When you Christian guys go to heaven, what are you actually going to do there.
I know "Most" Christians don't believe the "Sitting on cloud playing the harp" theory. But what will you actually do?
Will you just live as you do now only in some paradise world? Will you spend all your time glorifying God.
How long for?.... Eternity?
Think about that.
The first 100 years will indeed be paradise. The next 100 years will be pretty good too, but you may become a little restless after 200 years of nectar drinking and renewing acquaintances with long lost relatives.
You may want to take up some new hobbies, lots of them. You have all the time in the world to become expert at everything you do.
After the first 1000 years you will probably have done most of the things that interest you. The next 1000 years could become a little repetitive.
10,000 years of fly fishing, listening to music, Ice Skating or doing Sudoku puzzles sounds pretty dull. In fact doing anything for 10,000 years is sure to dampen your enthusiasm for that activity.
What about the next 10,000 years, and the next.
After 100,000 years you should have tried just about every hobby, pastime, learned every language fluently, tasted every combination of food and drink a thousand times over.
Lets try to imagine the first million years of eternity. Boy, would you be full of wisdom, knowledge and memories.
what are you going to do for the next million years. and the next, and the next.
100 million years will be just the beginning of the rest of your life.
1 billion years... a million billion years? I would think you would have run out of things that interest you by now.
10 thousand million billion years and you will be pretty desperate for a change of scenery.
A Billion Gazillon years will not even scratch the surface of all the years to come, and they will come very slowly, a day at a time. Doing all the things you have already done billions of times before.
Our solar system will have long gone by then, swallowed by the sun turning to a red giant then contracting to a white dwarf star and cooling down over the billions of years.
In an infinite period of time you will have done everything and seen everything an infinite number of times. But you still have to do all those things again an infinite number of times and keep doing them forever.
If we live in an open, ever expanding universe, the universe will cool down to absolute zero and die entropy death. A cold dark universe with that little oasis of paradise created specifically for you.
Conversely if we live in a closed universe. There will be the big crunch and the next big bang.
No doubt god will sustain your existence somehow so that you will be able to do and see an infinite number of things over and over and over and over and over for an infinite time.
And when you have done all that, you do it again and again and again ad-infinitum.
This is not heaven. This is Hell.
I would be interested to hear from any Christians who can explain their perception of living for eternity. Can this be explained without changing the essence of who you are, without changing your "being". Would your very soul need to be exchanged for one that can cope with such an awful prospect of living forever.
No one should be afraid of death, total annihilation or non-existence.
Being unable to die is a fate much worse than death.
"I would be interested to hear from any Christians who can explain their perception of living for eternity."
ReplyDeleteDon't hold your breath.
What's wrong with living for an eternity?
ReplyDeleteHezekiah,
ReplyDelete"What's wrong with living for an eternity?"
Ok, Imagine doing your favourite thing, for example, playing the piano.
You decide to have a marathon piano playing session, you start early in the morning and play right through till early evening, a quick break and then keep playing till 2am. Great Fun. But the next day is also 100% piano playing. Even though you enjoy playing the piano, it is starting to get monotonous. You do nothing but play the piano all day every day for a week... eating at the keyboard and only stopping for comfort breaks and to sleep.
Several weeks go by doing nothing but play the piano. You are now sick to death of playing the piano and long to just stop.
After months of playing the piano non-stop you will hate it.
Now imagine doing that for years and years, being forced to keep playing.
This is comparable to doing the things you enjoy for an infinite amount of time. Once you have done everything you enjoy a thousand billion gazillion times and are forced to keep doing these things indefinitely, you will long for death, but you will not be able to die because you will have to keep doing the same old thing over and over and over..........
You are looking at our faith in the wrong context. You're looking at things through man's eyes and not God's. We won't be measuring time, which by the way is a man-made way of looking back through time and forward through time. We won't be in human form in Heaven. We will be in Spiritual form. If you read the Bible, our faith tells us there will be a new Heaven and a new earth. The old ones will be washed away by God. I have no idea what I'll be doing all "the time" I'm in Heaven, but I can assure you it will be infinitely better than those who will spend eternity in Hell. It will be no party. Those condemned by God to spend eternity there will be isolated, in total darkness and in constant torment. And for the record Paul, who said we'll be doing the same thing over and over and over....??? Where did you get your information? As for doing things a thousand billion gazillion times, it's kind of like owning a DVD collection. You watch a movie, and because you like the movie you keep in your library. The next time you pull it out and watch that particular may be 5 years down the road. That's because you've watched a lot of other movies in your library you like. Now that movie will be like watching it for the first time, because you've been watching other things. It's like brand new. I don't think we'll run out of things to do there.
ReplyDeleteRuss,
ReplyDelete"You're looking at things through man's eyes and not God's."
Yes, that's because both you and I are men.
"won't be measuring time".
Accepted, there would be no point. However "Time" will still exist and you will still experience it.
I like your DVD analogy. However, In an infinite amount of time, even if you do only watch it once every five years, you will still have to watch that same DVD an infinite number of times.
Or maybe there is an "erase all data" button, then enjoy the experience again for an infinite number of times. I don't think you will complain that you have watched this movie before when you don't even remember it in the first place, right?
DeleteIf mankind will live forever, I think we can do an infinite number of things also.
Age and health apart - every day you wake up there's always something to do and other things you would do if you could. Why is that going to change? People already want to live forever. Ask an old person if they could have another 10 years with guaranteed good health if they would take it
ReplyDeleteHi Tim,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response.
I don't think you have examined the implications of the Infinite.
You seem to be desiring extensions to human lifespan measured in human conceivable time spans. Sure, it would be nice to live an extra 10 years, 50 or even 100 years. I could achieve all my goals, see and do all the things that really interest me plus experience a whole lot more unexpected things.
Try writing down everything you really want to do or see or experience justifying why that thing is important to you. I personally have no interest in watching the "Godfather" movies or tasting Monkey Brains but I would like to experience Space Flight, A conversation with the Dalai Lama. I suspect you could come up with 2 or 3 hundred things that really interest you and a few hundred more that are maybe nice to have.
But let's be bold here. Suppose there a one million things on your list that you would like to do, things that would give you personal pleasure and happiness... OK, another million things that would be OK but not as satisfying.
You could experience all of those things, every one of them for as long as you like, until they loose there appeal and become mundane.
Let's suppose one of the things you want to do is to to play the guitar. You will have enough time to become expert, better than any guitarist that has ever existed. You would be able to play every tune that has ever existed or was even possible to exist and you could play every possible tune a billion times over and over, not just for a hundred years or a thousand years or even a million years but playing the same tunes for an infinite time, forever. Never able to put an end to your guitar playing, never able to say "Enough, I've had my fill".
This scenario will also be true for every single one of the million items on your list, Never able to stop and say "I don't want to do this any more".
Many of the things I liked to do when I was younger, I grew out of, I explored these interests to incredible depths. My enthusiasm knew no bounds. But eventually, the things that captivated my imagination so intensely started to become less interesting, even a little dull, I needed to move on and today, those things can't hold my attention for more than 10 minutes.
In an infinite period of time, your list of a million things to do will be completed in just a few hundred million years you will not have the ability to continually move on to new things.
The universe is finite and therefore there are a finite number of things and events in the universe. You would have enough time to count every atom in every planet in every solar system in every galaxy.
You could rearrange every atom in the universe into every possible configuration and experience every event that it was possible to experience in all possible configurations of the universe.... and you could do this a billion times over.
Once you've done that you will not have made the smallest indentation on the time you still have left to live.
Once you have experienced every single possible event in the universe a gazillion times you will still not have the option to say "ENOUGH".
This is an never ending eternal nightmare.
While it would be nice to live a lot longer in perfect health, the concept of living "forever" is infinitely more terrifying than death.
our little brains cannot fathom the things of God. The flesh cannot comprehend the things of the spirit.you see God is not confine, he is all knowing, all powerful, no limit and I got some news for you, you dont just die and thats it that is only for animals. God uses the foolish things to confound the "wise" I think you are just scared of death and has no hope which can only be found in Jesus Christ.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Christian and I understand completely where Paul is coming from. I've also wondered what we could possibly do in Heaven to make it, well... heaven. For all Eternity. Which is why I've been reading up on it in search for answers, and how I stumbled upon this debate.
ReplyDeleteThe quite honest truth is - I don't know. Nor does anybody else, so I'm not even bothered to admit it. I've read through all kinds of fancy guesswork of people who believe they'll be gardening forever, fly fishing to their heart's content, bakers who will bake and people who think everyone might receive a galaxy. Despite the searching I have done, the only useful answer I have found is the following verse:
1 Corinthians 2:9
New International Version (NIV)
However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
What I do know, however, is that eternal life is inevitable. There's no halfway stop where you can be blissfully ignorant forever, there is Heaven, and there is Hell.
Let me tell you of our God, things you might not have noticed. He is the Creator of all things. Which means He understands all things, knows all things, to the tiniest detail. Your sharp sense of humor was created by God, He has it too. Do not think for a moment He does not chuckle at our insane antics. He completely gets boredom and frustration, it was created by His Hand. Your appreciation for what seems insignificant to others, guess where you got it from. God is the master Architect, Engineer, Scientist, Artist or whatever your fascination may be. Everything about you and others that you love or respect is a little bit of God's breath blown into us.
We define God by what we have known and experienced of kings, rulers, and people of authority. We forget that He is our Father, Brother and Friend as well. He's not some cold, distant god, basking in His own glory. He's right here, and interested. In you. I could write pages of His love and grace and all I know of him, but it would simply remain text to you. What I would like to challenge you to do, is to make sure. You have got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Make absolutely, undeniably sure, that whatever it is that you believe, that you are correct. I do believe that anyone who truly, wholeheartedly, wants to know the truth, he will find it.
To bring it back to the original topic, this is what I've come up with. I do not have the faintest inkling what eternity will be like, but I do know that a God who so perfectly knows our hearts, souls and minds, will know what to do with Eternity. He will know how to create a paradise unbeknownst to us, filled with what we have never seen, experienced or imagined (1 Cor 2:9). God does not need us to go and praise Him, He is God, with or without us. But for some unfathomable reason, He flawlessly loves us and wants us to share in His Kingdom. A Kingdom worthy of God. I fully trust in Him to make Eternity indescribable and I do believe that, not for the first time, He will blow my mind. I hope you will be there to share the experience with me.
An infinite God can create an infinite number of ways to make life interesting for infinity - God is not limited by a creative maximum... He knows what He is doing - In this I have faith. :)
ReplyDelete