The Remnant
I love having discussions about this, and finally, several months after promised on Easter to a few people, I am getting it out. Therefore, It shan’t be short and is littered with quotes and thoughts. It is a long time coming, and where it does not confuse, I think it may help those who have trouble understanding our post-death. This will be my boldest undertaking on Sola yet…
“What will heaven be like?” might be the most commonly asked question by any young child familiar with Christian doctrine. I am one of those kids who has always wondered and pondered what it could be like. Through all of the books I have read, tapes I have listened to, masses I have attended, and learning I have undertaken that could yield a clue, I have come to a smattering of views and ideas of what could happen when we die. Given that nobody knows, I think reason, science, and faith have led me to several ideas that make more sense than some of the short-sighted views of what the Final Eden could look like. With the premise that this is only a could, I will ask you to bear with me, for this could not only become very complicated, but also very fragmented and unshaped since it is only a dictation of free thought – besides the fact that salvation might be the hardest religious concept for us to understand, much less defend. I have never written this exploration down (only discussed it), so it could get really messy. It will probably end up looking like a spring or series of loops in its organization by the end, since heaven and hell and the whole crazy thing are all a result of that final judgment intertwined with our created existence in God’s image here on earth. It is all very absrtact and each paragraph is separate and differing in a sense from the previous. This will probably end up resembling Pascal’s Pensees as severed thoughts to most people, so read each paragraph as its own subject and connect them all at the end. And if you don’t get it and are still interested, read the whole thing a few times, despite length…
Foremost, at the head of this discussion is God. God is absolute and unwavering love. Despite all we have done or failed to do, He loves us. It sounds corny or cliche when you say it, but it is as a parent loves their kids when they are young. Is love from a good mother or father corny? I would hardly think anyone who had great parents could say so. This is much the same as the Eternal Father, in that God is the parent, with infinite reaches of knowledge concerning our decisions, thoughts, and actions. He sees through all that we do, while we can only link the basic and immediate consequences of those aspects of our lives. But at the time of judgment, I think the veil will be lifted, and we will get a glance at what God sees, all of our lives flashed for a moment in our minds. People really hate this idea. I think it is the main secret argument for atheism today. It isn’t that they think it so improbably God exists, people seek rebellion because they dislike being morally accountable to a being that does nothing tangible for them. But there is no way God can prove to them he exists without ruining the entire purpose of our lives – free will. Their worry is not invalid, because this is why heaven will be difficult for everyone who chooses to enter it. But the acceptance of God’s goodness and authority is key to understanding what heaven is. And despite the atheists’ worry, everyone will be invited to the Banquet. Their R.S.V.P. is the part that they might fail to address correctly…
“Power, no matter how well intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced one for the sake of the other.”
I don’t think we are judged by God when we die. I think we die and get a chance to see our entire lives in a single moment somehow. But it is not God who does the judging. Important to the concept of heaven & hell is the idea of free will. The whole doctrine focuses on this, and this moment of judgment is hinged on our ability to choose or reject God. Not only have we had free exercise of our wills throughout our lives, we finally get to use our free will one last time and that choice is final. Our final choice is this: Heaven or hell? While deciding the matter for ourselves, it is painfully clear that God is watching, and he sees every flaw that we possess in all of its selfish and short-sighted intent. The havoc we have wreaked upon our fellow souls, ourselves, and the natural world are the focal pictures we must view in this time, for they will determine not only the decision we make, but through that decision, our relationship with God for the whole of our existence outside of time. This decision is influenced not only by our judgment on the matter, but the fact that we know that the most powerful being to exist is standing just behind a curtain, watching the whole ordeal. In the face of this most powerful yet loving presence ever, knowing that He knows everything we are viewing, will we choose the humbling path of admitting we were wrong and asking for forgiveness, or the ego-centered indignation of self-righteousness? We cannot lie in the face of ultimate truth, love, and goodness. We can, however, choose to wind ourselves up in the self and the idea that we were right all along and it is not the place of anyone to judge us, including ourselves. This foyer, where we have not yet had direct contact with God, but know He is there watching and awaiting our judgment, is to me what Purgatory must be. It will be pain enough. And though guilt is sure to follow, God does not want guilt. He wants us whole. The pain of seeing your life, fraught with sin and destruction that you have caused is the anteroom to heaven or hell, and the ability to accept ourselves in the light of total goodness is the key to the gate of heaven. God says yes to all those who say the same to Him. In this way, in choosing for ourselves, it is us that choose heaven or hell, not God that chooses it for us (Calvinism or immature fundamentalist Christian sectarianism have no place in this world if God is a perfectly just and loving being). Following this, it might sound easy to get into heaven. All you have to do is choose it. But as life has reflected for all of us, it is the most difficult to make the right and good decision when doing so in light of a string of bad ones. This process is even more difficult when we have a moral authority who is implicitly directing our decision. The only way it can happen is with the total destruction of the ego and a realization that though nothing is left of us and we have failed in ways we did not even anticipate, there is still a hand of love and peace reaching out to us. It is only after losing everything that we are free to do anything. The process is a purification by fire that I think will burn the failures and shortcomings away if we can stand the test without turning on the Proctor…
“…what is denied to us by effort is supplied to us through grace. So when around us we see the decay of our life, when ever earthly hope of redemption has failed us, when those whom we love cannot help us, when we have tried everything and there is nothing left to try, when we have tossed our last log onto the fire and all the embers have flickered out, it is as this point that God’s hand reaches out to us, steady and sure. All we have to do is take it. This is the uniqueness of the Christian message.”
If it must be hard for us to get to heaven, think of how difficult it would be to be God allowing the millions of prodigals home! To forgive that much would be so difficult. How easy we turn to bitterness when we are wronged by another. And for God to accept such flawed and immature souls everyday! If freedom has a terrible price, surely God pays more than His share. I think this (besides the Christ Himself) attests most clearly how powerful our God truly is. It also shows an example that is one we all should seek more often – unrelenting and pure love can conquer all barriers. Perhaps it is easy to love that much. I think the hard part is getting over yourself enough to love in that way, and to get over the fear the the love will be unrequited. In a truly loving person, there is a recklessness in love that refuses to count the cost. Children are so much better at loving without being self-conscious and retracting into themselves for fear of pain or mistake. In the End, we cannot hold onto the pains we do now if we wish the get into heaven, which is why Christ said we must become like children. It would do us all better to remember that…
“Love should not discern. It should tangle & twist, making emotionality impossible to sort out. It should be so vast that it contradicts itself. For how can love make sense if there is no God? It doesn’t. That’s why there is. Limits undone, expanses shortened to zero. Let there be nothing else but love. And if that is the way it were, all human imperfection would amount to nothing because there would be no such thing. And that is the way it can be. To be able to say ‘I love you, despite and for your imperfections, beyond your vices and problems, to that external soul He created for His purpose,’ should not be hard. Our flaws are a tribute to the original, individual, God-shaped hole in all of us that only He can fill. And we should love those holes and welcome their perfection through Him, but witness that maybe He made some more flawed and full of holes so He can fill them more. Maybe imperfection is part of God’s plan. But I know it starts with love. So we will love. And try not to forget. Because when we forget, our God-shaped holes remain empty. And how foolish of us it is to try and limit something so infinite with our insecurities. Love is not held at bay by our false pretenses and stupid narcissism or egotistical consciousness. It is diverted into a twisted, tangled, ugly thing that ruins its purpose. But the love is inside you, even though it may look like something else. You love so deeply that you cannot share it with anyone, and therein lies the problem. Turn it out and love(!), because that is the only way others will realize they can do the same.”
– startlingly, Kev Johnston in a journal I just found
If free will is of our nature, why how can the choice of heaven be the last choice we ever make? The choice is final because man cannot survive if he sees the Lord unfiltered (I should have a quote for that since it is in the Bible, but you need some homework). I think this idea can be logically extended to salvation. If we choose to accept the forgiveness and love that God offers after we decide for ourselves if heaven is for us, we will be allowed to see Him in all of the glory that follows a being of pure truth, light, justice, love, forgiveness, and goodness. In seeing God in His true form, we will be unable to turn away from Him. Not for an a priori lock on our free will, but an unquenchable desire to be a part of the Beatific Vision. We are not strong enough to turn away after being fully exposed (though we do know of beings that are: angels). This poses no problem for free will in my opinion, but if someone can come up with an issue, feel free to let me know…
“No, there is no escape.
There is no heaven with a little hell in it-
No plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our
pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.”
– George MacDonald
There is no heaven with a little hell in it-
No plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our
pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.”
– George MacDonald
I do not think heaven is eternal. In fact I know it is not. As I posited in my physics-based argument for heaven (take a break and read it if you like, but don’t get frustrated because it is much heavier than this…), beyond the 4th dimension, there is no such thing as existence for our intents and purposes. This is because there is no such thing as time or dimensionality as we experience them. Heaven is based outside of time, in a dimensional space that uses time to explore our lives as we use lines and geometric shapes to explore the truth of mathematics. Eternity is life without limits, possessed perfectly and as a simultaneous whole. There is something beyond time for us. How can this be? Because there is a certain aspect of human life that is missing, and it seems to be timelessness…
“Heaven itself would be – must be- a coming home. …You say the materialist universe is ‘ugly.’ I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a Materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact not strongly suggest that they had not always been or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. In heaven’s name, why? Unless indeed, there is something which is not temporal… In the reality of Now, the clock is always ticking. One might suppose, looking at the glossier advertisements of watches – ever more exact, ever more spectacular flashes of the passing second – that modern man considers time a lovesome thing or, possibly, has a watch fetish. We might be better advised to throw the whole lot into already-polluted Lake Erie. And yet, after all, the clock is not always ticking. Sometimes it stops, and then we are happiest. Sometimes – more precisely, some-not-times – we find ‘the still point of the turning world.’ All our most lovely moments are timeless…If indeed we all have a kind of appetite for eternity, we have been caught up in a society that frustrates our longing at every turn. Half of our inventions are advertised to save time – the washing machine, the fast car, the jet flight – but for what? Never were people more harried by time: by watches, by buzzers, by time clocks, by precise schedules, by the beginning of the programme. There is, in fact, some truth in ‘the good old days’: no other civilization of the past was ever to harried by time. And yet, why not? Time is our natural environment. We live in time as we live in the air we breathe. And we love the air – who has not taken deep breaths of pure, fresh country air, just for the pleasure of it? How strange that we cannot love time. It spoils our loveliest moments. Nothing comes up to expectations because of it. We alone: animals, so far as we can see, are unaware of time, untroubled. Time is their natural environment. Why do we sense that it is not ours? [And we come to the quote:] ‘Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact not strongly suggest that they had not always been or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?’ Then, if we complain of time and take much such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been, or will not always be, purely temporal creatures. It suggests we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it – how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it has gone. Where, we cry, has time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear proof , or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home…Golden streets and compulsory harp lessons may lack appeal – but timelessness? And total persons? Heaven is, indeed, home…“
– Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy
– Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy
In other words, since we are constantly but inexplicably baffled at the constraints that time puts on our lives, there must be some aspect of us that is not used to being in it – for the reason that we were created to be outside of it altogether. So though we live in time now, perhaps it is such that there is something missing for us while we are subjects of time’s rule…
Let’s get into thoughts on actual post-judgment existence…
Hell is first. I figure I should get the easy stuff out of the way, and hell is the easiest but most frequently misunderstood doctrines of our faith. As the famous quote deftly states: “the gates of Hell are locked from the inside.” Hell is not a place where we are damned by God, as so many immature Christianities profess. This sentiment to me is simply fear-mongering. Hell is the personal choice to reject God’s love. An appropriate analogy, as used by C.S. Lewis, is that of Plato’s cave. We are stuck in a cave our entire lives, and as such, if we leave the cave, our skin will be burned by the sun, since it has never been exposed to ultraviolet rays. The sun symbolizes God, while the light the sun gives off is the love that God gives. Without the sunscreen of forgiveness and self-examination in the light of heavenly truth, the sun of God’s love burns our skin and we hate Him for it. The more exposure we get to God’s love, the more we are burned by Him, but only if we refuse sunscreen. The sun becomes our enemy when our skin cannot stand it, and where light seems to help the many, the light-skinned are harmed by it. UV rays can be good for some, stimulating certain vitamins in the skin. But without protection, it is painful.
Alternatively explained, it is like the love of an unconditionally loving parent with a rebelling teenage child. When the child is chided by that parent, and yet the child knows he himself is wrong, there are two options. The child can accept a moment of shame and admit the wrongdoing and return to the arms of the parent, or the child can become bitter at the parent. If bitterness results, the love that the parent shows the child, in the child’s self-righteous indignation, is twisted into a painful and hateful reminder of a past mistake. The teenage child cannot forgive himself, so he can hardly be expected to accept the love that he is given. How can anyone love him if he cannot even love himself? Anyone who does must be wrong, must be hated, and must be rejected in totality. This is how we reject God. Love becomes the enemy. Not the warm embrace of a summer day’s sun for those who have the skin to stand it, but the seemingly harmful well-wishes of a being that accepts us when we cannot and burns us with our every movement. Love is key to this, even concerning the love from the soul who is in God’s sights:
“…to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable…the only safe place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell…”
– Clive Staples Lewis
– Clive Staples Lewis
So in response to those who say that hell is where God sends the wicked, a punishment for those that do wrong, I would say that the view is incorrect and inconsistent with an all-good Being. Not only does it make for poor apologetics and belief with near-evil implications, it also does not capture the essence of our life here on earth concerning free will and love. Hell is a choice for the individual, and one we must all pray that the choices we make on earth do not lead ever twisting toward.
What would being in hell be like? I once had a dream that I was in hell. It was the worst dream I ever have had, and I shudder to think of it. But it was sublime and emotional beyond any reasoned view of hell I have ever come across. There were no fires or pains of external classification. The pain was purely internal. It was the jealousy and hatred of all people and beings that I knew that had not chosen as I had, it was the fear and anger of being alone forever, it was the despair at nothing left to exist for but my bitterness, and it was the self-righteous perspective that said I was right to feel all of it, for I was right and the world and everyone in it were wrong. The worst was the aloneness. Lonely is one thing, but one can be lonely and not alone. This was being lonely and alone, for all eternity, with none to even attempt consoling companionship. I was forgotten. It was also dark, blacker than any room I have ever been in, and the only experience I had was of the self because of the lack of vision entailed in that darkness. Hell truly was the self and denial of all else. And it was horrible that way. All in all, it was very existential, but nothing I would want to ever experience again, if even for a night. Hell should not be a place any of us choose. But I think it is, because of the way some twist God’s love against themselves.
I think that about does hell justice. It is a simple concept that is often overlooked with threats of God’s vengeance and the fall of humanity. I hope it rings true or clear enough, because it terrifies me that I could corrupt myself that much or that others could do the same…
Now, into the most difficult of all, Heaven. This will get very complicated very quickly and might resemble random shards of glass being put together to make a window. Try to keep up, I will clarify anything that people have a real difficult time connecting…
“‘To everyone who conquers…I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it…’ -Rev 2:17
What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created?…If He had no use for all the differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one…Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling on the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock on of the doors in the house with many mansions…Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it – made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
– Clive Staples Lewis.
Although there are probably a good deal of spiritually-tied visions of salavation, mine is scientifically tied. Perhaps some of the old theologies would resist a view integrating science and faith, but in the age of reason and the modern Church, it seems there are many things the Church has gotten right on terms of religion and reason in the observable world. An example is the resurrection of the body. The Church has always held that talk of separation of body and soul of the human person, at any point on this earth, is heresy. Derived from Christ’s Resurrection and St. Paul’s talk of everlasting life, the Church moved toward the doctrine as a rule for existence in the afterlife. With the development of modern science and philosophies, science has come to essentially prove what the Church has always said: there can be no existence without the body. The mind and body, the brain and its thoughts are inseparable. When the brain dies, the mind is extinguished on this earth…
Now my thoughts get cluttered. If we cannot exist here with body and soul separate, is there some waiting place we exist before we get our body back? Do we really believe that it is this exact body that we are given back after we reach salvation? I don’t think so. I don’t know what it means, and I might be bordering heresy, but I do think something can exist without a body [I don’t think it is heresy to speak of body and spirit separate but still with life, because the word ‘body’ in Christian context means around 984293847923 different things, which can be integrated into the view of what we become if we choose heaven…]. There is obviously no legitimate science to confirm this, but even so, science can be followed. If we were to die of body and live on as soul, science says we would have no hippocampus to direct and store our memory in our brain. We would have no amygdala to keep our fears and angers a part of our emotional states. We would have no basal ganglia to control bodily function such as breathing, or autonomic responses. Emotion, thought, and memory would cease to exist as we know them, which makes for some very difficult theodicies. However, I think it can still be done…
The non-continuity of memory is the most obvious to me. The most clear thoughts I have of my Grandmother, who was robbed of her formerly vivid and fun-loving personality (along with memory of where she was and who her family was) by Alzheimer’s, are ones that mirrored her confusion and a vast memory loss that resembled a fresh existence daily. When we die, what happens to those that memory has left behind? Are we simply set to a previous place in our lives? There is obviously no good answer, but if memory is what makes us who we are in a way, we have lost an essential part of ourselves. Does this mean we enter salvation as a different person? I am so damn confused thinking about this right now… ANYWAY, it is for this reason that it seems memory is a nonessential part of salvation. It is the nature of the brain and memory that everything cannot and will not be stored fully for us throughout our lives. Even if the brain could store everything and we had an optimized hippocampus somehow, when we die it would decay anyhow, and as famous test subjects like HM and Clive Wearing have shown, the decay of certain structures ensures that memory will be erased. Therefore, I don’t think we have memory post-death (Then how can we be expected to judge ourselves in the anteroom of salvation or damnation? I don’t know how this works out. Maybe for a time we retain an objective memory of all that we have done on earth. But I don’t think this lasts long, for the nature of heavenly existence that will be discussed shortly). Paired with this, I don’t think we have our personalities, our physical bodies as we know them, or really anything that differentiates us from one another but perhaps an existence in spiritual form that is constructed by God Himself. No brain, no cognition. How can it work? How can we be identified if we have no personality, memory, or physical existence? Perhaps by some sort of countenance or spiritual essence. But perhaps it does not matter…
[I used to wake in the middle of the night a few years ago and think about heavenly existence and be thrown into a panic due to the nature of sleep (Like: “Oh shit, I just didn’t exist for like 5 hours! What the hell am I doing wasting this time!?”). If I am right about all of the brain stuff and the nature of consciousness, death might just seem like dreamless sleep forever. That seems pretty crappy to me. Then I would call my parents and everything would be alright, but the nature of sleep and its probable relation to death has always bothered me. It is very existential to think about sleeping for eternity… And though I have many thoughts about that relationship, this is not the time or place. That is the most dismal of my thoughts about death…]
Why would selflessness be a main tenet of Christianity, or all of the world religions? It seems that all religions stress the giving of the self in one way or another to the greater good or a Greater Power. There has GOT to be a reason for this that is not rooted in some biological shift. Darwinists often use selflessness as an example of where evolution has made a mistake that probably could result in the destruction of our race as certain dead-end qualities have done to other species in history. But what if it was a quality we developed despite our biological state and for a purpose? Darwinists are right in that selflessness serves no evolutionary purpose by aiding in the propagation of species. However, they might be framing the issue incorrectly. Maybe it is not a mistake, but a purposeful tweak on our biology that only looks like a dead-end quality. It is something that seems to surpass our biology, just as our preoccupation with time does. I think the answer lies in what heaven must be in nonmaterial existence.
I believe this nonmaterial existence to be the giving up of not only one’s ego, but their entire self. Heaven to me is integration of ourselves into a heavenly structure of the other. Integration onto the surface of God. We may not be a part of His Pure Essence, but we have surrendered the self to Him. Why selflessness as a life goal? Because we lose what it is to have a self; that is our goal. With this, we can see how values Jesus professed are actualized. Humility, selflessness, love, wholeness of self, and all others point to how the concept of self is rendered after death. If we can grasp it – which is impossible given the secare (severed, look up that etymology for an interesting word history, since it developed to the modern word sex…) nature that we experience here on earth – this is the scariest thought of all. But if God is the noun Love, Heaven is the verb Love. Love in an integral way which is beyond personal experience. The best way heaven can be achieved in my mind is in some ethereal influx where separation is nonexistent. How this would look, what the function would be, and what personal traits we would retain are still all mysterious to me, but as selves, I simply do not feel heaven can be achieved. Personal existence constrains us to selfish motives and unintentionally self-seeking needs like food and shelter and comfort-love. Giving up the ego is the first step. Giving up the entire self is the goal (obviously then, in hell somehow we keep the self. Or imagine we do…). If it seemed difficult to get to heaven just by getting over your ego and admitting you were wrong, now it seems near impossible in a way. Not only do you have to give up your ego at this point, but you must ensure that you’ll never have an ego again, with some sort of total integration into heavenly existence. And I still can’t figure out how it will work, because it is something I have not experienced. I don’t think any of us will be able to imagine it until we are there…
Touching on this point, Terry Eagleton artfully wrote in one of my favorite quotes:
“…for Christian teaching, God’s love and forgiveness are ruthlessly unforgiving powers which break violently into our protective, self-rationalizing little sphere, smashing our sentimental illusions and turning our world brutally upside down. In Jesus, the law is revealed to be the law of love and mercy, and God not some Blakean Nobodaddy but a helpless, vulnerable animal. It is the flayed and bloody scapegoat of Calvary that is now the true signifier of the law…
Here, then, is your pie in the sky or opium of the people, your soft-eyed consolation and pale-cheeked piety. Here is the fantasy and escapism that the hard-headed secularist pragmatist finds so distasteful. Freud saw religion as the mitigation of the harshness of the human condition; but it would surely be at least as plausible to claim that what we call reality is a mitigation of the Gospel’s ruthless demands, which include such agreeable acts of escapism as being ready to lay down your life for a total stranger. Imitating Jesus means imitating his death as well as his life, since the two are not finally distinguishable. The death is the consummation of the life, the place where the ultimate meaning of Jesus’s self-giving is revealed.
…What is at stake here is not a prudently reformist project of pouring new wine into old bottles, but an avant-gardist epiphany of the absolutely new – of a regime so revolutionary as to surpass all image and utterance, a reign of justice and fellowship which for the Gospel writers is even now striking into this bankrupt, dépassé, washed-up world … The coming of the kingdom involves not a change of government, but a turbulent passage through death, nothingness, madness, loss and futility … signified among other things by Christ’s descent into hell after his death. There is no possiblity of a smooth evolution here. Given the twisted state of the world, self-fulfillment can ultimately come about only through complete self-divestment…”
I don’t know much more that this, and I find it hard to explain to others and reason to myself the importance of selflessness to the end we are meant to reach. But as the famous saying by Tertullian goes:
“How could I praise,
If such as I could understand?… I believe…because it is impossible.“
As I previously touched on, as Catholics we believe the invitation to heaven is extended to all. The heavenly banquet table is open to everyone who is ready to sit down with everyone. Anyone born on this earth is created equally on terms of ability to get to heaven. None have surer footing than others (more in-depth views on exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism, can be found here, thanks to Daniel Lower).
“Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, What may Thy service be? Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, But simply following Thee.”
Though maybe some may have genetic tendencies that lead toward greater goodness, selflessness, or whatever, life is about what we do with the time and life we are given. The line of goodness is not static, but is relative to the qualitative state we possess. It could be that for a murderer, goodness simply entails not killing another person. For another, serving at a homeless shelter 15 times this year would not be enough to constitute goodness. It is all relative and the scale of justice is personal, which is thus another reason that perhaps only we can be the judge to it. If this is the truth and we can simply get to heaven by being minimally good and choosing heaven during our final judgment, then why be more selfless than others? If all can get to heaven, why be a certain religion? Why am I Catholic? As Thomas Aquinas (I think) put it, when we reach heaven we all experience God in a private and individual way. Our time with God will be purely our own, subjective in every way. This rings true even in life, where our perceptions of the world are biased almost completely by our past, present, sensory perception, and mindset. The analogy he used for the personal different heavens is that of a container for God. We all experience God when we go to heaven, but the difference in heavenly experience between myself and Mother Teresa is great. Where I can only hold a teaspoon of God since the goodness I cultivated on earth was limited and I cannot comprehend a vaster amount of God, Mother Teresa can experience five gallons of God. Her life on earth and the goodness she pushed herself toward allows her a more full picture of God that many others would not understand. We can only be receptive to the amount of God or heaven that we have expanded ourselves to hold. Another analogy is that we are all built to experience a certain surface of God’s Heavenly Being. The more virtuous we are during our lives, the bigger of an area we are able to cover. So although many reach heaven, the reason that being a better person might pay off in the end is that there exists different states or levels to heaven. Even so, the experiential nature of heaven is somehow such that there is no jealousy or bitterness at the difference between personal heavens. I will not envy Mother Teresa, because my little bit of God that I have gleaned the ability to hold within myself is more than I could have imagined, in judging myself, that God would have given me. I formerly was not worth the ground of God which I now occupy, and now I feel like the most gifted individual in heaven. Our God is a generous God…
Therefore, I am Catholic because I believe that it is either the fastest way to heaven or the easiest way to expand the amount of God that I can receive when I reach the Kingdom. There are many paths up the mountain, and almost all of them reach the top. I simply believe mine to be the least obstructed.
Confused yet? I guess this sounds fragmented and a bit nuts when I write it out… Hmmm….
As Catholics, we believe that the body and spirit will be reunited on the last day. I have not yet reconciled what that could mean for us, but it is a doctrine worthy of hope and joy I believe. Maybe it means none of the above is correct. But if ‘body’ is not what we believe it to be in this life, perhaps it is a communal body like the one I have outlined…
Here is the basic structure of what I have written above:
- God is love. He will not keep us out of heaven or force us into hell. He will watch while we make the choice. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.””
- We are timeless beings, as suggested by our lack of comfort with the concept. We were not built for here, but for salvation.
- Hell is not fire and brimstone. It is selfish, bitter loneliness where no respite of companionship exists after we have twisted self-righteousness to indignation at a Creator who only wishes to love us.
- In heaven, we do not exist in the physical states which we currently occupy. This includes mental states like memory. The world religions’ focus on selflessness suggests that we are no longer selves. We are a heavenly body that is incomparable to the current existence we experience. We are integrated somehow into heaven in a communal way.
- All people can get to heaven, but heaven can be experienced in very different ways depending on how our experience on earth helped us to grow and mature virtues during our lives. The more virtuous one was during their life, the more God they have the ability to experience.
- This is super confusing when I write it out…
The most powerful allegorical novel about salvation and damnation I have ever read is C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. It is a quick read and can be finished in only one or two sittings. I recommend it for anyone seeking beautiful imagery of the Final Location. Check it.
“Death be not proud, for we will have the last word through Christ!”
So many more thoughts, not enough time or space. Other points are better for discussion anyway…
I finish with an article I wrote a few years ago while at UP while in a time of despair, that I think applies to the topic of loving like a child that was discussed in the beginning of this discussion. God bless,
-kj-
“The Plea from God
Love! Love! Love! Is it so hard to see that God made us to love? Love each other, love His creation, love these wonderful lives we have been given, love love itself. Is not the greatest gift we have received not also the greatest gift we can give? Love! Why must we fight over religion, politics, or anything? Why can we not do what is best graced and served by love? Where would we be? Would it be better than the tense and ultimately horrible world we live in today? What is so funny about peace love and understanding? I wish He would just come down and say: Children, Love! Love dangerously uninhibited, recklessly, with no end, this is why you were made! Why these pretenses of insecurity, why fight everything? Can’t you see how great it will feel to love and be loved by all of those around you? Why can you not learn to love it all instead of pushing for yourself so hard? How can you not see the infinitely diverse and lovable qualities I have given to everyone around you?
I believe God is love and I believe it is He that created us. Wouldn’t it be great to have a world full of loving creatures, He must have thought! So He created us to love. But look at us! The one earthly infinite ability we have been given might just be one of our most underused! Shame on us, shame on us all for not seeing and stopping this lack of love! Even hate! If He is watching, what a horrible scene He must see. Fighting over religions, the supposed cause of love! Fighting over ego, fighting over simple words, fighting over causes no longer even remembered! Fighting over things that mean nothing compared to love, like riches, power, and land! With love comes so much more than power, land, or riches. The riches we gain are patience, joy, understanding of those we have taken the time to love, and most of all, we gain love from another! The land we gain is territory of people’s hearts. Who would not rather have conquered five hearts with love and be loved completely without false pretenses or judgments over having fifty acres of land? Being understood, being accepted, being loved is worth way more than all of the riches in this world for most of us. The power we gain is that of self-control, grace, and true relationships that are worth more than thrones, for what would a servant do for you that a best friend would not?
But it doesn’t even matter if you think God created us or not. Are not the best things from pure love? Success from the love of a job, a lasting friendship from the love of another, cute, fat little babies from the love of a spouse, really messy drawings on construction paper from the love of a child, tens of thousands of dollars toward a university education from the love of a parent, and the warmth of a smile from the love of a sincere passerby on the street. Is it truly as hard as we pretend to smile or say hello to those walking by? Is it truly that hard to look someone in the eye and talk to them courteously and create a genuine friendship at first meeting? Is it so impossible to try to get to know your neighbor despite these flimsy and useless walls of security we psychologically surround ourselves with? Is it so difficult to give a little of yourself to everyone you meet? No, it is not hard to do these things. The constructions we create to protect ourselves are for no one’s benefit but our own, and sadly they often end up protecting us from loving and being loved. Love takes energy, but it also gives just as much back! To love someone with all your heart is the greatest feeling in the world, regardless of if the love is being returned. There are people here at UP that I love, with my whole heart, my whole being, and they needn’t even know. The energy and satisfaction that I get from loving everything about someone with no thought of myself is something that I cannot explain. It is truly the thing that keeps me religious and moving toward the Ultimate Love, whether those that I love are of my religion or not.
This is not only a plea from me, it is a plea from God. He just wants you to love and be loved! The greatest ability you have been given might just be worth trying, if not for your own sake, for the sake of those hundreds of unique, beautifully lovable souls you walk past every day…”
