha: Please allow me to summarize what we have discussed so far. First we made a distinction between a child’s view and an adult’s view. Elaborating upon the adult’s view, we used the word heaven with two different meanings – literal and metaphorical. Literal is speaking of heaven as a real place, but metaphorical is comparing a place to heaven.

Speaking of heaven as a real place, we distinguished between human perspective and God’s perspective. In human perspective, heaven is that part of the world that is invisible, but in God’s perspective, heaven is the world, and earth is its part.

Comparing a place to heaven, heaven is a synonym of love, joy and peace. We need to experience heaven in our life now rather than worrying about where we will go after we die.   

Martha was excited when she summarized the discussion. It seems that she was no more afraid of the hellfire. 


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