Heaven is for the Good

Thoughts on tolerance and dogma

Photo by James Kovin on Unsplash

I saw a comment on Twitter on a fellow Latter-day Saint’s tweet. It was the typical anti-Mormon tripe: Mormons aren’t Christian—they’re going to hell. Joseph Smith, the founding Prophet of Mormonism taught us that God is more broad-minded than most of us think. Paraphrasing Brother Joseph, God looks at us like a kindly parent, with compassion and longsuffering. We believers go out of our way to find fault with one another and condemn our fellow believers to hell because they don’t comport themselves in accordance with our doctrine. Joseph said we would be surprised by who we willl find in heaven, once it’s all over and done.

One of the things that attracted me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was this openmindedness, which is reflected in our views of the afterlife. Perhaps I should invert that and say that it is the revelations about the afterlife that create that openmindedness. We send missionaries out to the world with a message th…