Will you be happy in heaven if you believe in hell?

The Ladder of Divine Ascent or The Ladder of Paradise. (Wikimedia Commons; US public domain)

Will you be happy in heaven?

Do you belong to the True Faith? Do your holy scriptures promise eternal reward for the faithful, and eternal punishment for the unfaithful?

When you enter those gates, and are ushered into the presence of your God, will you rejoice knowing that (if you are a Christian), all of the world’s dead Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and followers of every other religion, along with the nonreligious, are at that moment suffering in torment?

Will you be grateful to know that you are part of a small elect, from which the vast majority of human race—all those who don’t share your religion—are forever excluded?

Will you think of your unsaved friends and loved ones, maybe parents, siblings, or children, who will not enjoy your eternal blessings? Will you be at peace knowing that they are, during every single moment of your eternal reward, suffering the most excruciating torture, which Jesus himself compared to a lake of fire? That they, like you, will be conscious of the passing time? (Because how else could torment be torment, if not conscious?)

After a billion years or so, will you think of those loved ones, and say to yourself, “No, their sins during their few years of life are not yet paid for”? Or will you have forgotten them by then, as you would forget throwing away a bit of trash?

Will you gladly praise the one who put them there, who—as Creator—personally invented the concept of pain and suffering, and who designed hell and the rules by which he would put people there? And who knew, before each damned person was born, that he would so damn them?

Will you proclaim his righteousness? Will you praise him continually (as he seems to desire) and tell him how good he is, how kind and merciful?

Will you be happy in heaven?