It’s a strange paradox: as materialism dominates our cultural imagination, even Christians are increasingly dismissing the traditional teachings of heaven and hell. Yet belief in eternal life is a dogma of the faith—core to what it means to be Christian. So why the skepticism? Perhaps the issue lies not in the doctrine itself but in how it has been understood, taught, and communicated.
Heaven and hell are not separate realities, as if one exists on the celestial mountaintop and the other in a fiery cavern. Instead, they are two experiences of the same eternal reality: God. The difference lies entirely in disposition. For those who have chosen to love, worship, and align themselves with God, heaven is the joy of full union with Him. For those who have rejected God, eternity in His presence becomes unbearable—hell is aversion to the very source of life and love.
Some people get the idea that Christianity boils down to, “If you passed the good person test, you get a pass into heaven; if you didn’t make the cut, well, that door leads to hell.” This characterization is deeply misleading. Christianity is not a cosmic grading system but a call to relationship. The central question is not, “Were you good enough?” but “Did you choose to love?” Goodness and virtue flow from love—they are the fruit of living in relationship with God, not the entry ticket. Heaven is not about being a perfect person; it’s about being transformed by love and choosing to remain in that love. As St. Augustine reminds us, “God does not save us without us.”
Some atheists claim they are content with their current, temporary existence and feel no desire for what is promised in eternal life. But I ask: what is it they imagine is promised? A superficial form of emotional happiness or material enjoyment? That is not the Christian proposal. The promise of eternal life is not an extension of earthly pleasures or a mere removal of pain. It is the perfection of the relationship we were made for: a full participation in the divine life, the love of God who is our ultimate good.
Life isn’t some cruel spiritual scavenger hunt that keeps you guessing about God’s existence, personality, or purpose for your life. It’s far simpler than that. The One who created you and is promising a relationship with you also literally died to save you. Apart from keeping the moral law, the rest of our choices are left to us. God cares about our lives and our decisions, but He created us with the creative freedom to choose our unique path. This is at the heart of St. Augustine’s wisdom: “Love and do what you will.” It’s not about perfection but about fidelity to love, which transforms and elevates all our choices.
The Vice of Acedia: Rejecting Relationship
At the heart of rejecting eternal life is a refusal of relationship, rooted in the ancient vice of acedia. The Egyptian Desert Father, Evagrius of Ponticus, called this the most demonic of all vices because its essence is autonomy—a refusal to engage with or depend on God. Acedia is not simply laziness or apathy; it is a spiritual resistance to joy and love, a despair that sees the effort of union with God as too burdensome.
On a related note, someone grappling with the idea of a God who created creatures in His own image and likeness (“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them” – Genesis 1:27) often struggles with the consequences of suffering that arise from the abuse of that freedom. Such a person might be tempted to doubt God’s goodness or even wish to relinquish their freedom altogether so that innocents might never suffer. While not falling into outright atheism, this response reflects another rejection of relationship—and yet another manifestation of acedia.
Evagrius explores this further. He identifies in acedia a person’s denial of the goodness of creaturehood itself and a desire to exert control in a way that only God can. This rejection of dependence upon God’s design denies the beauty and purpose of being made in His image. But only Jesus, the God-Man, has the power to lay down His life for the innocent in an infinite, perfect, and efficacious way. As Jesus Himself says in the Gospel of John: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). His voluntary sacrifice reveals the truth about freedom, love, and the dignity of human nature.
Acedia fosters isolation, whispering the lie that autonomy is freedom. It convinces the soul to turn inward, away from vulnerability and the love that could save it. When someone rejects a relationship with God in this life, they are also rejecting it in the next. This ultimate rejection—preferring self-sufficiency to communion—is the culmination of acedia, and its eternal consequence is alienation from the very source of life and joy.
Strip away the distortions of cherubic angels or eternal flames, and focus instead on what heaven and hell truly signify. If love in relationship is what brings us joy now, heaven is its ultimate fulfillment: a perfect, unbroken union with God and others. Conversely, if isolation, selfishness, or rejection of love define our lives, hell is the continuation of that reality.
This is why Christ came—to redeem us and offer us a choice: eternal joy or eternal misery. As Scripture reminds us: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Either our joys and sorrows in this life are meaningless, or they are glimpses—foretastes—of the eternal destiny that awaits us. The choice to love, to say “yes” to God and His proposal of eternal relationship, is ours.
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