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What's Heaven like?

A

Anonymous

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Assuming I'm let in, I think I'd like to see the brochure first. This is a question that's bugged me as I think no-one really has a clue what we're in for, but they're quite keen to sign up. On the other hand, it's quite clear and unambiguous as to what goes on in The Other Place. Anyway, I'm thinking mainly of the Christian view of the afterlife, but I'd also be interested in what other beliefs think also.

My main queries are:

1) Is the resurrection physical or spiritual? If I read Revelations correctly, it states that the "dead rise from their graves" which suggests it's physical. In that case, when you're dead you're dead until the second coming. And how does this work if you're cremated? I assume some kind of reassembly is in order.

2) What's Heaven like? Is it the pearly gates and dry ice on the floor or something different?

3) What is there to do there? Is it like being at church for the rest of eternity? Is it supposed to last for eternity? What if you get bored and want to leave? And what if all the interesting people really all are in the other place? Does Hell allow visitors? Will I finally learn the answers to all my questions?
 
One day you'll know.

Or not, in which case it won't matter.

Or something else.
 
Don't believe the brochure!

This is a subject I've never been able to get my head around. As beings I think we find it hard to understand a world without any sense of us ('me', 'I'). Yet the planet survived perfectly well before any of us lot came along. Part of me thinks we just stop. Part of me thinks our souls go on in some form.

However, if there is a heaven and hell, I'm sure to be taking the elevator down rather than up, so what would I know?

I only have an eternity of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll to look forward to. Umm, fear.
:)
 
What I never really grasped was Satan's punishment thing... if he spends all his life tempting you to be naughty, so he can claim your soul, he may as well let you have a bloody good party when you're dead.

If Hell is indeed punishment for being a baddie, after you've been judged at the Pearly Gates, then surely Satan is nothing more than a jailer in the employment of God!
 
Well let's just assume for a bit that you have to kill someone or worse to wind up in the lake of fire. It seems that the choice is somewhat limited - it could be a choice between eternal torment on the end of a pitchfork, or eternal torment in a hymn recital.

And if the soul does goes on, where does it go? And what's it like?
 
Whatever it turns out to be let's hope it's not like that Godawful schmalzy film with Robin Williams and Glorious Technicolor . . .

Carole
 
Evilsprout said:
What I never really grasped was Satan's punishment thing... if he spends all his life tempting you to be naughty, so he can claim your soul, he may as well let you have a bloody good party when you're dead.

If Hell is indeed punishment for being a baddie, after you've been judged at the Pearly Gates, then surely Satan is nothing more than a jailer in the employment of God!
Click to expand...

That's true. Maybe he gets off on it, but even so I'd imagine he'd get bored of roasting people after a while.
 
Just had another look at Revelations (which I assume is the definitive source) and it throws up some interesting things. Firstly, it seems to confirm that the resurrection is physical. Secondly, it describes a large city (the New Jerusalem) descending from Heaven that shines like a precious jewel (insert UFO metaphor here) which is where mankind and God will live together.
Thirdly, this city is 12,000 stadia x 12,000 stadia x 12,000 stadia in size. Maybe someone could work out how many people would fit?
And finally, it doesn't describe what nightlife there is. Actually, there isn't any as night is banished, as is hunger, thirst, grief and all the other bad things.
 
It seems to me that if there is a continuation of ourselves after death it will be a very natural thing. There is so much that we do not know about the universe. We don't need a supernatural to explain continued existance. That may be just the way it is, with natural laws we do not understand now.

What has always made sense to me is that we get what we expect. And that human expectations have shaped what is there.
The afterworld of fifty thousand years ago had to have been a different experience than that of five thousand years ago. The Greeks expected Mount Olympus. The Vikings expected Valhalla. Through history there have been thousands of cultures and thousands of beliefs. And I think it will continue. Thousands of years from now they will look back on our beliefs as myths.

Then the question becomes; if we survive death and find what we expect, where will we be when beliefs change and Heaven is no longer an expectation of the living?

I suspect that we never stop learning and that part of that learning may be that there is more to know than Heaven or Hell and that as immortal beings we are not confined to what we have been taught to expect.

What makes sense to me is that either everything stops cold and we cease to exist or what comes next is a natural process that I can understand and work with when I die.
 
Thanks Marel - that pretty well sums up my outlook too.
 
Oh dear Dark Detective, it seems you - like so many evangelicals - have been reading Revelation as if it were a 19th/20th/21st century text and not the 1st century mosaic of mystical symbolism that it is. If you had read it like the latter I think you will find that it is more akin to the musings of Marel than you might think...

And as for hell, I think C.S. Lewis pretty much hit the nail on the head when he wrote that the gates of hell are locked FROM THE INSIDE...
 
Oh dear indeed, and here we reach a problem. I'm looking for some answers, so I decide to read the book. The book tells me one thing, then I'm told "oh no, you're not supposed to take it literally." What else aren't we supposed to take literally? Who decides what we should take literally or otherwise? I'm looking for an answer, not an interpretation.
Which brings me onto the point I made earlier - if everyone develops their own interpretation, then what the heck are Christians supposed to believe? It seems that people are then given licence to believe whatever they want. In that case, why do we have a book, rules .etc. in the first place?
I'm not criticising, by the way, I'm asking questions. I'm not arguing for or against anything.
 
The answers don't come in a book, because all books are written by people, and people have different opinions. As an adult, you have to work out your own understanding of the world, not take someone else's word for things.

Look at the number of Christian sects. Islam and Bhuddism also come in different varieties, while Hinduism IS a lot of different varieties all under one label! Common sense tells you all these religions and sects cannot all be right, and possibly none of them are. (But many may contain some good and useful stuff, if you care to seek it out.)

As Fort said "I can conceive of nothing, in religion, science, or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while."
 
I think Marel has given the best answer so far.

Carole
 
Ok, let me rephrase the question slightly. My overall objective is to get some answers - I'm not trying to subscribe to the Christian view exclusively. However, before I make a decision on what I think is right, it's important to find out what certain faiths believe. On the question of Heaven, I want to know what Christians believe. The thing I'm finding, though, is that it differs from person to person within that faith. And since that's the case, why bother having a faith in the first place?
I asked the question about Heaven, because it seems to me that Christians either have no idea about what Heaven is like, or they've developed their own interpretation of it. The thing that therefore puzzles me is, why do people sign up to something if they don't know what it is?
I agree that Marel put it beautifully. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that there are two ways to go: believe everything in the book (or any book you decided to choose) literally word for word, or throw it out and make your own way. The latter then renders religion a personal thing, and makes organised religion totally obsolete.
 
Don't know what the problem is. Hell is here on earth, heaven is something made up by stressed people to have something to look forward to and Satan is the only reasonable force in this whole confusion because he doesn't give a damn and you should do the same and get on with your life without breaking your brain with a question that was made up by humans!:devil:
 
Marel's idea of Heaven sounds good to me but as a matter of interest, I guess most people will be hoping to meet up with loved ones, but what if their idea of Heaven is different to yours, would they be in a different Heaven?:confused:
 
What about the Book of Genesis then Dark Detective? Do you have it that we either
1. take it literally as we would any modern literature
OR
2. dump it

Is the option of taking it as ancient myth not allowed?
Is it fair that we denegrate its author(s) because that they did not write exclusively for a 21st century audience?
Does the fact that it is an ancient myth written by an ancient people render it worthless to the modern reader?
Are then all works of classical and ancient literature worthless? Can we apply the same criteria to Plato's Republic?
And of course John's Revelation? (BTW it's not "The Rough Guide to Heaven")

As for what Christians believe about heaven, Augustine reckoned it would entail singing "Allelulia Amen" infinitely. I don't think everyone would agree, as there's no explicit literal description. Perhaps it's indescribable.

If you are thinking that perhaps Christianity is the way to go and you are starting at "right what do I get in heaven" I reckon you should look elsewhere. From what I've read and seen that's not what its about. The Islamic heaven might suit you better, particularly the martyrs one;)
If you want to decide whether or not the Christian faith "is right", I suggest you look at the Apostle's Creed first. If you can dismiss that out of hand, well, there's not much point in wondering about the Christian concept of heaven then.
 
I have a theory that heaven and hell are the same place. It all depends on your point of veiw.

Cujo
 
Hospitaller,

Firstly, if I’ve done anything to upset or offend you I apologise. I acknowledge my line of questioning has been a little facetious and blunt, or maybe it’s my lack of knowledge on this subject you object to. But I didn’t start this thread to ridicule Christians but to ask some questions which are important to me. I’m not being sarcastic when I say I welcome any input from someone as erudite and well-read on the subject as yourself.

Secondly, I retract the statement “before I decide what’s right”, I acknowledge that sounds totally arrogant. What I really meant was “before I decide what makes the most sense to me.” I’m trying to make sense of what people believe. Before I do that, I need to find out what it is.

So, thirdly, of course I’m not approaching this to ask “what’s in it for me” or trying to pick the best afterlife, I just want to find out what it is that Christians believe. The perception of heaven has been muddied somewhat, and these perceptions throw up some paradoxes. But in asking the question “What’s Heaven like?”, there doesn’t seem to be an answer. I find it puzzling to have a belief without a firm definition.

Finally, I don’t recall denegrating anyone, and if I did so it wasn’t intentional, but if we start taking some things in the bible as myth, whereas others take it as literal, we get in the situation where we all believe in different things despite receiving teachings from the same source. What are we supposed to take as myth and what as not? If the story of creation is myth, what else in the OT and NT should we take as factual/historical if anything? What is Revelations trying to teach us if it’s not a foretelling of the apocalypse? Maybe I’m taking the wrong tack, and looking to the scriptures to spell things out to me is the wrong approach. But that’s what I’m after. Because after all, if I get it wrong, I’m probably going to find myself somewhere unpleasant.

Oh, and thanks for the recommendation. I’ll take it in the good humour in which I hope it was given. ;)
 
All in good humour of course:)
Early Christian writings are interpreted in all manner of ways. Your best bet is to get your hands on some scholarly literature ABOUT these writings and a good broad spectrum of stuff at that - everything from an analytical and scholarly academic view point (neither religious nor atheistic in undertone) to the "Jesus was a mushroom chomping alien" type stuff. It all stands or falls on its own merits.
There are many religious heads out there will have you believe THEIR interpretation in order to support their own fragile beliefs, and probably as many anti-Christians the same. Realise where they're coming from, read without preconception and enjoy a fresh look at what is old hat to many.
Don't expect all the answers from these writings. They don't even claim to have them. Paul himself said (with Platonic undertones) that we see now only as through a glass darkly...
 
Hospitaller is right. If you only read the bible itself you'll never get anywhere. You need to understand its own history as a human artifact to understand what's written in it.

Compare it with Shakespeare: without a knowledge of the history of his times, and the sources that were available to him, you'll never understand half the references in his writings. And even with all this knowledge, scholars still argue about many of the points. And not only minor, obscure stuff either - there are still those who say that other people (take your pick) wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare!

And consider that the bible was written much further back in time; so our knowledge of the detailed historical background is that much more shaky. This is why the Dead Sea Scrolls caused such a stir when they were discovered - they allowed new insights into many biblical ideas.
 
just a precisation to Marel's point; ancient greeks didn't go to Mt.Olympus when they died !That was the place where most of the gods hung out (unless you became a demigod or such and in that case you were "accepted" up there).The greeks believed that when you died you went to hades (passing the river Styx where you meet Charon the ferryman waiting to ferry you across it for the payment of a obol,a small coin put under your tongue before your burning at the funeral pyre)where you'd become a ghostlike figure of your former self.
Even the Elysian Fields weren't actually a paradise(heaven) most of the dead people over there where quite pissed off about their states (just check the Odissey, Aeneid to read about it).
In fact they didn't believe in afterlife, judgement days and such likes;they believe more in the fact that your survived your death more by your deeds then anything else.
 
Originally posted by rynner


And consider that the bible was written much further back in time; so our knowledge of the detailed historical background is that much more shaky. This is why the Dead Sea Scrolls caused such a stir when they were discovered - they allowed new insights into many biblical ideas.
Click to expand...

But if God is the editor wouldn't he make it undersandable to all in any period.:confused:
 
The editor was, for the OT some wee Jewish chappie in the desert somewhere and for the NT the Christian church, and we all know what they are like when it comes to encouraging civilised discussion of differing points of view....:rolleyes:
'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!'
 
What's Heaven like

Swansea. Only bigger.

Locally yours,

Tim J
 
What is the actual Christian interpretation of heaven? Is there one central view for each religion? The image that i find is mostly put across by the media or what have you, is of white clouds/clothes and everyone being as falsly nice as the Waltons.
I dont know if i could spend eternity in that situation
 
We know a song about this, don't we children?

'Heaven, Heaven is a place, a place where nothing, nothing ever happens' - David Byrne (Talking Heads - Heaven)
 
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