G.K. Chesterton said to be a Christian is to long for another world - to feel homesick even when you’re at home.
Do members of other religions feel that longing for a world other than this one? Do they sometimes also express the thought that ‘This world is not my home’?
Islam? Judaism? Buddhism? What about atheists? Agnostics?
What exactly do you mean by “another world?” Are you referring to some form of messianic age? An after-life experience? Something else entirely?
Please rephrase your question.
Zev Steinhardt
One difference between many Eastern faiths from Judaism/Christianity/Islam is the belief in reincarnation. For the latter existence on this world is a very short period relatively speaking. When the faith involves reincarnation, this world becomes more significant.
Good question. I am not referring to any specific event, or anything to do with any doctrine. Not a Second Coming, not an afterlife that begins after we die, and not life on board a big spaceship.
I’m referring to a sense, that some but certainly not all Christians have, that ‘This world is not my home.’ That feeling we are strangers here. That we’re somehow exiled or misplaced. There are many Christian hymns and gospel songs that mention coming or going home - Softly and Tenderly, Green Pastures, This World is Not My Home, to name a few.
Well, a notable number of Muslims longed enough for paradise and 72 virigins, to blow themselves up in this world in hopes of getting to heaven.
The very focus and essence of Christianity can be distilled down to saying that this world is a shit-pile and temporary, and that the next world (“heaven”) is paradisical and eternal. Hence, Chesterton can comment on a feeling of alienation from this world.
Within Islam, there are different emphases with different sects. There is certainly a notion of an after-life, and it is used by many fanatics to stir up suicide missions. However, I think that most mainstream Muslims would say that what is important is obedience in THIS world.
Judaism focuses much more strongly on perfecting THIS world, on being a partner with God in the completion of the world. The primary focus is the here-and-now rather than some unknown and unknowable future world.