I'm not sure we're done with the previous post and I want to encourage everyone to keep commenting there, but I'm going to go ahead and throw up another subject for us to chew on. Since the last post concerned hell, it kinda follows this one should be about heaven.
My son worries we'll lose a big part of our humanity in heaven. For example, it seems natural that we would mourn for those we know who didn't make it into heaven and are being tortured in hell for eternity. How do you just forget about them and enjoy yourself? How do you stop missing the brother who didn't make it or the friend you didn't talk to about spiritual things? And how do you live with the guilt that maybe you didn't try hard enough to warn them about hell? No one wants to cry and feel guilty, but if you erase those emotions (i.e., God wipes away the tears himself) from the human psyche, don't you lose a part of what makes up the human experience? Without sorrow, how can we fully experience joy?
And what other emotions are we going to lose in heaven? What about our curiousity? If we know everything and we have all our answers now, what's left to explore? Are we just going to sit around? What about the joy of a job well done? Is everything just going to be handed to us in our mansions? Now, some religions believe we'll be able to have sex in heaven, but if the purpose of sex is to procreate and we don't really need to do that anymore, can we count on that? (He's a teenage boy, he worries about these things, okay?)
Do we even have our freewill still in heaven? Surely no one would be stupid enough to choose hell even after they're in heaven, but it sounds a lot like we become more robotic than human.
So, what's your idea of heaven and where did you get that idea?
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9 comments:
Are you running a seminar on religious belief?
This I believe:
Heaven like God is hidden because we have not yet the means of seeing it, but these things are what I have glimpsed so far.
Heaven is "Home"!
Heaven is where God is and we are with and of him.
You lose nothing when you go to Heaven. You become much more. Your freewill and individuality are not lost but are enhanced and expand to encompass everything. Just as a worm becomes a butterfly they are the same though different.
You will experience as much of Heaven as you can tolerate.
Heaven is eternal and only "now" touches eternity. Therefore Heaven a.k.a. The Kingdom of God is here and now.
Heaven is better than sex.(I just threw this one in for the teenager, but I sure hope it is true)
How did I come to this? Six decades of discussion, reading, listening, thinking, distilling, meditating, and culling, all within the framework of open wordless prayer and an eternal longing for home.
"Sweet Nothingness" ?
No, Sweet Everything!
Awesome, Drlobojo. I especially have come in very recent years to understand the concept of the Kingdom of Heaven being "at hand" meaning right here, right now.
All these questions are natural ones to have. But notice what they center on: a "me." What happens to me? Rather than hanging hope on the Author and Creator of Me.
The details of "heaven" are among those cares I strive to cast on Him.
Yes, drlobojo, I am kinda running a seminar on religious belief. :) For years I've known what I believe, but it's only recently I've been tearing it apart to know WHY I believe it. What's the history, the research, the case behind the conclusions I've been given. And how do other religions with the same books, paper and evidence available to them come up with different conclusions from the way I was raised? Also these discussions with my son tend to give me a headache and it's nice to be able to pick other people's brains about this stuff.
Your answer was awesome, by the way. I always thought of heaven as a place where you become everything you were meant to be in the first place, sort of like your butterfly metaphor.
And, ER, yes, we can leave the details about heaven to God, but is it just me, or is there a lot more graphic detail in the Bible about hell then there is heaven?
Oh, and I guess I haven't really grasped what y'all are talking about when you speak of the, "kingdom of heaven" being at hand. I always thought of it as referring to a spiritual reigning of God in the hearts of men with the result being transformed lives and eventually a transformation of society. In so doing, God's will will be done on this earth. Are we on the same page on this?
Or is it rather a literal reigning of God Himself on and over this earth? Didn't God make a few covenants with the nation of Israel about this, which is one of the reasons they had trouble accepting Jesus as the Messiah?
Same page, I think.
"Literal" is a word that does nothing but confuse, in my mind, when talking about these things. I mean, I think it doesn't come close to what the reality is behind anything.
I have Jesus in my heart. If I meant that literally ...
Now is now.
The very concept of time is man made.
The Kingdom of God is here, or rather we are in it. We can't see or feel it, or do it so very slightly, because we are encrusted within our earthly selves. We occasionally peek through. It often scares us when we do.
The question of "heaven" is, to me, irrelevant. The idea that Jesus came to deliver us from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are belied by his own deep commitment to the lives people were living, and the injustices they suffered, the illnesses with which they were burdened, and the system of popular religious belief that straight-jacketed the status quo.
What that all boils down to is that I am honestly agnostic about the whole "life after death" thing. Jesus, and Paul, spoke much more of the resurrection of the dead, than he did pearly gates and St. Peter sitting there with a big book checking people in like a Spiritual Holiday Inn. I much prefer the image of the eschatalogical banquet - we are gathered around the table prepared by God, as spoken of in Psalm 23. I also think of Jesus' response to the Saducees, disbelievers in the resurrection all, when he insisted that our ways of thinking and living and doing business have no application in the Kingdom of God which is to come. This observation alone forces a certain agnosticism upon me on this whole question - if our ways of thinking and living are not applicable, then it seems to pursue the question is a fool's errand.
If, in fact, the end brings "sweet nothingness", even that will not be so bad. I am far more concerned with how we are living now than with any possibilities that may or may not exist once we shuffle off this mortal coil.
Re,Geoffrey: "I also think of Jesus' response to the Saducees, disbelievers in the resurrection all, when he insisted that our ways of thinking and living and doing business have no application in the Kingdom of God which is to come."
Where in the Bible did you find this? I'd like to look at it a little closer.
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