I wouldn't want that either. But I don't see any reason in Scripture for thinking this will be our eternal experience.
It's more along the lines of what pastors say in sermons, and even you profess later in your post, that that SHOULD be all I want to do is fall on my face before the throne and worship, doing the exact same thing for all eternity. You say that's what I should want and treat it as if that's what God wants.
But it will be a different earth, free of the curse of sin, uncorrupted by human wickedness, where the lion and the lamb live together in peace, and Christ rules all in holy perfection. I think these things will make a very BIG difference to the nature of the new earth.
Different, there won't be sin, there won't be night, but I think there will still be dirt, there will still be plants, animals, water, they may all be beyond imagination in how spectacular they are, but when God created this world and this universe He was pleased with it, before sin poisoned it. God doesn't change His mind because God knows everything so He won't come to a new perspective due to new information, because there is no new information to Him. So the things He created that were Good, are still going to be Good, they'll still please Him. Maybe you're right and it will ALL pass away. But my heart tells me that the things in this world that please him, will be a part of the new creation too. Some things will be familiar, others will be new, I have no idea how much of each there will be. But God created many many forms of life, big and small, and I hope the new creation will have many many forms of life big and small too. New Earth sterile and devoid of life aside from God and the redeemed humans? No plants, no animals? That doesn't feel consistent with what God has done.
David danced before the LORD with all his might. (2 Samuel 6:14)
I think many activities can be considered worship, if they are done for that purpose, if they are done to glorify and please God.
Is this a reflection of your love of this world, the world we are told in Scripture to avoid investing in because it will one day be entirely burned up? I think God is far more creative than to simply recreate the earth we know. Certainly, when I read John's revelation, his descriptions of heaven and the life to come sound very little like life here on earth.
Not my love, His Love. He will remake it perfect, but He loves his creation, and His image bearers. He gave His own son, the sign of ultimate Love for something. The world we're not to invest in is the civilization and society that WE created in sin, the "World" of men, the rules and laws and punishments and false religions and idols and perversions and abominations that WE make.
What is stupid about falling on our faces before God's throne in adoration of Him? How would this be wrong even if it was all we ever did in heaven? Does God not deserve such adoration? What about the cherubim before God's throne who continually proclaim, "Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty"? Are they just acting stupidly? Is God stupid for allowing or making them do so?
No, the stupid is the idea that that's ALL He wants us to do. He has bigger plans than that. If He wanted robots that just bowed to him forever He could have had that. He made us capable of so many more things than that, He made us with free will, and in the new creation, with the absence of sin, we will choose to do things that glorify Him, and there an unimaginable ways that He will want for us to do that. He created such variety and diversity, that it wouldn't be His way to have everyone be the same, everyone do the same. He could have exactly what you describe, if He wanted. Would He deserve it? Yes. However it's inconsistent with His creation, and we were created with free will, so that we would all be different, His plan for each person is individual, that's inconsistent if we're all doing the same thing for eternity.
Well, this is suggestive of how you view God, isn't it? That being in God's presence wouldn't by itself be enough for you indicates a very low, weak view of God, it seems to me.
I don't think you need fear that eternity will be static or "samey" but I would urge you to think more carefully on who God is. He is far, far, far more unlike us than He is like us. We share some of His attributes, yes, but He differs from us in ways I don't think we can even guess at. He is quite alien; quite beyond our understanding. Resist, then, the very human tendency to think of Him as just a super-powered human. I think when we finally see God, we will be stunned by how much more enormous and different from us He is and how truly and greatly He deserves all the praise and adoration we can give Him.
The opposite.it makes Him more glorious to have a more vast and diverse plan. It's not enough for me because I don't believe it's enough for Him. Just basking in His presence (which will be everywhere btw, it won't be confined to one location, we can get on a spaceship, fly a trillion light years away, and God will still be just as close to us, and still be the light in the entire new universe), and not doing anything for Him, that's not glorifying Him. That's too small, that's men's thinking. God is more glorious than that. He has something planned for each individual person, that they will want to do for Him, and that will glorify Him in so many different ways with each person doing their own calling and fulfilling His plan. Adoration will be part of it of course, but He has more than that.
To people who don't love God, who aren't totally obsessed with Him, heaven has to have more in it, it has to be about other things, than just God. But heaven is heavenly only because God is there. Selling that to those who are living in rebellion to Him, who don't truly love Him, is impossible without making heaven into just another nicer version of earth.
The vision they're selling is static and small in scope. God is vast and magnificent in scope. It's too simple, and God and all His works are complex.
Well, Satan would certainly object to such worship, don't you think? He'd want to discourage us from such adoration of God, right?
Not if by telling people "all God wants you to do is bow and grovel before him like slaves, a lazy king resting on a silken cushion being fanned and fed grapes for all eternity is that what you want?" he can make being in God's presence sound boring and undesirable.
Satan has been telling me that for years. To convince me that God is THAT boring.
The bitterness of the tone. That comes from years of worrying that as my body was falling apart here (still waiting on the MRI but I most likely have Multiple Sclerosis), and an active life has been taken from me, that my 2 options were two static eternities, an eternity of suffering, or an eternity of doing the same thing over and over again never actively doing anything just falling on my face.
I have no doubt that as I questioned that here, and prayed for revelation that the Holy Spirit reached out to me to tell me that God is not static, God does not want everything the same or everyone doing the same thing, God is not BORING, and that He plans for me to do so much more active things than I could even imagine.
Satan also tried to convince me, in my weakness, in my illness, that God gives out blessings and curses to people lopsidedly on earth, some prosper, some get sick and weak like me, but after the Resurrection, He hands out His blessing one size fits all, you get the same as someone who was truly blessed on Earth and your suffering meant nothing, He didn't care, He doesn't care, and all His plan would be would be for you to grovel at His feet. That there was no individual plan, since we'd all be getting the exact same thing and be doing the exact same thing
I stopped loving God and instead only feared Him, because I knew as bad as my situation is, He could make it worse, and I felt I had nothing to really look forward to, just a less painful static eternal existence.
That's what Satan wanted me to believe about God, he knows my weakness is sameness and boredom, and let me tell you, when you're crippled you get bored with the few things you are still able to do so easily that it makes you cry. Read? Watch TV? Stories about people doing things you can't do. Arts and crafts? When you are so clumsy it's a struggle to tie your own shoelaces anymore?
The reassurance, and trust me, it wasn't from any of you here, because you keep doubling down on this concept that a static samey eternity of doing one thing over and over is what I should want, and all I should want. It really does not matter what the thing is, I just don't want to be doing the same thing over and over. But the reassurance was that God has WAY bigger plans than that. That that view of God is too simple for someone so complex.
I think we'll have lots to do in heaven. But I would urge you to think carefully on why God alone for all of eternity wouldn't be enough for you. The God I know, the God revealed in Scripture, is a God who is totally satisfying all on His own.
Because that's a simple view of Him and not good enough for Him.
(1 Corinthians 2:9)
We can imagine falling on our faces in adoration. We can't imagine what God actually wants us to do in the new creation.
Oh, he'd be thrilled to have you love a version of God that is false, or that diminishes Him.
Nothing in my mind diminishes Him now. The view of everyone just falling on their face in adoration forever over and over was a diminished view, it coincided with Satan's view of a fat lazy king resting on his laurels, not a perfect being who created a Universe, and will in fact, create a second one to replace the first with this next one being perfect. Eternal life is more than just falling on our faces in adoration because GOD is more than falling on our faces in adoration. That makes me Love Him rather than just fear Him (although we all still must fear Him)
