All You Need Is Love

[monk222]

One of Sully's readers chimes in on the whole God question and heaven and hell, an answer that probably resonantes well with good-hearted non-beievers and agnostics, that it's all about the love:

I don't believe in God (at least not a personal one), but I do believe in a sort-of Heaven/Hell duality: Heaven is Love. Conceptualized like this, there is no reason we can't have Heaven, or Hell, on Earth. The most glorious of moments, the moments when we feel the most love, are our Heaven; the moments where we feel none of that love, then, would be Hell.

Though I have a healthy respect for it (and occasionally wish I too had it), I no longer share your faith that there is something after this life. But a lot of that is actually helpful to me in that it doesn't leave me waiting for some kind of redemption that may or may not come. Rather, it makes the immediacy of this life of the utmost importance. I strive for love. I love feeling love. And I can only imagine that someone who has never felt that kind of love, someone who has been deprived for his or her entire life of that beautiful feeling - THAT would be Hell. To me, it's a lot more horrifying to imagine living without the love of others than to imagine living without God's love.

If it turns out that I'm wrong and there is a God, I am relatively certain that He would prefer that we lived our lives by giving and receiving as much love as possible, rather than eschewing Earthly love in pursuit of some obscure divine.

Which is fine and dandy, but what about those of us who are not overwhelmed with a lot of earthly loving. Atheism is easier the richer and better looking you are, while those of us who are on the other side of the curve, well, we kind of need something otherworldy. Of course, need doesn't guarantee satifaction, but sometimes hope is all you need. Love or hope, either way.