When the Light's Indigo (On Heaven and Hell)

Relaxing a fist
that you didn’t know was closed.

Radishes—how they wave their
     magenta reds
Through photon fields to find me.

How mother’s voice gets softer when she sings.

Where will I go when the light’s indigo?
(and oh what a silly thing to say)

But while I am still, you can bet that

Brick by brick by brick by brick(you get the point)I’ll 
build a bridge across the sky so—

When I have to go,
when the light’s indigo, I’ll
Find a certain way to find you.

From a young age, I was terrified by thoughts of hell. My conception of hell was that it was a place to which one goes if they die with a mortal sin on their conscience. It was a place of fire, eternal suffering, and torment, overseen by a super-powerful demonic overlord, Satan. By contrast, I understood heaven to be a place of bliss, reunion with one’s dead relatives, and eternal dwelling in a big, Disney-esque kingdom of God.

It seemed obvious to me that, given the existence of hell and heaven, the main or even sole purpose of life was to avoid hellfire and to attain a place in heaven. In fact, given even the possibility of eternal dwelling in either bliss or torment, it seemed like this should more or less be our main focus. This is basically a reiteration of Pascal’s Wager.

The Wager works like this: if heaven and hell are NOT real, and if one acts as if they ARE real, then the loss one incurs over their lifetime is some finite measure of pleasure (from not doing all the “bad” or self-indulgent things that they would otherwise have done). However, if heaven and hell ARE real, and if one acts as if they are NOT, then there is risk of infinite loss. Given this situation, it seems like the safer bet is to assume the existence of heaven and hell and to act accordingly.

Many people have problematized Pascal’s Wager. For example, one might note that the conception of heaven and hell as respectively eternal bliss and eternal torment is not universally held, even by Catholics. To some, hell is merely separation from God, an eternal lack of fulfillment, whereas heaven is a merger with an participation is God’s ongoing creation. Moreover, if death is mere annihilation, or if there is some form of reincarnation, then the wager changes.

But I think this objection misses the point. The point is that if there is any nonzero probability at all of an eternal bliss/torment dichotomy, then by the infinite nature of eternity, any rational response to the wager turns out the same.

Another objection to this line of thinking is that the Wager focuses heavily on self-interest rather than morality or truth. Shouldn’t we care about doing what is actually right and believing what is actually true, rather than just picking the safest bet? Moreover, belief and worship under duress could be seen as insincere and self-serving rather than a loving choice. An all-knowing God may “see through” such calculated belief.

To this my response is two-fold: first, if you can show me a way of discerning the ultimate “truth” of any matter, let alone one of such import as this, then I will follow you there. Until such a time, we must choose what proposed truths to endorse. Second, I’m not sure that a God that has set up an eternal bliss/torment dichotomy is so worried after all about morality and loving choices after all. It would seem like an act of great barbarism to establish such a test for humans, and such a God would seem to be concerned more with submission and worship than genuine loving and truth-seeking.

A further (and, I think, better) objection to the Wager is that it isn’t clearly actionable. After all, many societies have believed in an eternal bliss/torment dichotomy, and they have different ideas about how to attain eternal bliss. Even if one accept the conclusions of Pascal’s Wager, which path should they follow? How should they concretely make decisions in their life?

A simple response to this would be to choose one such society and follow its precepts. Better to guess at one than to throw up one’s hands and follow none at all.

This is more or less where I stand today on Pascal’s Wager. But the truth is that I don’t grapple with this question anymore. Whether heaven and hell continue beyond this life I cannot say, but I am sure that they start here.

Is there a fire worse than fire? And isn’t fire here, now?

And can’t we already achieve a merger with God, such that we exist as a subprocess of and participant in His ongoing creation?

Indeed, Luke 17: 20-21 reads: “Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, “Here it is,” or “There it is,” because the kingdom of God is in your midst.’”

Heaven and hell are largely unearned states in this life. Our foremost orientation should be to “free the captives,” as it were. I feel very lucky to have experienced a slice of heaven, and I wish the same for all conscious beings.

To take up this orientation is to “build a bridge across the sky,” to bring the Divine and the metaphysical into contact with the everyday; and, possibly, to earn a place for oneself in heaven.