Heaven?

Post by **River** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:39 pm

Christians Wrong about Heaven, says Bishop

It looks like we all go to, for lack of a better term, the Halls of Mandos for a while. Then we come back and remake this world.

Even though I'm not a believer, I found this very interesting as it flies in the face of everything that's in our culture. It makes me want to go back in time to when I was a little kid and still went to Sunday school because I honestly don't remember our pastor or Sunday school teachers going on about heaven vs. hell and I know for a fact that the church we went to didn't touch Revelation with a 10 ft. pole. But I'm pretty sure they taught the standard doctrine: after you die, you go to some other place, away from this world. And apparently that's wrong.

What do you guys think?

Post by **axordil** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:30 pm

It looks like we all go to, for lack of a better term, the Halls of Mandos for a while. Then we come back and remake this world.

What you mean we, white eyes?

Seriously, though, most of what the guy describes aligns with what I was taught in my evangelical upbringing. Of course, that was back before the Left Behind crew got into the discussion.

And a lot of it is obviously open to interpretation.

Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:42 pm

Interesting read.

Post by **nerdanel** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:03 pm

I will never understand why people of any faith feel the need to speak authoritatively about something that no one alive on earth has experienced, can experience (while still present on this earth), or can definitively know. Very few things about religion anger me so much as this. I can't exactly explain WHY it makes me angry other than to say that it feels like the ultimate in both presumption and futility to me. I really think that people create heaven in their own image - i.e. as they wish it to be - and then try to attribute it to other human books or people (who have done the same thing.)

Post by **Maria** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:51 pm

"God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves."

And how is most organic "hardware" manufactured on this planet??? Mommy + Daddy, cell by cell .....

Post by **WampusCat** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 9:05 pm

I'm with nel on this. Speculation is not made more truthful by the certainty with which it is argued.

I do believe that the dead are with God, so anything I believe about the nature of our existence after death is based purely on what I see as the loving nature of God. That pins down very few details, which is fine with me.

Post by **MithLuin** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:51 pm

nerdanel, would such speculation be more acceptable if the person claimed to have a mystical experience of what the afterlife was like?

I know there are lots of accounts of near-death experiences out there, where people claim to have died and then come back to tell the tale. I'm not sure what I think of that - the fact that many of them are so similar suggests something about the experience of being near death. But the fact that they all lived means they didn't really die, so, I'm not sure what it says about the afterlife.

And then there are the kids at Fatima, who saw visions of heaven and hell. But again, what they reported seeing - was it real or metaphorical, and was the vision itself legit or a hoax?

To me, heaven is being 'with God.' As to what that means or what it's like...I can't say much about it. I just know it's very, very good.

Post by **Crucifer** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:04 am

Like nerdanel, this is one of the issues that really gets me riled. No one has experienced death. Therefore no one has the authority to say "it's like this or that", only to hypothesize, e.g. "I believe it might be this or that".

Personally, the answer is, once again, I don't know. If there is something later, I'll see what it's like. If there isn't, it doesn't matter anyway.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:14 am

I also believe that the dead are with God. But in a world loaded down with poverty, war, and injustice, it seems to me that we're called to focus on what's in front of us, not theories and possibilities about the afterlife. That's a question that all of us will eventually find the answer to, and fretting about it beforehand is pointless. What makes a difference is what we do now.

Post by **Crucifer** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 2:14 pm

That's a question that all of us will eventually find the answer to, and fretting about it beforehand is pointless. What makes a difference is what we do now.

Post by **Cerin** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:12 am

I didn't take the article as this man stating unknowable things with certainty. All he was stating with certainty is that that is what the Bible says about life after this stage of earthly existence. I don't think there is anything wrong with stating with certainty what you perceive a text to be saying. His reading seems to me to be accurate.

Whether one believes the Bible to be true is another matter entirely.