Will We Remember Loved Ones Who Go to Hell?

What if someone we love goes to hell? Will we still remember them? Won’t that kind of suck?

That is the essence of some questions that a reader named Max asked in several recent comment threads here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life. And though the answers aren’t what everyone wants to hear, the point of this website is not to be popular, but to give real answers to hard questions.

First, contrary to popular belief, hell is 100% voluntary. No one is forced to go there. During our lifetime on earth we choose whether we want to go to heaven or to hell by deciding what kind of person we want to be. If we decide to be a selfish and greedy S.O.B., we are choosing to go to hell. If that is our choice, in the afterlife neither God nor the Devil will send us to hell. We will go there of our own free will because that’s where we prefer to be. See: Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?

Second, the afterlife is a continuation of this life. We are still the same person we have always been, but we are the same person we were inwardly. Any outward fakeries or masks that we have put on are stripped away. We become outwardly exactly the person we were within ourselves here on earth. See: What Happens To Us When We Die?

This means that the answers to these questions are human answers, based on who we are and how we function as human beings. And even here on earth, we drift away from, and sometimes consciously choose to cut ourselves off from, people who have taken paths that go in an opposite or very different direction than the path we have chosen. When it comes to people who have chosen hell, we do this not only because their life is incompatible with ours, but also to protect ourselves from the harm they would do to us if we let them keep their hooks in us.

It’s not that we can’t remember them. It’s that we choose to move on with our life, and leave them to their own very different chosen life. And eventually, yes, we forget that we ever knew them. Otherwise, it really would suck, both for us and for them.

Some basics about the afterlife

Unfortunately, there is a whole lot of misinformation and fallacy about the afterlife, much of it based on a much too literal reading of the Bible. For the real answers to these questions to make much sense, it is necessary to lay out some basic principles about the afterlife. Other articles here explain these principles in more depth. For now, I’ll just lay them out to get you oriented on what the afterlife is all about.

1. The afterlife is in the spiritual world, not in the physical world. Once we die, we leave our physical body behind, and we never rejoin it or return to earth.
2. In the spiritual world, we have a spiritual body that looks and feels a lot like the one we had on earth, but it is lighter and freer and more capable because it is made of spiritual substance, not of physical matter.
3. In the spiritual world, time and space as we know it here do not exist. Yes, we experience a passage of events one after another, but we live in an eternal present. And yes, we see people and things around us, near and far, but that is based on how close to or far from them we are in our heart, meaning in love.
4. The spiritual world is a world of love. Love is what we’re made of, love is what makes us the person we are, and love is what determines our relationships with each other. Whatever we love most of all, that’s who we are as a person.
5. The spiritual world is a world of truth. There’s no faking it or pretending to be someone we’re not. Whoever we truly are, that’s what we are both inside and out. Everyone can see exactly who and what we are, because it is fully expressed in our face and body, and in all our words and actions.
6. There are three regions of the spiritual world: heaven, hell, and in between them, the “world of spirits,” where we first go after we die.
7. Heaven is where people who have chosen to love God and/or their fellow human beings most of all go.
8. Hell is where people who have chosen to love only themselves and their own power, pleasure, and possessions go.
9. In the world of spirits, where we go immediately after death, everything that doesn’t fit with our true inner character is gradually stripped away, until become outwardly exactly who we are inwardly.
10. Once we have gone through this process of getting rid of everything that doesn’t fit in with our true character, we see a path that leads to the heaven or the hell that corresponds to our character, and we willingly follow that path. This path brings us to our eternal home either in heaven or in hell, based on the kind of person we decided to be during our lifetime here on earth.

One more thing: Children and teens who die before they have reached the age of adulthood and self-responsibility are raised to adulthood in heaven, and they all become angels of heaven. No one goes to hell unless she or he has intentionally and persistently chosen as an adult to live a selfish and greedy life here on earth.

With these basics under our belt, we can start to answer Max’s questions. I have edited them, and my responses, for clarity and context, and have provided links to the original versions.

In heaven, we are all brothers and sisters

The question about whether we will remember our loved ones who go to hell came out of another discussion in which Max asked:

Lee, I was curious, but won’t we be considered brothers and sisters of Christ in heaven? And no relationship of anyone such as gf, bf, wife, husband, dad, and mom etc.?

To which I replied:

Brothers and sisters of each other, but not of Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus calls his followers “brothers and sisters,” but they never call him “brother.” They call him “Lord” and “Master.” There’s a reason for that. In heaven, people will not see Jesus Christ as their brother, but as their Father in Heaven. Jesus Christ is God, and the angels of heaven know that very well.

In the afterlife, parent and child relationships will indeed fade away over time. In heaven, everyone will view their fellow angels as brothers and sisters even if they came from different generations on earth. There, everyone is physically in the springtime of their youth.

However, husband-and-wife relationships will remain. That is how God created us in the beginning. What God has joined together, no one, not even God, will separate in this life or in the next. But this applies only to people who are inwardly married, not to people who were civilly married but have no inner oneness of mind and heart.

In response, Max asked:

So my mother would be my “sister”? Would she still remember her being my mother and me as her son or would all that go away? Would I have to stop calling her mom?

My reply:

When you first arrive in the spiritual world, it will probably be the same as it was on earth. You’ll still think of her as your mother, and she’ll still think of you as her son. But as time goes on and you both become young adults physically while still retaining the knowledge, experience, and wisdom you gained during your respective lifetimes on earth, not to mention the new knowledge, experience, and wisdom you are gaining in the spiritual world, it will make less and less sense to pay attention to the earthly age difference and relationship between you, because you will both be full angels.

If you still want to remember the mother/son relationship, you can. There is no “have to” about it. In heaven, no one is forced to do or not do, or to think or not think, anything. It’s just that her job of raising you to be a self-responsible and good adult, and now an angel of heaven, will be complete. There won’t be any particular reason for you to think of her as your mother, or for her to think of you as her son, because you won’t need that relationship with her anymore.

If you both end up in the same community of heaven, you will think of each other as close friends. The memory of your earthly relationship could come back if there were some reason for it. But that would only drag both of you back down to your earthly, material state of mind, which will pale in comparison to the spiritual state of mind you are in there. So again, it’s not that you have to stop calling her “mom.” It’s that you will have entered into a different kind of relationship with her—a relationship of equals, and of being fellow angels of heaven.

I realize this idea is upsetting to many people who have a good relationship with their parents or children and want to keep that relationship. And again, there is no compulsion involved. You can keep that relationship as long as you want to. But consider how you will feel about each other after both of you have lived in heaven for the equivalent of a thousand or ten thousand earth years, having your own adult life, your work, your skills, your interests. Would it really make sense after all that time to look to someone as your mother when the two of you are now full adults who, on those time scales, have been around just as long as each other? You would no longer need her to look up to as a mother and mentor, because you are now a full grown-up just like her.

That’s the situation. It’s not that you can’t think of her as your mother. It’s that eventually you won’t think of her as your mother because that won’t be the kind of relationship you have with her anymore. And she will be perfectly happy with that also. She will have her own very full life to live among her friends and companions, one of whom might be you.

You can read the original thread here.

The long and the short of it is that the longer we live in the spiritual world, the more our outward and biological relationships on earth fade away. They are replaced by relationships like those between brothers and sisters, or between friends. And the people we are closest to, and who live in the same community of heaven as we do, are the people who love the same types of things we do, and think about things in a similar way.

It’s not that we can’t have relationships with people who are more distant from ourselves in their thoughts and feelings. We can. But we will always come back to our own community and our own home, where the people who are closest to us live.

This also means that the one who is closest to us, our partner in spiritual marriage, will continue to share our home and our bed with us. See: How does Marriage Fit In with a Spiritual Life? Is There Marriage in Heaven?

What about friends and loved ones who go to hell?

This brings us to the question posed in the title of this article. On another thread, which you can see here, Max asked:

Would God still erase our memories of our loved ones who didn’t make it?

To which I replied:

As far as our memories of loved ones who choose hell instead of heaven, it’s not that God erases our memory of them. It’s that our memory of them fades away over time because they’re not part of our life anymore. It’s sort of like families who have one sibling go bad and become a thief or a druggie or whatever, and who never shows up at family gatherings anymore. After a while, they don’t think about him all that much anymore because he’s no longer a part of their ongoing life as a family. They can think about him if they want to, but there’s not so much reason to think about him anymore.

(Of course, the same thing applies to a female family member who goes bad.)

Later, referring back to this in a series of questions here, Max asked:

In a comment back when you said something like “we can remember our loved ones but we just don’t since it’s like a family member who’s in jail now and don’t really have to think about them anymore, or if we wanted to we can.” Where’d you get that idea from? Like how do you know we can still remember the ones who didn’t make it?

In another answer to that comment, I said that most of my knowledge of how things work in the spiritual world comes from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), especially his most popular book, Heaven and Hell, which I recommend to anyone interested in the afterlife.

The Bible is meant to tell us how to get to heaven, not what heaven is like. Most of what the Bible says about the afterlife is metaphorical, not literal. Fortunately for us, God opened Swedenborg’s spiritual eyes and allowed him to spend almost three decades traveling around in the spiritual world and reporting back to us what it is like. This is the clearest and most extensive information about the afterlife ever published.

Here is a slightly edited version of my reply to Max’s main question, about whether we still remember loved ones who go to hell. The original version, which also covers another one of Max’s questions, is here.

Our memory of old friends fades

You asked whether we will remember loved ones who go to hell. My reply was that over time, although we could think about them if we wanted to, we won’t anymore because they are no longer an active part of our life.

Really, this works almost the same as it does here. There are kids I hung out with when I was young, but we’ve long since parted ways, and I rarely think about them anymore because I’m living a whole different life now than I did then. It’s not some terrible, nefarious thing where our memory is wiped clean by some robot overlord. It’s just that those people aren’t part of our life anymore, and we’re thinking mostly about the people we’re living and working and playing with now, not the ones we were living and working and playing with twenty or thirty or forty years ago.

Now consider that people in heaven live the equivalent of thousands of earth years and more. They’re not actually in time and space the way we are here on earth. But their experiences do accumulate, and they move on from one day and activity to the next. If you had a friend a thousand years ago, but that friend hasn’t been part of your life for a thousand years, and meanwhile you’ve made new friends who are a part of your life now, are you really going to think about that friend that you had a thousand years ago? Most likely, you won’t even be able to remember his or her name.

If we kept the active memory of everyone we ever had a connection with, our mind would become so crowded that we would hardly be able to get anything done. We could think about those people if we really wanted to. But most of the time we don’t, because we’re busy with the work and the people and the activities we’re engaged in now, and those other people and activities are in the past.

Leaving behind loved ones who go bad

As far as loved ones who go to hell, it’s not that they “didn’t make it.” It’s that they chose hell over heaven, by choosing to live a selfish and power-hungry life instead of a good, thoughtful, useful, and kind life.

And if a family member or friend makes that choice, and persists in it, nothing good will come of maintaining your relationship with that person. When it becomes clear that they are selfish and greedy, and will take advantage of you also, and even suck you into their own destructive or criminal life if they can, the best thing to do is to cut them off, as difficult and painful as that may be. It sounds hard-hearted, but the alternative is to give them hooks that they can grab onto and use to drag you down along with them.

Angels understand this. And yes, it’s hard to see someone you care about go to “the dark side.” But in the end, if that’s the choice they make, there is nothing you can do about it. People sometimes get a savior complex and try to intervene and “fix” the one who went bad. And though it’s not necessarily wrong to stage an intervention, because in some cases it works, in the end, it will be their own choice. If they reject your efforts to help them, and persist in their bad motives and bad behavior, then there is nothing you can do about it.

We are free human beings. We can make choices about our own life that no one else can overrule. In the end, if someone we love makes the choice to go evil, we just have to accept it as a fact, and protect ourselves from that person, usually by cutting them off so that they no longer have access to us. If they do still have access to us, all they will do is drag down and destroy our life. For example, people who have had abusive partners commonly have to go no-contact with them to protect themselves from that person, who would only continue to abuse them if they didn’t cut off all contact.

It’s not just a simple matter of “we forget all about loved ones who go to hell.” It is an active, and very difficult choice on the part of good people who go to heaven to let go of their loved ones who have chosen hell. At that point, there is no more possibility that they will change their minds. They have made their choice, they are now living it, and they have zero interest in changing. Any efforts to reach out to them would only result in pain and misery. This is what Jesus was talking about when he said:

Do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. (Matthew 7:6)

Can we still remember them?

It’s not that angels can’t remember their loved ones who go to hell. They can if they want to. But they choose not to because there is nothing they can do for them anymore.

Thinking about them and trying to reach out to them would only cause pain and misery on both sides. Pain and misery for the angel because she or he would be dragged down into a hellish state of mind. Pain and misery for the loved one who chose hell because he or she would be tormented by the atmosphere of light and love around the angel reaching out to him or her. For people in hell, love and kindness are painful, because they conflict with their own selfishness, greed, and hatred.

The spiritual world is a real, human world. It is not all ponies and rainbows. We are human beings with all our thoughts and feelings and abilities to choose one thing over another. People who have chosen heaven in this life continue to choose what is good and loving and true in the afterlife. And that means making hard choices to leave behind friends and family members who chose greed and selfishness and a desire for power. Those people have made their choice. Allowing them to continue to drag us down emotionally does no good for either one, either here or in the afterlife.

We can’t save people from their own choices

I know this is not the popular or politically correct thing to say. But people who keep trying to “fix” other people will have to learn the hard way that it just doesn’t work. Only an internal choice on the part of those other people can fix them. It can’t be done from the outside. And sometimes we must make hard choices to cut off toxic people. If we don’t, but keep showering them with our “pearls” of hard-won love and wisdom, they will only “turn and tear us to pieces,” just as Jesus said.

The same is true in the spiritual world. There, once we have made the choice to leave behind those who have chosen evil over good, their memory gradually fades from our mind because we are now focused on the good and happy life we are living in the present, not on past connections that in reality were severed, not by us, but by the person who chose evil over good, and thereby destroyed their relationship with us.

This is what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples as he sent them out to preach the good news:

Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. (Matthew 10:11–15)

Living a good and spiritual life is not a walk in the park. It requires definite, sometimes difficult action. This is why Jesus said in the very next verse:

I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

Here is a shorter video version of this article:

For further reading:

• Is There Really a Hell? What is it Like?
• Pain, Punishment, Prison, and Hell
• Can Gang Members Go to Heaven? (Is Life Fair?)
• What Happens To Us When We Die?
• Who Are the Angels and How Do They Live?