The after-life for most Christians is to be spent in a place called Heaven. The generally accepted idea is that those in Heaven spend their days either singing the praises of God or living the sort of ideal life that they were denied on Earth.
Despite the deliberations of many great minds, apart from physical reincarnation, there are no real indcations of what,precisely, the after-life will consist of. The many debates about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin seem to be somewhat pointless if the angels don’t bring some enlightenment to us poor mortals waiting to shuffle off this coil.
Who, for example, will qualify for entry into a heavenly after-life? Obviously all good Christians will qualify but what about all those millions of people who live blameless lives but have never been introduced to Christianity? Are they condemned to some other place simply because Christians failed to inform them that their good works were wasted since God was not aware of them?
When, for example, did mankind start to qualify for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven? Was it in the ages of the old testament when God walked this Earth or was it after the sacrifice of Jesus? The blood of Jesus was supposed to wash away the sins of the world – but was this ‘washing’ retroactive?
Did the ancient cave men with their natural and instinctive lives simply fail to qualify because of when they lived?
Why, for example, do so many people who experience a near death trauma claim to have seen a brilliant light and dead relatives waiting to welcome them? Do the dead spend their time standing around waiting for others to die?
Will I become a bigamist in Heaven because I have had four wives? Will I suffer the consequences of an unintentional sin because the unwritten follow on to ’till death do you part’ was ‘also to keep thyself true till death do you reunite’? Will I be banned because of such sinful behaviour?
If Heaven is a place of spirit only, will it be possible to maintain an individuality or will we each become a part of the whole – a bit like the believers in Guaia accept?
As we age on Earth the days become much shorter and the passage of time accelerates to frightening rates. Does the phenomenon exist in Heaven? Will our lives or spiritual existence experience a similar acceleration or will time simply cease to exist?
Will death-bed confessions and regrets really allow the multiple rapist, murderer or genocidal maniac to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Is it possible for the most heinous of criminal lives to be washed away by a few words, no matter how sincerely meant?
When it comes to personalities, will we still maintain an individual character that other residents will accept or will the dead become a homogenous mass of identical beings with little to choose between them?
With the whole of eternity to fill, how will we pass the time?
My quest for answers has put me into many mixed situations where the questions themselves become entities that create hubris and discord.
It would be so nice to have a few answers instead of a whole raft of questions but there seems to be no way of knowing the nature of Heaven.
First published in Qondio – http://www.qondio.com/the-nature-of-heaven