Why is God not more obvious?

This is a speculative theology article that should be taken with a grain of salt, as it stands outside what the Bible says, but I think it raises a couple of interesting questions...

If you believe that those who die outside the age and state of accountability (e.g. children, mentally disabled people, etc) go straight to heaven (which is quite a popular view), then you reach the interesting conclusion that possibly half of all people who have ever lived will go to heaven. Why? Because somewhere approaching half of all people who have ever lived have died before reaching adulthood throughout history (source), as children and babies (more if you include before birth). Before modern times, the infant mortality rate was very high. Say that those who never hear the gospel have a chance to go to heaven and that figure increases a lot.

Moreover, in the thousand year reign after Christ returns, mentioned by the Old Testament prophets and in the Revelation of St John, almost everyone will come to know Christ (e.g. Isa 11, Isa 65:17-25). That includes potentially quite a lot of people going to heaven, perhaps billions, given no war, very little suffering, no disease, very long life spans (Isaiah 65:20), and presumably no involuntary infertility.

Combine this with the 'age of accountability' theory and you end up with a lot of people going to heaven, perhaps 2/3rds or more of all people who will live, given a third to half of all people in this age plus almost everyone in the age to come.

An interesting aspect to this train of thought is that on this view most people who go to heaven get there without much, if any, testing or trial of their faith, as CS Lewis suggests in the Screwtape Letters. Thus, God only allows a small proportion of the people who will go to heaven to be tempted and/or to suffer for a long time.

If so, then heaven isn't such a narrow gate. It's a pretty wide gate, seemingly contradicting Matthew 7:14.

But perhaps it is both a narrow and a wide gate. The key thing is, it's a narrow gate for us, for us who are in this present age, who have reached the age and state of accountability. For people in other ages, or in certain states, it is not narrow at all.

So why are we here then? Why are we, this minority, tested so much when most of the saved aren't? Isn't that unfair? What is going on?

One possible reason is that the vast majority of people that God creates accept God's gift of eternal life without much reflection or struggle, but there's a small minority of people who only respond to the gospel in a less-than-perfect situation. Most souls don't need to be led to accept Christ through negative reasons such as e.g. perceiving a lack of meaning in their life, etc, negative reasons which are common in testimonies among Christians today. But for others, maybe God knows that they are like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), wherein experience of life without God is the key factor that leads them to accept God.

So what does God do? God puts those people into this world, where God pretty much lets people do their own thing.

Perhaps, in this theory, if we, the 'problem cases', had started off in the happy world, then we would, for some reason, have wanted to be our own masters and rule our own fate, in a place of our own apart from God. But in this world we have learned such things as to reject sin although we do sin, how much we need God, that God is rightfully ruler as well as helper, that life can lack meaning without God, and so on. We perhaps wouldn't have ever realised this stuff if we had started out in the 'happy world'.

Thus, God, in His infinite wisdom, saw that being in this world was key and that's perhaps part of the reason why this stage of history exists.

In conclusion, I suggest that this speculation could help to explain why God chose to make two stages of history, and why God has given so much free reign to people in this world and decided not to broadcast His presence in a 'fireworks-like' display.

Secondly, I suggest that, with some assumptions, one can find that altogether most of the humans that God creates might make it to heaven although heaven is a narrow gate for people in this world in an accountable age/state.

How is there free will in heaven?

Is there free will in heaven (or rather the new heavens and new earth)? How can the people in heaven be free if you know they will always do the right thing for an eternity?

Here is an answer I like to this question, that involves a certain view of evil.

In traditional Christian theology, evil is an absence of good like cold is the absence of heat. Evil is not an independent thing, but exists only because good exists and sometimes there is not much good in a situation. So evil is a lack of empathy, a result of a person not processing things morally.

For practical example of this, suppose someone wants people to treat them well, but they are really rude to staff at restaurants and other places. If someone could make them feel the pain they cause others for no reason, then this person would change their behaviour because they wouldn't want to be treated in this way. So their bad behaviour is actually the result of them not being consistent with their own principles in terms of how they want to be treated. In general terms, this shows how evil is not being truthful about how one's actions affect others in ways one's own self would not like (assuming someone endorses the Golden Rule, that is).

So if evil is something like this, then in heaven God has solved evil by making us completely truthful, through Jesus taking our sins (1 Pe 2:24). Because we are completely truthful, we can never choose to be evil because we will always be aware of how we would like to be (ideally) treated.

We will be unable to do evil in the sense that you, the reader, are unable to find it desirable to rob banks or murder people - that is, you are free to do it, but you can't do it because you can't be tempted by it. It's an inability to find something a good (or 'truthful') idea rather than any sort of physical inability.

Location heaven versus state of mind heaven

There's a common perception out there that heaven (or eternal life in the new creation) is just a place. There's a common view that all God has to do to let people into heaven is put them in heaven. And that God doing this would instantly make hell empty.

The Bible also talks about heaven as a state of mind rather than a location:

Romans 14:17: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 36:8-9: They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

Luke 17:20-1: Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

In the Bible, heaven and eternal life also involve one's mind or self being deeply and intimately connected to God.

So heaven isn't just about going to a heavenly location in a spiritual dimension, it also involves a state of mind. Judging from the verses above, this state of mind involves experiencing whatever happiness or contentment God feels through being reconciled fully to God.

The question is: how do you get reconciled to God to experience a state of mind heaven? The problem is that our wrong actions (sin) separate us from the kind of closeness to God that is heaven. The Bible's answer to this problem is that God/Jesus Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Pe 2:24). This meant God could "[make] [us] alive with Christ" dealing with the problem (Col 2:13) - meaning that although we can't avoid sinning in this life (1 John 1:8), our fundamental orientation has changed.

This analysis says that going to heaven isn't simply a matter of God letting someone into heaven. Intentions, thoughts, desires, and so on need to be different as well, and a two-way loving relationship needs to exist between us and God.

Why is it so hard to describe heaven?

Why can't Christians come up with a really fantastic description of heaven (or rather the new heavens and new earth)? Here is my attempt to explain a large part of the reason.

Something interesting about our happiness in this life is that it is very, you could say, 'temporal'. That is, people's happiness experiences a huge issue with boredom. Some people would be happy to live forever as long as they could keep experiencing new things forever, but in polls a lot of people say that they wouldn't want to live forever even if they could do so.

I believe this is because human happiness is not naturally hardwired for eternity. Our ability to be happy cannot sustain us for that long. E.g. it's a relatively common motif in horror stories that someone is condemned to live forever even though they can do whatever they want.

But it's interesting to note that God is probably not at all like this, if any God exists, because otherwise God would have gone completely insane with boredom. In most theologies God is eternal and outside time, and thus God has already lived for an infinite length of time. If God's happiness can't handle eternity, then God would be mad with depression (Isaac Asimov actually wrote a short story based on this premise called "The Last Answer").

And this leads to the conclusion that, because God is naturally eternal or for some other reason, God's happiness is a kind of happiness we have no experience of in this world - apart from through the Holy Spirit's sense of peace, if Christianity is to be believed. This can be indicated, if any God exists, from the reasoning above (unless Isaac Asimov's short story is right!)

Thus I conclude that part of why heaven is such a great place is because we have access to this divine kind of happiness that allows someone to be at peace and contented forever without being insane or something like that.

See Rom 14:17: "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,"

1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him""

Psalm 16:11: "You will make clear to me the way of life; where you are joy is complete; in your right hand there are pleasures for ever and ever."

Psalm 36:7-8: "How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights. For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see."

Rom 8:18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

We get this happiness through being connected to God through His Holy Spirit. And this is made possible by Jesus Christ removing our sins when He took them into himself on the cross (1 Pe 2:24).

I believe this is a significant part of the reason why heaven is so hard to describe in a really fantastic way.

Do we lose ourselves when we go to heaven?

One concern that a lot of people who aren't Christian have about the Christian concept of heaven is that you have to be a certain kind of person to go to heaven. That is, you have to fit a certain set of personality traits; you have to conform to whatever personality God says you need to have. And these traits won't necessarily be ones that you see as really being 'you'.

One response to this is that you can divide personality into two areas: personality and character, and that improvements in character never betray who we really are, and God only changes character.

Personality is like whether you are introverted or extroverted, whether you like reading, sports, horror movies, video games, etc. Character is whether you treat other people in the way you would like to be treated, i.e., your tendency to do the right thing.

An example of why this distinction is important comes from this thought experiment: if you are an introvert, you would probably feel like becoming an extrovert would 'betray' who you really are as a person, and if God imposed extroversion on you, it would seem a bit like mental slavery, perhaps. But think about this: does anyone feel that way when it comes to changes in character?

I would contend that everyone always accepts improvements in character as being consistent with who they really are. For example, suppose you had someone who was really rude to staff at restaurants and other places, and then someone is rude to them one day and they feel bad about it, so they decide not to be rude to staff any more. Nowhere in this process, it seems, would they stop and say, "Hang on, being more empathetic and treating people the way I'd like to be treated is not consistent with my true self!" It seems that if someone has realised that they ought to relate to people differently, there would be no sense of betrayal of one's true self.

These examples illustrate how the problem is resolved when you say that God changes us in character, not in personality. So when God changes us it's more like someone suddenly realising they should e.g. work on being more honest and empathetic, rather than deciding to become an introvert or an extrovert (a personality issue). And in heaven (or rather the new heavens and the new earth) we will be different because our characters will be perfect, but our personality will stay the same (if we want it to).

This verse seems a bit relevant, 1 John 4:7: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."

Why God can't just forgive sin

Forgiveness doesn't do a lot of things. For instance, it doesn't necessarily make people better. If I forgive someone for stealing from me, then I won't seek revenge, but it won't necessarily mean they'll stop stealing. So forgiveness won't necessarily make the forgiven person better.

This could be a problem for religious people if you need to be perfect to be with God. If you have to be perfect to hang out with God forever, then it raises the question: how is God's forgiveness going to make people perfect? If my forgiveness doesn't make someone who steals from me perfect, actually they could easily steal again, then how is God's forgiveness going to make a religious person perfect? Maybe the religious person will feel so grateful or remorseful that they'll never do anything wrong ever again. But experience teaches us that this is unlikely...

This is partly why Christianity teaches a type of forgiveness where forgiveness DOES make someone better. When Jesus died for us on the cross, God put our evil onto Christ, as well as the punishment for it. You can imagine all our badness, like a great pool of black sludge, being poured onto Christ on the cross. So "We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives" (Rom 6:6) and in return we will "be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of [our] own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ (Phi 3:9). Luther called it the 'Great Exchange'.

2 Cor 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Isaiah 53:12: "Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Unfortunately, Christians still do the wrong thing a lot because God has decided that what Jesus did for us will be fully manifested at a later date. Until then, "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions" (Gal 5:7). In fact, in our present state, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8).

Heaven and hell, some numbers

There may be Biblical evidence that a lot more people will be with God forever than be separated from God.

First of all, there is the doctrine of the age of accountability (link). This doctrine is that people who die before an age where they can make an informed decision about Jesus automatically go to heaven. This also includes people with a mental disability or some other disability that prevents them from making an informed decision about Jesus (there's 'state' as well as 'age' of accountability).

This could be broadened to include some people who never hear about Jesus or who hear but not in a way that allows them to make an informed decision about Jesus (but if you say this, then there needs to be a reason why God wants us to tell people about Jesus, which is a problem for this view).

If you broadened it in this way, then most people who have ever lived will be in heaven, because until modern medicine the infant mortality rate was about 50% (source) and there have been a lot of people who have never heard the gospel.

Secondly, we must remember that after this age (which ends when Jesus returns) there is an 'age to come', where almost everyone will be Christian:

Isaiah 2:2-4: "In the last days, the mountain of the LORD's house will be the highest of all--the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. People from many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of Jacob's God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths." For the LORD's teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem. The LORD will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore."

How many people will live in this age to come? Perhaps billions.

Thirdly, the good angels are happy forever and some interpret Revelation to say that 2/3rds of the angels stayed with God (Rev 12:4). Now, if there are billions of angels, then that is a large number of people who will be happy with God forever.

But what about verses like Matthew 7:13-4?:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Maybe this verse is saying that it's a narrow gate to heaven for people who a) become adults that b) can make an informed decision about the gospel that c) live in the current age. That is, our group, where the decision to accept Jesus is fraught with uncertainties and difficulties not present with the other groups. It could be that our group has the lowest proportion of people in that group going to heaven (compared to people outside the age/state of accountability, people in the age to come, and angels). If this speculation is accurate, then it raises the question of why we are in this group!

One of the disadvantages of sin is that we can't properly imagine heaven

There are some aspects to eternal life that people often find hard to understand. In this life we get bored and it can be hard to imagine how an eternity doing anything - even living with God - will not get boring if life in heaven is like life now.

Something that should comfort people on this issue is that, in the Christian view, one of the disadvantages of doing the wrong thing is not just spiritual death (being disconnected from God, Rom 6:23) but also that we don't experience the sort of joy and contentedness that God originally intended for humanity and this affects our ability to properly imagine eternal life with God.

Even when we are not suffering in any way it's obvious that there is something 'less than ultimate' about human happiness. And you'd have to imagine that God, it would seem likely, actually enjoys living forever (and in some sense has already lived forever). So we're probably missing something.

Surely whatever we're missing, that isn't as nice as what is the case for God, must be connected to our currently being either apart from or actually separated from God.

So we've always known a quality of happiness less than what God experiences, and this is why we can't imagine properly what life will be like once we experience "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" in the Kingdom of God (Rom 14:17). It will involve experiencing the peace and joy that God has (Matt 25:21). And our inability to experience this happiness now is why people think that eternal life with God will get boring and have problems.

Some good verses on this are:

1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'"

Psalm 16:11: "You will make clear to me the way of life; where you are joy is complete; in your right hand there are pleasures for ever and ever."

Psalm 36:7-8: "How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights. For you are the fountain of life, the light by which we see."

Rom 8:18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

Just like sin can eventually cause someone to become separated from God, so in this life it causes problems even where there is no suffering.

Does going to heaven involve missing out on the richness and variety of human experience?

There's a common perception that going to heaven involves being 'lobotomized'. That it means being turned into a perpetually happy 'machine' where you are unable to express natural emotions like sadness, cynicism, and so on. Meanwhile you are constantly 'high' on love which enables the saints in heaven to care about people and God the way God wants, like a parody of 'positive thinking' gone wrong.

This view is based on a misunderstanding of how the saints in heaven will be different. The entire difference is summed up thus: whereas now we don't treat other people the way we would ideally like other people to treat us, the saints in heaven will. Whereas now we don't follow the Golden Rule perfectly, the saints in heaven will (Matt 7:12).

Jesus (who is God) felt sadness (John 11:33-36), anger (Mark 3:5), cynicism (when justified, Mark 12:14-15), extreme anxiety (Luke 22:42-44). Jesus felt a full spectrum. He felt every emotion that was compatible with treating others the way Jesus would have ideally liked to be treated.

Heaven won't change people so that they can't get sad, lonely, feel grief, pain, feel cynical (as long as it allows for giving people the benefit of the doubt), anger (when justified) and so on. It only means that we will follow the standard above, which goes along with loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. When someone adds something to this then they are in danger of adding something to heaven that heaven doesn't have - this is where the 'heaven involves a lobotomy' view comes from.

So if our idea of heaven involves missing out on the richness of human experience, then either a) following the Golden Rule perfectly means missing out on the richness of human experience, or b) something has been added to our understanding of heaven that heaven doesn't have.

What is eternal life and why would it be good?

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, having seen and done everything there is to see and do, decides to dedicate the rest of his existence to insulting every single living being in the universe - in alphabetical order. It is interesting to note that the Guide points out that those who are naturally immortal are born with the psychological capacity to cope with immortality and would not suffer from this trope; Wowbagger's immortality was thrust upon him by accident, which is why he has such a hard time of it."

-From TVTropes

Douglas Adams' makes an interesting point in the Hitchhikers series about immortality and happiness. He points out that being immortal would actually have a lot of downsides. Although perhaps the first few hundred years would be pretty interesting, eventually it would get tedious.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that humans are not naturally immortal. We are finite beings who live on earth for a short period of time. We get bored rather easily and I suspect we aren't naturally able to cope with eternity.

But even if we never died physically we would still not be eternal in the way that God is. Even if we never died physically and 'continued' forever we would still exist within time. So we could never say that we had actually lived for an eternity, like God can (Psalm 90:2), even if we were immortal.

God is naturally eternal and outside the restrictions of time, so surely God is naturally able to cope with eternity; with living forever. Whatever happiness God has must be an eternal happiness that never gets boring or pointless, otherwise God would not be able to 'cope' with His own nature (and that would be strange).

This may explain why the Bible talks about eternal life (God's plan for humanity) as experiencing God's happiness:

Romans 14:17: For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

Psalm 16:11: You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Psalm 36:8-9: They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

Because God is naturally able to cope with living forever, God's happiness is an eternal happiness that never becomes monotonous. That is, eternal life. So giving that happiness to humans would be giving humans eternal life, a life that is fulfilling and pleasurable for eons; forever.

The only problem is that according to the Bible, failing to do what is right separates us from God strongly enough that God cannot give us eternal life (Rom 6:23). God cannot be that close to sin. That's why Jesus died on the cross for us (Rom 6:6), where God did a 'character swap', exchanging our moral failures for Jesus' perfection, to be fully manifested after we die.

How does human nature change in heaven?

A lot of skeptics have this question about heaven: why won't people in heaven do bad things? Especially when you consider how Christians cannot avoid sinning in this life.

Is it that God changes human nature? Well then why didn't God create Adam and Eve with a nature that wouldn't sin? It doesn't make sense. But what other explanation is there?

So does God prevent evil in heaven by changing human nature?

In one sense yes, in another sense no. The answer lies in what Jesus did on the cross for us.

You could say that humans are made out of two components: a body-brain, and a soul-mind.

People will always have a body-brain (whether physical, spiritual, or glorified resurrected body) and a soul-mind. So in the sense of the 'components' of human nature, human nature never changes.

Is it a problem that the components of human nature never change?

Yes. For some reason God can't make anyone with these components like Himself when it comes to sin. By this I mean, only God can never be tempted by sin (James 1:13). And we're smart enough to know that if we mess other people around then we can often fulfill our needs and wants better. And if God hadn't given us needs and wants then we would be self-contained social islands (not a good alternative).

So how can God make heaven perfect if we're stuck with these components of human nature, and these components lead to sin?

Part of the answer is that human nature isn't the only issue. There is also the issue of our own individual moral characters.

We have free will, so in theory, heaven could have no evil in it if people just chose not to do evil there (despite our bad track record on earth).

But in practice, having free will doesn't really help things that much. We are smart enough to know that selfishness/evil often makes a lot of sense, and so we can't make ourselves do something like 'be perfect' that is clearly against our self-interest.

But maybe, the problems of human nature could be sidestepped if just one person lived a morally perfect life.

How so?

Well, if one person lived a flawless life with a body-brain and soul-mind, then perhaps God could 'give' their moral character (pattern of moral choices) to others... That would make the human nature problem irrelevant.

If God could just 'give us' a morally perfect character, then we'd still have our human nature, but it wouldn't be a problem because now everyone would have a perfect moral character.

There was such a perfect person, according to Christianity. Although Jesus had a body-brain and soul-mind exactly as we do (Rom 8:3), for Jesus sin wasn't ever a problem. This is because Jesus had God's soul (John 10:36). So Jesus had the soul of someone (i.e. God) who had chosen to never sin from eternity.

We don't exactly know how it works, but Jesus' moral character (pattern of moral choices) can be handed out to others. On the cross our sinful selves somehow died with Christ, and in return Christ now lives in us (Rom 6:6, Gal 2:20). This is referred to as getting a new nature and being a new creation (2 Pe 1:4; 2 Co 5:17).

This world is the 'choosing period', where people decide whether this is something they want. For some reason, God waits until after we die to 'fully manifest' the effects of the 'swap' - but the 'swap' is fully accomplished as soon as someone genuinely believes in Christ (Col 3:3).

So heaven makes sense. We will still have a body-brain and soul-mind, but this time there will not be any problems. Because our moral character has been changed through the cross.

[1] Part of the idea of Adam and Eve is that you can have a body-brain and a soul-mind and nevertheless avoid sinning. I think this is possible because the 'Garden of Eden' situation is one where God protects our understanding of good and evil. So we rely on God's understanding of what to do, whether to get angry with someone, or help someone, for example, rather than our own. The 'Fall' seems to be a situation where people decide to rely on themselves for working out good and evil and to let go of God's protection.

One way of interpreting hell

Hell is described in pretty awful terms in Revelation, but we must remember that it is described in other places as simply not being with God. 2 Thes 1:9 "Whose reward will be eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength".

I've noticed on forums that it's easier to criticise Christianity if you accept the 'Revelation' view of hell but it's not as easy if you accept the '2 Thessalonians' view.

Maybe Revelation talks about hell in such a terrifying way because doing so will ultimately get more people into eternal life? Proverbs 14:27: "The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death".

But if hell isn't all that bad then the Bible is being a bit deceitful about how awful it is. And if hell is awful, then why would anyone would choose to go there?

I think a good illustration of how people could choose to go to hell, and yet hell involves an eternity of suffering, was given in a Twilight episode called 'A Nice Place to Visit' (quoted from here):

"A two-bit thug, shot to death by the police, wakes up on the far side. Given his life of crime, he is puzzled to find himself in what he takes to be heaven: a penthouse of Pascalian divertissement has been provided for him in which he can sate his every sensuous appetite. The supply of booze and broads is endless, and he can't lose at the gaming tables. But soon enough our man tires of the 'good life' and heads for the door — which is locked. Turning to his host, the thug complains that he'd rather be in the other place. "This is the other place!" the host demonically laughs."

I think if we were forced to live with the happiness we have now for let's say... a trillion to the power of a trillion years, then eventually we would be weeping and gnashing our teeth in pain. The happiness we have now cannot sustain us for that long.

There is another interesting take on this in a quote from the science fiction novel 'Permutation City'. In it Greg Egan tries to imagine life as an eternal being:

"The workshop abutted a warehouse full of table legs – one hundred and sixty-two thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine, so far.  Peer could imagine nothing more satisfying than reaching the two hundred thousand mark – although he knew it was likely that he'd change his mind and abandon the workshop before that happened; new vocations were imposed by his exoself at random intervals, but statistically, the next one was overdue.  Immediately before taking up woodwork, he'd passionately devoured all the higher mathematics texts in the central library, run all the tutorial software, and then personally contributed several important new results to group theory – untroubled by the fact that none of the Elysian mathematicians would ever be aware of his work.  Before that, he'd written over three hundred comic operas, with librettos in Italian, French and English – and staged most of them, with puppet performers and audience.  Before that, he'd patiently studied the structure and biochemistry of the human brain for sixty-seven years; towards the end he had fully grasped, to his own satisfaction, the nature of the process of consciousness.  Every one of these pursuits had been utterly engrossing, and satisfying, at the time.  He'd even been interested in the Elysians, once. No longer.  He preferred to think about table legs."

The eternal existence of 'Peer' in this quote indicates what our existence might be like if it lasted forever.

Is there another kind of happiness and way of being? According to the Bible there is, which everyone can find in God's presence. Talking about eternal life, Romans 14:17 says "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit". So the happiness of heaven actually involves people experiencing God's happiness. This joy will make us complete and fulfilled forever, in a way that we have never known and literally cannot imagine (1 Cor 2:9: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'").

The catch in experiencing God's happiness is that it requires someone to want to live under God's standards, because we get it through the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17) - who is Christ's spirit. Since we experience God's contentment through Christ's spirit, we need to be willing to be 'in' Christ. As Galatians 2:20 puts it: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me". This is how close we need to be to God to experience His happiness. In Christ we can express our personalities however we want minus actions that treat others in a way we wouldn't ideally like to be treated.

And yet people can and it seems would choose to go to the 'hells' described above rather than heaven, if heaven requires entering into a state where we love and serve God with all heart, soul, strength and mind, and love and serve our neighbour as we would ideally like to be loved, which is God's standard (through trusting in Jesus' death on the cross for us).