Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?
Is heaven paved with gold or like earth, without tears? Or is it both? I haven't ever thought much about heaven and hell other than I hope to get to heaven someday. But I'd like to know what other people expect, think, fear. So if you could take a few minutes to tell me what you believe, it doesn't have to be deep. It doesn't have to have a bibliography. I don't care how zany it seems; I just want to know if people believe and what those beliefs are.
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I don't actually have that good of a theology of heaven and hell. I guess I believe Lewis' ideas (as presented in The Great Divorce). Basically, I think that heaven is the completion of self through the giving up of self, or total unity with the will of God. Hell is the absence of God due to a person's unwillingness to relinquish one's idea of oneself in the form of selfishness or sin.
which...if one follows the aforementioned ideas, one would have to conclude that we are currently in hell when we are not relinquishing ourselves to further the glory of God. And we thought we were scared of hell...
Who said we weren't in some form of hell?
Do you think we over-spiritualize heaven? Do we really think matter is bad? If the things of earth are not inherently sinful (as Lewis would say) why would these things disappear completely when we find out completion in unity with Christ? I think the point of The Great Divorce is not to say that in eternity everything will completely disappear and we'll all be spirits floating around surviving on the glory of God, but to say instead that we should now be surviving on the glory of God. Lewis describes the Valley of the Shadow of Life as a place where our physical bodies are not strong enough to stand up to the glimpse of God's glory seen there. Instead, because of the life that has been lived we either get back on the bus to reign in hell or we are transformed into a body that then ventures on toward the glory of God. It's a beautiful picture. The man does not, when he is transformed, evaporate into a soul as to be protected from the environment around him but instead he is made more real than we can imagine so as to become part of the environment around him. He is a physical body and yet he is no longer concerned about his body the way we are. His body is an outward expression of the spirit that is him. Body and flesh are one.
So that might not make sense, but I want Melanie to read it so I'm going to post it now.
Also, I'm not saying Lewis meant to say things about the nature of heaven specifically. In fact, I think the book is more about how we spend time on earth in this life. How do we live the kingdom on earth, this sort of thing. I do wonder, though, if we over-spiritualize things, and I wanted to hear thoughts. It's something we don't study a lot. I think this is because we don't have clear cut answers and we tend to sum things up with, "I don't think it will matter when we get there so why worry about it now." (very much like a professor of mine just did today in class...) I think the discussion may be important, however. That is all. Goodnight.
God's grace falls (like the rain here in New England) on the righteous and the unrighteous, so to be absent from God (ie: hell) is something that no one on the planet has yet to experience. That being said, think about some of the pain, terror, horror, and utter dismay that individuals all throughout time have endured and suffered under - God was still in the midst of that. Hell (total absense from God) is merely a word, the reality is much, much, much worse than any of us dare to even imagine, especially if we take into consideration what the attributes of God are, and then we remove all of them.
Hell is complicated, while for me heaven is fairly simple.
I am not talking about little babies with wings, or even the harps being played in the background, but rather the innocense of the garden, where Adam and Eve walked beside God, and simply took care of His creation. It is not the removal of pain, as pain is a good thing in that it reminds us or indicates for us that something is not the way it should be or intended to be, but rather there will be a removal of heartache. Imagine death being removed as an option, and yes this does mean that we all become vegitarians (if we need to eat at all)...
Heaven is simply serving God as He intended, while Hell is serving self, with all that God is and has given completely removed...
I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with both dps and Laura. Hell isn't something we can truly experience on earth because here God is always with us. Nor do we give up our bodies.
I hadn't really thought about corporeal resurrection until Wendell Willis brought it up in class, but I think that we do overspiritualize heaven and resurrection due in a large part to Platonistic dualism. I don't think that the Jews (and therefore Jesus) meant for anyone to think of heaven as we do today. And to be honest, I don't really know what heaven will be like, but I do have a vision (not literally) of someplace that is more real than anything that can be experienced on earth and I do think that it will be simpler than here because instead of trying to rely on ourselves we will rely on God.
Sorry that that was so muddled. It's pretty much that confusing in my head too. I guess my short answer is, I have no idea what it will be like, but I like Lewis' presentation in The Great Divorce and also in That Hideous Strength.
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