So here's an interesting Heaven problem.
You are a parent. You have some children who lose their faith and become atheists. When you go to heaven, and they go to the lake of fire (your children, the ones you would do anything to protect, whom you loved and nurtured and would be horrified if someone beat up,) when you're in heaven and they are burning YOU DON'T CARE. It doesn't bother you one bit that they are burning. because heaven is defined as without pain, lament or regret. In your new body, you forget about your children and don't care about their suffering.
Weird definition of perfect, huh?
Nobody ever loses their faith. Faith is permanent - once God activates faith in a person, it cannot be lost.
LOL…this used to bug me, in the early years after I lost my faith in the Christian God, as religionists were essentially saying that I faked my faith for those decades. But consider this, if I thought my faith was real, and that I was guaranteed to become part of your imaginary heaven, but in reality I was never really saved, where does that leave the idea of confidence of salvation? You either have to assume that tons of people are lying to you about their former faith, or that no one really knows whether or not their perceived faith in Christ & salvation is real. The only way to remain confident that your faith is truly real, is to assume that each and every single person that says they lost their faith are fakers/liars.
Not really. There are people who say that they are saved because they do good things; others because they are not as bad as they could be; others because they go to church and got dunked in the water. There are other explanations for why people say they have faith. The Bible tells us that God protects those who actually have faith - as He is the one who gave them that faith - and that He will not let them fall from faith. So, the question here is why you thought you had faith. Maybe it was because someone got you to say some prayer and then told you that you were saved. What's the truth here?
The truth here is that I grew up mainstream Protestant, joined the church in 8th grade. I was the youth leader for our youth group for about 1.5 years (the adults were still really in charge…). By the time I finished HS, I had read thru the Protestant Bible. In my college years I switched over to an independent Bible church as my mainstream church was ignoring the Bible more and more IMPOV. I spent a dozen years in a couple independent Bible churches, partly switching due to moving after graduating from college. I felt I was saved by Christ’s grace and did not doubt for my future or my faith. I felt I had God's presence in my life. I did Bible study, even outside of Sunday morning. One of the longer studies utilized The Footsteps of the Messiah: A Study of the Sequence of Prophetic Events by Dr. Fruchtenbaum. I regularly attended church, participated in small devotion groups, spent time in prayer, donated time to help others, volunteered frequently at the church, and tithed to my churches. My faith wasn’t just an undigested bit of beef.
One irony is that the seed that started forming cracks in my serene God-fantasy was a Christian video (watched in a Bible study group) that claimed that there was scientific backing for the Deluge. I wanted to know more than the video offered, so I would be able to explain it to others if there was an opportunity. Well the video was backed not by facts and science, but with obfuscation, misdirection, and essentially lies. That left me taken aback to read lies from Christians. I ignored that for a while, but every time the preacher would bring up some of the grand miracles from the OT, I couldn’t help but think of some of the information I had reviewed. Eventually, I decided I needed to figure out more about the grand miracles and how they could or couldn’t work. So I spent about the next 2 years reading, praying, and getting more and more frustrated as my faith felt like it was under attack. I spent some time talking with a local Bible college professor that I knew, and he provided some of the apologetics for my reading. In those 2 years I read a dozen or so books of apologetics from CS Lewis to the dolt Josh McDowell, other books like Eusebuis’ History of the Church, some of the Nag Hammadi Library, John Romer’s Testament, several book on Sumerian and Egyptian archeology, and others I have forgotten. Anywho, I don’t think my general story is all that unique here on this board, as there are even ex-preachers on the board. I still remember reflecting on 1 Cor 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”…well that didn’t work out so well.