> There is no sorrow in heaven, it is an emotion that doesn't exist. If your loved ones aren't in heaven when you get there you don't even think about it. The presence of God is so powerful there that it wipes out sorrow.
Sorrow is part of what makes us human. Ability to have any peculiar kinds of emotions is what makes people people. Everyone reacts to things differently. If you rob an emotion from a person, they're no longer what they previously were. I'm happy that I'm sad sometimes, because sadness can lead to hope and understanding.
By saying that people are robbed something that makes them what they are, you're picturing the Heaven as a peculiarly flawed utopia. There are two ways to achieve an utopia, and many people consider the other one to be flawed, especially when the utopia-builder is supposed to be an all-powerful god.
One way is to provide everyone everything they'll ever need. The other way is to make everyone believe they have everything they'll ever need.
Because the first method is very hard to pull off, some governments who promised an utopia decided to instead go the other route.
There's even a famous joke about this:
"Adam and Eve were most definitely good model citizens of the Soviet Union. They had no house, no clothes, had no money and possessions, were unemployed, and yet, they believed with all their hearts that they lived in a Paradise!"
So:
If you go into the first kind of utopia, you're expecting that you don't need to change your mindset. The society provides everything you need for you even if you don't care much about it.
If you go in the second kind of utopia, the society wants you to change your entire mindset and unquestioningly believe that they provide you everything, even if you don't care damn. They want you to swallow the big lie. They have no choice, because people would revolt. You have no choice, because you're now with some people who can make you do things against your will.
In this case, the big lie would be that there are people out there who aren't "saved", and it is normal to feel sorry for them. You're saying God is good because He can make you accept the big lie and like it.
(Heaven® is sponsored by United States Transportation Security Administration. If We Annoy People Enough, They'll Think They're Safe!)
Wouldn't it be much more productive for an almighty god to come up with a better definition of who gets saved and who doesn't, instead of forcing people to like the system with all of its faults?
> I do not believe that that person will go to hell (as long as they are Christian) for not getting the other person saved, but God does have rewards for those who are obedient to His voice.
Ah, you're a believer in salvation through deeds, not grace.
Let's not go into schism-inducing issues and instead look at the big contradiction with what you said earlier: "The presence of God is so powerful there that it wipes out sorrow". If "presence of God" is so overwhelming, surely there's absolutely no difference between being a nice follower and being a super-nice follower? If you're saved, you get God's infinite grace. If you're saved and save others, you get, uh... God's infinite grace, and some more of the same?
And here I thought Heaven was supposed to be some kind of a place where everyone has abundance of happiness. And now there are apparently different levels of happiness reserved for some people.
