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Is it OK to not believe in literal heaven and/or hell?
When it comes to any idea, I don’t think we can or should force ourselves to believe things that contradict what we’re able in our conscience to accept as true.
Heaven and hell are strange ideas, especially the idea of hell. If by “hell” we mean a place God creates and designates for eternally tormenting people unable to accept Christian faith, it introduces a number of logical problems to the idea that God – in God’s essential nature – is loving, just, and merciful. For instance, it’s a difficult argument to make that a just and compassionate deity would say, after creating humankind, “Let there be eternal and unforgiveable torment for the ones who do not accept or love me or my message.”
It’s worth noting too that much of the imagery in popular Christianity that describes heaven and hell in this way (bliss for the one and torment for the other) are largely shaped by medieval and renaissance literature, like Dante’s Divine Comedy (graphic images of sinners in hell tormented eternally) and Milton’s Paradise Lost (devil with pitch forks looking to collect souls). These images are a long way off from what the biblical writers in the apostolic era and the early church would have envisioned regarding the afterlife. Paul speaks of the resurrection of the dead. The gospels speak of the “kingdom of God” where righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit define life together with God. Many first century Jews (like Jesus) held the belief that once a person dies, we go to “the place of the dead” or sheol (in Hebrew). For most first century Jews, sheol was neither good nor bad, just a place where souls live on as shades of their living selves. It was later that Christian writers developed elaborate doctrines of heaven and hell as afterlives of bliss or torment.
Heaven and hell are also tricky ideas because they are so fraught with use and abuse by Christians who use them as a cudgel to try and force conversion. I remember hearing the message so many times when I was young, “If you don’t repent and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, you’ll go to hell. If you want to be with God in paradise forever, then you need to believe.” Theologically, I think this is a spectacularly unsound way to think about heaven and hell, because it reduces the Christian faith to a cost benefit analysis, instead of an adventure (worthy for its own sake) toward the heart of God.
I once heard the story of a Muslim saint called Rabia of Basra. She was known around her town for praying loudly in public spaces and for carrying around a bucket of water and a torch wherever she went. She would pray aloud, “Lord, if I worship you in order to gain an eternal reward, then take this torch and burn down the riches of paradise. If I worship you for fear of torment, then take this bucket of water and douse the flames of hell. But if I worship you because of your worthiness, then hide not your face from me.” I think I agree with Rabia. If all the heaven and hell business turned out to be false, and if the afterlife turns out to be more like sheol or eternal rest or sleep awaiting its new beginning, Rabia’s bucket and torch would have us consider the possibility that loving God and enjoying God’s love in this life would be enough in itself.
I do think that heaven and hell are powerful metaphors for things we experience in our lives here and now. For example, Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard says that hell points to the realities of despair and anxiety, when life becomes a prison to itself, or when we feel cut off from God and meaningful life with others. When life is an exile to joy and hope, or when we are exiles to our true self or the ground of our existence (God), then life becomes a hell. Kierkegaard calls this “the sickness unto death,” which in his view threatens the life of God in the soul. On the other side of it, for Kierkegaard, heaven might be when we know and enjoy divine love – and meaningful fellowship with other people through divine love – and when we are conscious of the possibility of joy and hope as gifts that abide with us, even in the shadowy valleys of life.
Heaven (or life with God) points to the acceptance that we are accepted and loved by a loving God. Whatever higher reality they do or do not point to, perhaps the words “heaven” and “hell” are best understood as symbols (sometimes rather clumsy ones) for pondering the boundless mystery of God’s love and the soul’s journey into God’s heart.
