I honestly don't get what is so meaningful about Heaven. What motivates you to go there?
- Is it that you get to be next to Jesus/God? Well, how exactly is that "good"? Sure, it would be cool to talk with the creator of the Universe, but even I would get bored after a while.
- Is it that you would be able to get to your friends and family? Even tho this is a more personal topic, my thoughts on this are that if I was able to re-connect to someone from my family who passed away, then everything that person did for me would become meaningless. Sacrifices done for another human being only have meaning if my life or my materials are limited on some way.
- Is it that your life will be stretched? Again, if we even remove the boredom factor, we fall into the same problem as above: my life only has meaning if it's limited in some way.
I personally don't want to go to Heaven. I don't want to go anywhere. But if I was to chose, I'd chose Hell. Most atheists I know would. As Nietzsche would say "In Heaven all interesting people are missing".
In the West, specifically since the 18th-19th centuries there's been a lot of confusion over Christian teaching on "the after life".
The concept of "Heaven" has become deeply convoluted, confused, and amalgamated into this hodge-podge of ideas that has often left many with the idea that:
"When I die I go to heaven to live there forever with God."
This was never the historic teaching of the Christian faith. It's not the official teaching of any mainstream Christian Church. If you were to look at the various confessional literature of most Protestant denominations you'd find that they all confess the historic Christian belief in the resurrection of the body and eternal life in the age to come.
So let's unravel this whole thing by first stating emphatically that "Heaven" as in "this spiritual place, somewhere up there, where God and the angels dwell is to be our home for all eternity; where we with these ethereal 'bodies' strum harps like angels sing-songing it up forever and ever" is complete and utter garbage. This has never been the teaching of Christianity, you will not find it in the Christian Bible, you will not find it in any of the Christian Creeds, you will not find it in any of the writings of the ancient Church Fathers, or in teachings of Christian theologians throughout the centuries--whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. From St. Paul to St. Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther to John Wesley and so on there is an emphatic belief that after Christ comes again at the end of time there will be a resurrection of the dead and that God will make a new heavens and a new earth, restoring and renewing this creation where justice and peace will dwell forever and ever.
Now Christianity has taught that when we die we go to be with Christ. The Bible itself doesn't go into any detail whatsoever as to what this means or entails. However that isn't the full story, and Scripture isn't very interested in that part of the story. It's far more interested in resurrection. The locus of all Christian faith is the resurrection, Jesus from from the dead. But that is meaningless in and of itself, it would just be a sort of happy happenstance. But it's front and center in Christian thought precisely because it is the beginning of God's work of renewal, of new creation which is culminated, finalized at Christ's return when the dead are raised and there is the restoration of all things. St. Paul goes so far as to say that "if the dead are not raised, then Christ is not risen ... our faith is worthless".
Thus this "going to Heaven when we die" idea is really just an expansion upon the idea that between death and resurrection we are with Christ. Whatever that
means is largely unspoken and we don't really know anything of it, though it does seem to indicate a living and conscious presence in and with God. It is intermediate, not final.
Now as for the final state, the real deal which Scripture does talk about quite frequently and which we have confessed for two thousand years--the resurrection of the dead and the world to come--we cannot say much about what exactly it will be like. There Scripture only offers us glimpses of this profound reality. St. Paul likens it to us currently seeing through a dim glass or mirror, but then "face to face"; St. John says that "what we will be has not been made known, but when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.". St. Paul contrasts our present bodily existence with that future bodily existence by calling the present body a psuchekos soma (a "soul-powered body") while calling the resurrected body a pneumatikos soma (a "Spirit-powered body"). We receive from the ancient Israelite Prophets a number of visionary depictions, for example Isaiah speaks of wolf and lamb laying together, of children playing near viper dens without fear, and that even the lion will eat straw like the ox.
This isn't harps and choirs on golden streets. This is dirt and soil, life and breath. It is walking, playing, running, doing,
living.
I think life is a good thing, and for there to be a time when children and parents can be reunited, friends coming together again, and the whole of humanity, and the whole world, being restored to such a life gathered together in the unity, love and beauty of God; if this be, count me in.
-CryptoLutheran
, but in what gives the body life, what moves or enlivens the body. Soul, our animal breath, now; and then Spirit, God's Divine Breath. "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." (Romans 8:11)
