To be perfectly honest, the concept of heaven was actually something of a dealbreaker for me back when I wasn't sure where my faith was, and it was partially responsible for me rejecting Christianity. The concept of heaven, I think, is never explained well. What I've heard includes:
-A place where you have heaps of fun and you're happy all the time
-A place where you join with God and become one with him and his glory
-Eternal bliss, joyous transendence ect et al
The problem with the first option is that being happy all the time forever sounds inherently suspicious, and of course I haven't heard it since I was a kid, since adults always seemed to associate it with 'the best theme park ever' in a way to make the concept accessible to us. I never got it, even then. What sort of theme park could be fun all the time?
The second option isn't what I want out of the afterlife. I want my time on earth to mean something, or at least to have had a bit of a point and if it all it was was an intermediate stage before I mindmeld with God, well, that's kind of depressing, actually. Interestingly, I'm not entirely sure 'melding' even comes into it. Catholic dogma is that you enter the glory of God once you die and the true joy of heaven comes from basking in his glory, as it were. It's kind of a confused issue, I guess.
The third one actually straight up scares me. Eternal bliss might not be a concept I can wrap my mind around but it sounds like I'd have to be fundamentally changed, mentally, to be permanently blissful and that's terrifying because then, as Phmcw, I wouldn't really be me. Then, of course, there's the same problem as the second option, as all my life on earth ends up amounting to just sitting around being pleased all the time. I'd much rather be working towards something then just basking all the time.
I have probably got something extremely wrong in this post, or at least misunderstood something about what was taught to me for the first sixteen years of my life and indeed is still being taught to me, so feel free to point it out.
As for my perfect afterlife, I think it would be reincarnation. I'm too attached to this planet to want to leave it permanently. There's so much beauty in the world that I'll never have time to see that I want to come back for another crack at it. Sure, there's inherent problems in this, like, say, coming back in Somalia, but at the same time, I think it's worth it, especially since I believe this universe is all we have.
Author
Topic: A little dilemma (Read 4036 times)