The hardest thing I had to give up when I left Christianity was the concept of heaven. To be sure, I do think that existence would eventually be boring regardless of the state I found myself in — eternity was a long time to live (although I’ll admit — as a believer I thought this wouldn’t really be an issue). But there was also a disappointment that there were many family members and friends I would never see again.
I have to say — I think this is one of the reasons some I know cling to religion so tightly. It’s this tenuous connection that they have towards the dead that gives them a vested interest in making sure belief in God and heaven and the rest is protected.
If I were in charge, I’d have to say that I would make death a bit more poetic, satisfying, and beautiful than it currently is. Because the death of someone I love…there’s nothing poetic about it. It’s just a bare fact of existence that seems like it should be something more, so we try to make more out of it, but it’s just there — this equation in the way you live your life that just seems unsolvable, that doesn’t really make sense. And somehow you have to keep living with the knowledge that there is something in life, a bare fact of existence, that, on some fundamental level of experience, just doesn’t make sense.
Not believing in heaven feels strange to me, I admit. The idea was such a fundamental part of the way I viewed things that leaving the belief felt unnatural — a bit like the way you would feel you had a missing limb for awhile after losing it. But at the same time, there was a sense of relief and acceptance — like there wasn’t any pressure on me to live as if there was a heaven, something I had always had doubts about. In ways that are a bit hard to fully explain, not believing in heaven made the world here and now much more important and authentic to me.
The easiest thing to give up, by contrast, was the concept of hell. Usually bringing this up has many Christians insisting that the image I have of hell isn’t accurate — there seems to be more attempts to sanitize the concept of hell, in my experience, than any other concept in the Bible. I think this speaks to how uncomfortable the basic concept is — it’s unpleasant to think that people are going to heaven, while others are going to hell (regardless of the way you define “hell”).
The most common thing I hear from Christians is that people shouldn’t worry about hell. God’s going to be just and it’ll all make sense when we die. But even the trust that it’s OK for this being to send some people to hell based on his own judgment (which is supposedly just, whatever it is) is disturbing — especially since the judgment of this supposed being doesn’t have to answer to anybody. Like, when I read a book that says there’s all these things that God doesn’t like that I do, and that calls me a “sinner” when I’m not…your statement that you are simply trusting God’s judgment really puts a damper on our relationship. I mean, the encouragement “just trust God — no point in asking questions” has, in my experience, caused people to judge me based on what a book says, and all rebuttals are met with a shrug and, “God’s just”….over and above my own defense of who I am. It’s frustrating.
Furthermore, the encouragement to trust God’s judgment above our own experience and sense of empathy is, if God doesn’t exist, an encouragement to trust a fictional being that is created by a few people, and for that trust to actually trump our actual real-life experiences and relationships.
During my last few years as a Christian, this approach of “just trust God’s judgment” wasn’t enough for me. I was always trying to look behind the curtain. Also, I was beginning to trust my own love and valuation of other people so much that God’s supposed opinion of how worthy they were to go to heaven began to matter less and less. The refrain, “Oh, if you saw it from God’s view it would all make sense” was an increasingly difficult position to take…my own empathy and trust in the beauty of other people I knew began bleeding through, and I began to see that the Bible — and the God in it — had less and less to do with the empathetic view of people that was growing in my heart.
And I eventually came to see that, although people are occasionally wrong, and although they do malicious things once in a while…no one deserves eternity in hell. So it’s a real relief not to believe in it.
And it’s really nice to live for the world that actually exists without feeling as if this life will be judged by a higher power.
It’s simpler. I enjoy life as it comes, embrace people who make this life better, and more soberly and honestly appreciate the lives of those who have gone before, knowing that there is only one me and that, for awhile, I contributed another verse to existence in a unique way that no one can replace and that doesn’t seem likely to come around again.
Leaving the concept of hell has given me a lot of peace. Asking me if I miss the concept of heaven (as an abstractly beautiful place — I wouldn’t want to spend a moment with the God of the Bible up there) is like asking me if I wish I could believe there were a million dollars in my bank account. Sure, it would be nice to see a couple buddies who have passed on after I die. But many things are there that indicate that isn’t the case, and that death is just a part of existence that is is simply “there.” This honesty makes it easier to live with myself and with others; there’s not this nagging view that I’m starring in my own Truman Show. Things are more peaceful, in a way, when I don’t have to twist my mind to think things that don’t seem real…leaving a lot more brainspace to get to the business of living a life that is, at least to me, much more authentic.
Thanks for reading.
[Image via Hartwig HKD under Creative Commons License]