In November 2001--when I was in 4th grade--my aunt died after a long and painful battle with breast cancer. I was nine years old, and this was my first real encounter with the reality of death.
My grandmother comforted me with the assurance that "Aunt Jan is so happy in heaven. She's with Jesus, and is no longer in pain. She's in perfect peace." But this did not make sense to me. My aunt was leaving behind her two young children and amazing husband. Wouldn't she miss them? And if you are missing someone, then you can't be in perfect peace. And heaven is supposed to be perfect...right?
In my mind, my aunt entered into heaven in 2001. Her children, supposedly, would not die for another seventy years. So, that would leave her waiting seventy years in heaven before being reunited with her kids. My dad tried to explain to me that heaven does not necessarily follow the same strict rules of time and space that our Earth does, and that my Aunt and my cousins could conceivably all enter heaven together at the same time.
This concept did not make sense to me when I was in nine, and I still can't fully grasp it. Human minds do not have the capacity to think outside our familiar universe; some ideas we will never fully understand, no matter how thoroughly we delve into them. And no idea is more complex than that of immortality.
From the very beginning of known history, humans from all civilizations have been fascinated with death and what, if anything, comes after it. In ancient Egyptian theology, when a man died his earthly body was preserved in excruciating detail (via mummification) to ensure its readiness for the afterlife. They would store in the royal tombs expensive jewelry and other belongings that would be of use to pharaohs in the next life, even burying servants alive. Early Nordic tribes believed that, if you lived a good life, you embarked on a posthumous sea voyage to the home of the gods; if you lived a bad life, you would be sent to "hell," a cold, dreary place where you would be continuously chewed upon by a poisonous serpent; and, if you died fighting in battle, you would live forever in a land full of fighting and feasting.
After thousands of years' worth of philosophizing and theorizing, we still have not come close to a consensus agreement on the afterlife. Muslims believe that those who die in Jihad are honored with 72 virgins after death. Hindus believe that the soul is reincarnated into other bodies numerous times. Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses believe that after death, you either are allowed into some sort of heavenly paradise or are completely annihilated. Of course, the preceding summaries are brief and incomplete, but that is because I do not want to focus on other religions' stands on immortality; Christianity and the Bible evoke enough questions as it is.
The Bible's description of heaven is ambiguous, leaving room for imagination, interpretation, and ultimately error. I find myself hoping that it will not actually be a "paradise" with golden streets and gates of pearl, but more of an "Earth without flaw." Take the world which God created for us--the world He once called "good"--and remove all aspects of sin and fallen humanity. I want bowling alleys, playgrounds, oceans, and ski-slopes. I still want to learn more, compete in athletics, and enjoy lively conversations with my friends. Anything short of that would be boring.
Of course, this is a naive view. C.S. Lewis compares my heavenly ideal to the complacency of "an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased." I am not capable of comprehending how wonderful heaven truly is, so I create my own terms for it, thus limiting its actual wondrousness.
Lewis is right, but that doesn't change what I want out of heaven (Perhaps selfishly using heaven to fulfill my desires is a problem in itself). I don't want to lose my free will; I still want to choose my own words and actions. I want to remember my mom, and my future husband and children. I want the freedom to look back upon Christmas morning, or my daughter's wedding day, or any other particularly fond memory. When discussing evil, most Christians argue that evil is necessary so that there can be good in the world, too. But there's no evil in heaven, and yet there is still good. Do we lose all of our free will? Do we just become robots? I'm led to believe that we do not lose our sense of identity, and are not robots, so I have a difficult time tying together the necessity that we will never sin with the possibility of free will.
I also wonder about the whole doctrine of "crowns with jewels." When I was younger, I used to complain to my grandma about how "Jake got candy when he swept the floor. Why didn't I get anything when I vacuumed?" And she would give me the same super-conservative Baptist answer: "Jake received his reward on earth, but you'll get an even greater reward in heaven." Even at this young age, I questioned this answer. Why do I want the crown and the jewels? Why do I want the greater mansion with more rooms? Once I'm in heaven, that won't even matter to me anymore. I will feel no envy and no regret, right? Or else I wouldn't be in perfect peace.
I have similar questions whenever I hear the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. What bothers me is that Lazarus was able to see into hell, and thus see people he had known who were in eternal torment. To me, remembering friends and family members who were sentenced to hell would be torturous, and not much of a heaven at all. I think this passage, though, is much more of an illustration that an accurate, factual description about the reality of heaven and hell. I hope so, anyway.
My elementary school years were influenced by ultra-conservative middle-aged followers of Bishop Usher's "A Beka Book." Absolutely certain that the creation of Earth dates back to six 24-hour days in 4004 B.C., they painted for my classmates and me a traditional picture of heaven and hell: the pearly gates, the streets of gold, and of course the agonizing fire-and-brimstone.
That's what I always had the biggest problem with, the physical "furnace" aspect of hell. During my teen years, I've come to believe that hell could just as likely be a psychological torture, perhaps an existence completely bereft of God. Think about it--a world without anything godly or good, without acts of mercy, kindness, or charity, a world without God. Isn't that so much worse than experiencing physical pain for eternity?
I hope it doesn't seem as though I want a torturous hell, because I don't. Not at all, actually. I admit with deep self-judgment that, after hearing about some heinous rape or murder, I think to myself, "Wow, I am so glad that there is a hell for that criminal," but I know that's a horribly selfish feeling. And it tears me apart to picture my friends spending eternity in such a place. I don't even want to think about it. It puts a nauseous feeling in my stomach. Why would God allow His beloved creations to suffer in such a way?
I do not think that I'll ever understand the nature of life after death. Because Jesus displayed scars on his wrists and holes in his sides, it seems as though we still have our physical bodies after we die. But that raises so many questions. Cannibalism, for one, proves that we as individuals do not exclusively possess each atom that makes up our bodies. Do our resurrected bodies look as we did when we died? That does not seem like a happy scenario for sufferers of MS or Parkinson's; wouldn't they much rather have the bodies they had when they were thirty? And I don't really anticipate the bodies of infants up in heaven. If we had braces or plastic surgery, does that carry on after death? Are children with cleft chins and other deformities still built the same way? Or perhaps on a less serious note, are people still overweight? We think that everyone will have "perfect" bodies in heaven--but who are we to judge that? Standards of beauty are different in every culture and country. Is any one standard really greater than the others?
I'm not sure we can ever know the nature of heaven or hell. The Bible gives us hints, but not nearly enough for us to build absolute theories. I don't see any problem with debating about these topics, and it's probably beneficial, but I also think that after thousands of years of human theorizing and hypothesizing, maybe it's not even possible for us to know these answers.
(October 4, 2010)
My grandmother comforted me with the assurance that "Aunt Jan is so happy in heaven. She's with Jesus, and is no longer in pain. She's in perfect peace." But this did not make sense to me. My aunt was leaving behind her two young children and amazing husband. Wouldn't she miss them? And if you are missing someone, then you can't be in perfect peace. And heaven is supposed to be perfect...right?
In my mind, my aunt entered into heaven in 2001. Her children, supposedly, would not die for another seventy years. So, that would leave her waiting seventy years in heaven before being reunited with her kids. My dad tried to explain to me that heaven does not necessarily follow the same strict rules of time and space that our Earth does, and that my Aunt and my cousins could conceivably all enter heaven together at the same time.
This concept did not make sense to me when I was in nine, and I still can't fully grasp it. Human minds do not have the capacity to think outside our familiar universe; some ideas we will never fully understand, no matter how thoroughly we delve into them. And no idea is more complex than that of immortality.
From the very beginning of known history, humans from all civilizations have been fascinated with death and what, if anything, comes after it. In ancient Egyptian theology, when a man died his earthly body was preserved in excruciating detail (via mummification) to ensure its readiness for the afterlife. They would store in the royal tombs expensive jewelry and other belongings that would be of use to pharaohs in the next life, even burying servants alive. Early Nordic tribes believed that, if you lived a good life, you embarked on a posthumous sea voyage to the home of the gods; if you lived a bad life, you would be sent to "hell," a cold, dreary place where you would be continuously chewed upon by a poisonous serpent; and, if you died fighting in battle, you would live forever in a land full of fighting and feasting.
After thousands of years' worth of philosophizing and theorizing, we still have not come close to a consensus agreement on the afterlife. Muslims believe that those who die in Jihad are honored with 72 virgins after death. Hindus believe that the soul is reincarnated into other bodies numerous times. Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses believe that after death, you either are allowed into some sort of heavenly paradise or are completely annihilated. Of course, the preceding summaries are brief and incomplete, but that is because I do not want to focus on other religions' stands on immortality; Christianity and the Bible evoke enough questions as it is.
The Bible's description of heaven is ambiguous, leaving room for imagination, interpretation, and ultimately error. I find myself hoping that it will not actually be a "paradise" with golden streets and gates of pearl, but more of an "Earth without flaw." Take the world which God created for us--the world He once called "good"--and remove all aspects of sin and fallen humanity. I want bowling alleys, playgrounds, oceans, and ski-slopes. I still want to learn more, compete in athletics, and enjoy lively conversations with my friends. Anything short of that would be boring.
Of course, this is a naive view. C.S. Lewis compares my heavenly ideal to the complacency of "an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased." I am not capable of comprehending how wonderful heaven truly is, so I create my own terms for it, thus limiting its actual wondrousness.
Lewis is right, but that doesn't change what I want out of heaven (Perhaps selfishly using heaven to fulfill my desires is a problem in itself). I don't want to lose my free will; I still want to choose my own words and actions. I want to remember my mom, and my future husband and children. I want the freedom to look back upon Christmas morning, or my daughter's wedding day, or any other particularly fond memory. When discussing evil, most Christians argue that evil is necessary so that there can be good in the world, too. But there's no evil in heaven, and yet there is still good. Do we lose all of our free will? Do we just become robots? I'm led to believe that we do not lose our sense of identity, and are not robots, so I have a difficult time tying together the necessity that we will never sin with the possibility of free will.
I also wonder about the whole doctrine of "crowns with jewels." When I was younger, I used to complain to my grandma about how "Jake got candy when he swept the floor. Why didn't I get anything when I vacuumed?" And she would give me the same super-conservative Baptist answer: "Jake received his reward on earth, but you'll get an even greater reward in heaven." Even at this young age, I questioned this answer. Why do I want the crown and the jewels? Why do I want the greater mansion with more rooms? Once I'm in heaven, that won't even matter to me anymore. I will feel no envy and no regret, right? Or else I wouldn't be in perfect peace.
I have similar questions whenever I hear the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. What bothers me is that Lazarus was able to see into hell, and thus see people he had known who were in eternal torment. To me, remembering friends and family members who were sentenced to hell would be torturous, and not much of a heaven at all. I think this passage, though, is much more of an illustration that an accurate, factual description about the reality of heaven and hell. I hope so, anyway.
My elementary school years were influenced by ultra-conservative middle-aged followers of Bishop Usher's "A Beka Book." Absolutely certain that the creation of Earth dates back to six 24-hour days in 4004 B.C., they painted for my classmates and me a traditional picture of heaven and hell: the pearly gates, the streets of gold, and of course the agonizing fire-and-brimstone.
That's what I always had the biggest problem with, the physical "furnace" aspect of hell. During my teen years, I've come to believe that hell could just as likely be a psychological torture, perhaps an existence completely bereft of God. Think about it--a world without anything godly or good, without acts of mercy, kindness, or charity, a world without God. Isn't that so much worse than experiencing physical pain for eternity?
I hope it doesn't seem as though I want a torturous hell, because I don't. Not at all, actually. I admit with deep self-judgment that, after hearing about some heinous rape or murder, I think to myself, "Wow, I am so glad that there is a hell for that criminal," but I know that's a horribly selfish feeling. And it tears me apart to picture my friends spending eternity in such a place. I don't even want to think about it. It puts a nauseous feeling in my stomach. Why would God allow His beloved creations to suffer in such a way?
I do not think that I'll ever understand the nature of life after death. Because Jesus displayed scars on his wrists and holes in his sides, it seems as though we still have our physical bodies after we die. But that raises so many questions. Cannibalism, for one, proves that we as individuals do not exclusively possess each atom that makes up our bodies. Do our resurrected bodies look as we did when we died? That does not seem like a happy scenario for sufferers of MS or Parkinson's; wouldn't they much rather have the bodies they had when they were thirty? And I don't really anticipate the bodies of infants up in heaven. If we had braces or plastic surgery, does that carry on after death? Are children with cleft chins and other deformities still built the same way? Or perhaps on a less serious note, are people still overweight? We think that everyone will have "perfect" bodies in heaven--but who are we to judge that? Standards of beauty are different in every culture and country. Is any one standard really greater than the others?
I'm not sure we can ever know the nature of heaven or hell. The Bible gives us hints, but not nearly enough for us to build absolute theories. I don't see any problem with debating about these topics, and it's probably beneficial, but I also think that after thousands of years of human theorizing and hypothesizing, maybe it's not even possible for us to know these answers.
(October 4, 2010)
I would definitely love to hear a more recent perspective you may have on all of this.
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