Really good thread CR. I hope you get lots of thoughtful answers.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this in my life. I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing I can do about it anyways, so whatever happens will happen, and God knows what's best. In the meantime, I will live my life for the Lord, depending on His grace to overcome my sins, and with his help, obeying him day by day. "When all is said and done, this one thing remains: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole of man." Ecclesiastes 12;13
Basically all my thoughts wrap around this one idea: I can't imagine a life better than this one, not really.
Having said that, I'll share some of the things I've considered at various times in my life.
1. I can't imagine an eternal life without boredom, and boredom becomes hell. I'm 56 now, which is still pretty young if you think about it -- my mom is over 90. Yet already, the novelty of most pleasures is long gone. I eat only because I still get hungry. Scary movies don't scare me any more. I no longer fall in love. I read a story, and get the sense that I've read it before, because there are really only so many plot lines that can be written. How many times can you hear your favorite song before you get so numb to it that it goes in one ear and out the other?
2. I can't imagine life without my animal friends. In fact, if you ask, I'll tell you that there are animals in heaven, because I'm that convinced that I can't be happy without them. Yet, we are taught that animals have no souls. My beloved pets are simply supposed to be worm food when they die. What kind of heaven is it without fluffy? But there's even more to it than that. It won't be heaven for me if there aren't lions and tigers and bears, oh my. And I'm not sure if I want them tame. I want them majestic. Even a little scary. To remind me that I'm not God's end all and be all.
3. I can't imagine heaven without children, without flowers, without butterflies. But these only exist because we have the cycle of life. If there were no death in heaven, there would also be no birth, no growing up. There would be no first steps. No laughter and slap happy rhyming songs. There would be no baseball games after school with friends. There would be no first kisses. No weddings. No family meals with everyone gathered around the table. No birth of one's own children... And it would just be the cycle of life of people, but of nature as well. Think of all the beauty that would be gone. Plants would have no flowers because they would never need to pollinate, and no fruit, because they would produce no seeds. Caterpillars would never become butterflies, because there would be no need to mate and lay eggs. It seems to me that a lot that is heavenly that we have with us now, would cease to exist if there were no death.
4. I'm not even sure it is the best for us to be without suffering. It has always seemed to me that although I love the mountain high times the best, I always do my best spiritual learning and growing in the valley lows. I can't imagine a heaven where i'm no longer learning and growing. To be stagnant? That's a kind of a hell in my book, a curse. Pain seems to be the #1 best catalyst for change in a human being. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to wish it into the cornfield.
5. So basically, what I'm saying is that an eternity of boredom, with no Fluffy and no Tigers, no children laughing, no flowers to pick or butterflies to chase, and worst of all, no personal growth even if it means pain, sounds more like hell to me than heaven. I don't want it.
I'd rather my death simply be the end, and live on in the hearts of those who knew me and in the consequences of the good deeds I have done.
Knowing that I have just this life makes it all that much more valuable, because i want it to matter. I want it to have an impact. And I want to "suck the marrow out of life" so that when it comes time for me to die, I won't "discover that I had not lived."
But I'm only a human being, and that's only me thinking. I've been wrong many times and i'll be wrong many times more. My intuition tells me that there is something beyond the grave, but not what I imagine and not what I've been taught. It's the great mystery that I will embark upon my death.
The more I learn, the more I realize how much i don't know. I have spent a good deal of my life seeking wisdom, and the only real thing I've learned is that I'm a very foolish person. It is okay to speculate on these things. But we can never really know in this life. All we really and truly know in this life is that we have this life, and so we should make the most of this life that we can.
To say, "I want to go to heaven and be with Jesus!" that is a good thing. To say, "I don't want eternal life -- I want to make THIS life here on earth a heaven for all," THAT is also a good thing. There is an illusion of looking for something solid when life is not solid at all, but fleeting, impermanent. Only those things are real that are eternal: love, justice, truth. The moment you try to pin them down onto the earth, they disappear in your hand.
May we find heaven wherever it exists, in eternity, or a little girl's smile.
