Consider the following conversation which took place only a few weeks ago in the Yahoo Answers discussion forums.
Derrick:
If you go to heaven, but if someone very close to you does not, how can you be happy?
In the Bible it says you will be happy in heaven ("there will be no tears") or something like that. If I were to go to heaven and my mom or dad or child didn't make it, there is no way I could be truly happy.
Charlotte:
In heaven you won't know who didn't make it because that would make you sad, and in heaven there is no sadness at all.
Derrick:
Charlotte, I want to puke at the thought of that. I'm not saying the Bible is or is not the right way to go. I let people think and believe what they want. I'm just confused.
People also say God doesn't force you to love him. Well, if he doesn't force you to love him, why is there a hell to go to if you don't love him?
I'd really like to remember the people I've come to love and care about.
Next, consider your own context, biases, and expectations. What is your neighborhood like? Where do you buy groceries and how do you pay for them? How do you expect to be treated when you walk out your front door? These are all clues to the things in your life that color your perception. So think carefully about the influences you had while you were growing up, who decided you should pursue the career you're pursuing (do you really think you chose it independent of any feedback from those around you?) and why you subscribe to the type of moral value system by which you judge the world.
Think long enough and you'll see all the ways your particular matrix of experience has colored your ideas about life, including what parts of the Bible you are most interested and how you interpret them, as well as how you view your family. Think longer and you'll notice that people whose backgrounds are similar to yours often share many of your views and expectations. And that is why it is so easy for an entire culture--full of generations of people sharing and thinking similarly--to make an assumption that compromises the value of the entire moral cohesion of its members.
Why do we in the West so often treat heaven so superficially, taking note of its golden streets and jeweled walls; and pave our way there with elaborately decorated halls of noise? Why do we love the hope of eternal luxury so dearly that we compile our beliefs about eternity so lazily? What happens to people at death? What happens to you when you cross over? Are you content to believe that you will suddenly become so enamored of gilded footpaths that you will forget all about the fate of those who were your family and friends?
I cannot accept an ideological assumption that my few precious advocates within the great expanse of this universe will become as forgettable as my 1st grade textbooks. If the love of Christ is the power by which we conquer death and join him eternally, if God really is love, then a theological paradigm that forgets that love is indefensible and should be fittingly forgotten.
Thus, if we are to start anew, we must reconstruct heaven according to heavenly wisdom instead of Western notions. We must employ a worthy Architect and suitable Craftsman to show us what we ought to believe. I know God has more ahead than happiness for sake of being happy. There is something to be happy about. There is a cause for joy. There is an object of hope. There is a rock which does not give to sea or quake, and a carpenter whose ornate mansions will be humbled as adobe huts to witness the celebration within their walls.
I believe at that time we will fully realize that John the Revelator was trying to do two things that are each very complicated: (A) describe a heavenly scene beyond human words, and (B) disguise his letter of politically charged rhetoric into an allegory so heavily symbolic that only his intended audience would recognize the meaning of the symbols, thus keeping him safe from punishment by his captors. Either of those tasks would be difficult, but to do both obviously means the letter of John's Revelation must carry a wealth of hidden ideas and necessitates a deeper level of reading than that required to understand Paul's epistles or the Gospels.
And then all those superficial ideas about streets of gold, and the idea that meeting Jesus face to face could erase the love in your heart you feel for anyone. I go so far as to say that divine meeting will intensify that love to painful longing akin to Jesus' own love as we finally understand how much he loves us. And once we feel that love, what happens next that causes God to wipe every tear from our eyes?
So what about Derrick? What I observe about Derrick is a strong sense of connection to the people around him. He is genuinely concerned about how to maintain the bond of love he has with his friends and family, to the point that he has come to "scrape the barrel" on the internet to find answers. I also assume that Derrick is someone who does a lot of thinking and feeling--not the passive sort of person who aimlessly wanders about in life and hopes they end up somewhere nice. His conviction that people should be free to form their own beliefs is, in my estimation, not the product of lazy epistemology. He thinks deeply about problems like why God would send people to hell, and Derrick apparently expects everyone to labor as he does in the task of thought.
And what about Charlotte? She seems to assert that heaven will be some sort of ignorance-is-bliss city in the sky, where God delivers eternal rapturous joy by means of censorship. Does heaven serve cupcakes for breakfast? Charlotte strikes me as the sort of person wandering fields of her own interest, trying to solidify her own haplessly assembled belief system. She hasn't done the hard work of crafting her beliefs yet. She still may, somewhere in the future, but hasn't done so yet.
And what's left for us is this decision: To either wander through life waiting for heaven to come, or to seek heaven on earth while we live. Are the experiences of life just a pair of shoes we will one day throw away to forget the pain, or are they more important to us than mere shoes? I believe Christ will transform pain and sorrow into beautiful reminders of his love--just like the scars he bears for us. We must either perform the labor of cognition and the active discovery of God's uncensored truth, or we must get out of the way and let the true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth, recognizing that what happens and who we love in this life is every bit as important as what will happen and what love will do in the life to come.
*Discussion copied from the following URL; revisions made for clarity.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An2kIdAiucuzrpC5H1wz8Ovd7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20110724200715AAKMbmd
Think long enough and you'll see all the ways your particular matrix of experience has colored your ideas about life, including what parts of the Bible you are most interested and how you interpret them, as well as how you view your family. Think longer and you'll notice that people whose backgrounds are similar to yours often share many of your views and expectations. And that is why it is so easy for an entire culture--full of generations of people sharing and thinking similarly--to make an assumption that compromises the value of the entire moral cohesion of its members.
Why do we in the West so often treat heaven so superficially, taking note of its golden streets and jeweled walls; and pave our way there with elaborately decorated halls of noise? Why do we love the hope of eternal luxury so dearly that we compile our beliefs about eternity so lazily? What happens to people at death? What happens to you when you cross over? Are you content to believe that you will suddenly become so enamored of gilded footpaths that you will forget all about the fate of those who were your family and friends?
I cannot accept an ideological assumption that my few precious advocates within the great expanse of this universe will become as forgettable as my 1st grade textbooks. If the love of Christ is the power by which we conquer death and join him eternally, if God really is love, then a theological paradigm that forgets that love is indefensible and should be fittingly forgotten.
Thus, if we are to start anew, we must reconstruct heaven according to heavenly wisdom instead of Western notions. We must employ a worthy Architect and suitable Craftsman to show us what we ought to believe. I know God has more ahead than happiness for sake of being happy. There is something to be happy about. There is a cause for joy. There is an object of hope. There is a rock which does not give to sea or quake, and a carpenter whose ornate mansions will be humbled as adobe huts to witness the celebration within their walls.
I believe at that time we will fully realize that John the Revelator was trying to do two things that are each very complicated: (A) describe a heavenly scene beyond human words, and (B) disguise his letter of politically charged rhetoric into an allegory so heavily symbolic that only his intended audience would recognize the meaning of the symbols, thus keeping him safe from punishment by his captors. Either of those tasks would be difficult, but to do both obviously means the letter of John's Revelation must carry a wealth of hidden ideas and necessitates a deeper level of reading than that required to understand Paul's epistles or the Gospels.
And then all those superficial ideas about streets of gold, and the idea that meeting Jesus face to face could erase the love in your heart you feel for anyone. I go so far as to say that divine meeting will intensify that love to painful longing akin to Jesus' own love as we finally understand how much he loves us. And once we feel that love, what happens next that causes God to wipe every tear from our eyes?
So what about Derrick? What I observe about Derrick is a strong sense of connection to the people around him. He is genuinely concerned about how to maintain the bond of love he has with his friends and family, to the point that he has come to "scrape the barrel" on the internet to find answers. I also assume that Derrick is someone who does a lot of thinking and feeling--not the passive sort of person who aimlessly wanders about in life and hopes they end up somewhere nice. His conviction that people should be free to form their own beliefs is, in my estimation, not the product of lazy epistemology. He thinks deeply about problems like why God would send people to hell, and Derrick apparently expects everyone to labor as he does in the task of thought.
And what about Charlotte? She seems to assert that heaven will be some sort of ignorance-is-bliss city in the sky, where God delivers eternal rapturous joy by means of censorship. Does heaven serve cupcakes for breakfast? Charlotte strikes me as the sort of person wandering fields of her own interest, trying to solidify her own haplessly assembled belief system. She hasn't done the hard work of crafting her beliefs yet. She still may, somewhere in the future, but hasn't done so yet.
And what's left for us is this decision: To either wander through life waiting for heaven to come, or to seek heaven on earth while we live. Are the experiences of life just a pair of shoes we will one day throw away to forget the pain, or are they more important to us than mere shoes? I believe Christ will transform pain and sorrow into beautiful reminders of his love--just like the scars he bears for us. We must either perform the labor of cognition and the active discovery of God's uncensored truth, or we must get out of the way and let the true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth, recognizing that what happens and who we love in this life is every bit as important as what will happen and what love will do in the life to come.
*Discussion copied from the following URL; revisions made for clarity.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An2kIdAiucuzrpC5H1wz8Ovd7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20110724200715AAKMbmd
So is ignorance really bliss?
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned, but did not point it out as a correction: God will "wipe away every tear...there will no longer be...crying," but it does not just say "there will be no tears" as Derrick paraphrased. This says to me that we will have pain and sadness when we reach heaven, but then we will be comforted and we will cry no more. I think the saints will feel sorrow for those who did not trust in Christ and will shed tears knowing that they imperfectly followed themselves and wish they could have done more to avert suffering of those they knew.
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