I’m throwing this open to all who consider themselves Biblical scholars, philosophers or just deep-thinkers, at least those who believe in an afterlife:
Do we keep what we recognize as our personalities when we leave this mortal plane? Furthermore, will we recognize departed loved ones when we get to wherever we’re going?
Frankly, I’m not sure. I don’t believe we can quite comprehend what Heaven (or whatever you want to call it) will be like until we’re there, but I wonder if we will really keep that which makes us unique personalities, which includes our flaws and our better natures, when we get there.
Will I take as much joy in “connecting” with someone I never knew in my Earthly life as I will in reuniting with a departed loved one?
One more question: Will there be baseball in Heaven? And will the Red Sox still lose?
The only thing I think we have to NOT have in heaven is the ability to be bored. I mean an infinite amount of time is fine but at some point you’d have done everything at least once and after that everything would just be a repeat. If stayed the way I am now I would go insane. No hell quite like boredom. Other then that I don’t see the need for any changes.
Do you think John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix jam together?
If you believe, as many Christians do, that:
(A) Sin is a consequence of having Free Will, and
(B) There is no sin in Heaven,
then you must also believe that:
© There is no Free Will in Heaven.
If you can contact the dead then they do appear as there old personalities so yes.
I am unsure of proper research in this area.
I don’t know if this is because its all rubbish or because its been swept under the carpet.
Yes, I believe that we do and that we will recognize our friends and loved ones. During my dad’s recent illness (he has since crossed over) he mentioned that both Bernie’s had visited him after we asked if he had had any visitors. After he said this, he got tears in his eyes. His brother, Bernie, was hundreds of miles away and his long time friend, Bernie, had crossed over several years ago.
I don’t believe that our flaws remain with us, however. Greed, envy, hatefulness, all those of a negative nature are shed when we leave this dimension (Earth). I think it’s likely that there will be differences in our spirits’ maturity, but only His love and the joy and peace it brings is in Heaven.
I don’t know now, but I will. 
I suspect so. But the question does not interest me a lot. Some memories of who and what we were, and a core identity, must survive in any “afterlife” that is meaningful – for a spirit to survive but have no knowledge of who or what he was and no surviving identity is tantamount to no survival at all.
“If there’s a rock and roll heaven, you know they got a helluva band.” 
::: ducks and runs ::::
If that’s the case, then that settles it: my personality won’t survive death.
I cannot conceive of “crossing over” as applying some kind of seive to personality traits, filtering out “bad” and leaving only “good.” How can traits be so polarized?
Free Will and boredom have already been mentioned. To expand upon the latter, some people in this “dimension” have a low tolerance for boredom. If they transform into an entity that is satisfied with the proverbial harp-plucking all day, can that even be the same person?
Another complication is Hell. Those who imagine that some of their friends & loved ones will perpetually roast in the afterlife must comfort themselves by thinking that the screams of the damned will be unheard in Heaven. Or that the screams can be heard, but ignored (or enjoyed!). Either way, it entails a subtle brainwashing that leaves the final entity distinctly altered from the flesh & blood version.
Lastly, consider how much biology makes up your personality. Sleeping, eating, screwing… these things are what being human is all about. Subtract them from your existence, and what remains can hardly be equated with the person we call “you.”
–Grump “low tolerance for harp-plucking” y
The priest at my Buddhist temple says that death is exactly like life, except that since you have no physical body, you cannot affect anything on the physical plane, therefore the laws of cause and effect do not apply to you. I interpret this to mean that your consciousness, in all respects, would remain intact after death, personality and all.
I sincerely hope so.
I’ve seen various people and denominations espouse views similar to Edlyn’s, suggesting that in heaven/paradise there will be no anger, no lust etc. I hope they’re wrong. A large part of what I am is based upon these so-called negative emotions. My greed and narcissism are what keep me working hard and striving for success, my envy is a large part of what makes me try to better myself, my hatefulness and anger are logical and inevitable extensions of my intolerance of what I consider ‘evil’. I may not be expressing this very well, but I really think that if I lost the capacity for all these emotions I would no longer be me.
I can understand having the ability to control these emotions being a blessing of perfection, but not actually having them removed.
If I have to be lobotomised and castrated to enter heaven then I’m not interested in going.
Yeah, but you gotta think outside the box. Boredom = too little to do divided by too much time. But if the concept of “time” becomes irrelevant, then the equation no longer makes sense.
“When they are truly His they will be more themselves than ever.”
- CS Lewis
It’s all about trust. Some of the arguments against heaven itself are really pretty squalid, if you’ll forgive me. The very idea that it could be boring totally negates the question. The whole point of heaven is that it’s perfect. Otherwise it’s not heaven you’re talking about - it’s something else, and while your arguments may be very well crafted they’re just answering the wrong question. So rather than assume heaven will be boring because you don’t like the mythos that has built up around it, why not question the mythos? Nobody said we’d be on clouds, and nobody said there’d be no anger. Our ideas of what should get into heaven and what shouldn’t are BY DEFINITION USELESS. Heaven was not designed by us, and damn good thing too, or it’d be just like earth!
So you have to accept that when you are changed, transfigured, as you enter the gates of heaven, it will be into something better for all concerned! Forget about what you think: haven’t we realised yet that we’re dumb? That there’s no point accepting God’s reality then questioning His right to be God? You cannot choose to hang onto one part of your personality because YOU think it’s worthwhile, because that means God is making the wrong decision, which means He isn’t God in the first place, which short-circuits the entire argument. We must always begin by assuming God is God.
As for scripture, it’s mind-numbingly complex and also relatively simple (because, thank God, we don’t have to fit it into our minds anyway). We become like Christ - http://www.freedominchrist.com/whoiam.htm . We are already like Him on earth, if we have chosen to take that step, and God sees us that way, however we may wrongly see ourselves. I’m a Christian and my mind is clearer and sharper and more purposeful than it ever was when I was sitting around cursing God. I just let Him be God. HE IS A LOVING FATHER, y’know! He does know what’s best! All we have to do is accept that we’re children!
Honestly, if you don’t want to mature into what He has for you, it’s just like a ten year-old refusing to go to school on the grounds that no good parent would ever insist he give up his belief in a flat earth. I think God probably spends more time waiting for us to stop stamping our feet and defending anger and lust than any human parents would ever spend with their child. How damaged we are.
I don’t think it’s defiance — at least not on my part — that makes me reluctant to give up what I perceive to be my personality, or even that of people I have known. It’s just an inability to comprehend what happens when we are, as Ross calls it, transfigured.
Normally, I’m bored by discussions about what happens in the afterlife, (i.e. “Are damned souls annihilated or do they burn for eternity?”) I don’t plan on having to find out, and there’s nothing I can do about it if I knew (save for having accepted Christ’s gift in the first place.)
Nor, am I worried about boredom or having to learn the harp, unless it’s a blues harp.
It’s just that there seem to be many Earthly pleasures — and I mean this in the most wholesome way — that would be a shame not to include in Heaven. I’ll use my only half-joking question about baseball as an example.
If there is baseball in Heaven, then there also is loss in Heaven, because there is no joy in winning, if there is also not the possibility of losing a game. And if you allow baseball, then you must allow for the possibility of mistakes, because without errors or limitations, there is nothing to overcome in making a spectacular catch, poking a line drive past an infielder or catching a runner attempting to steal second.
Much the same can be said for other things that many of us enjoy and would seem to assume will be there in Heaven, including music, literature, food, conversation and yes, I’ll say it, sex.
I am not trying to be trivial or difficult here. It’s just that having been given these gifts on Earth, I can’t believe they would be denied us in Heaven. But accepting these gifts requires the payment of occasional loss and even pain, for without these, then the gifts become meaningless, bland and without joy.
Just, as I fear, a personality without faults would be.
“Pains they may still have to face… but they embrace those pains.”
- CS Lewis again
Of course there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be music, literature, food, conversation. There will not be sex as we understand it, because if you’re going strictly biblically “in heaven they will be like the angels, neither male nor female” - but there’ll be something indescribably more beautiful, refreshing and ecstatic. I’m sorry if I got a little overheated in my reply.
Losing a game isn’t all a bad thing, and the part of it which is not bad will remain. Good and bad have become viciously entangled, of course, and it takes some heavy pruning to get us free, but it can be done. A good gardener is worth trusting. As for loss, the whole system of salvation is crowned with loss, so it’ll be there. It’s not personality faults that will have no place in heaven - it’s evil. As defined by God, not us. We’ll be surprised what gets in, and what doesn’t.
I always imagined that the Christian heaven consists simply of being with God, having a much more direct connection than we can achieve on Earth. I cannot imagine any pleasure greater than that.
The version of Heaven where people are hanging around on clouds talking to other dead people, with God still as the Big Guy Running Things, and maybe you get a glimpse of Him now and then, just seems like the product of an impaired imaginination–people who can’t comprehend that life in Heaven could be significantly different from life on Earth.
Knowing and understanding God in such a profound way would certainly make you a different person from who you were in this life.
The idea that one still has a physical body in Heaven has always irritated me. Seems like a dumb way to do it. But, if I make it in (Ha! Fat chance!) I guess I’ll understand it.
Indeed.
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” — Jesus
Libby! Where ya been?
Well, there is also the Free Spirit belief that one can be “born of Spirit” while on Earth – but this requires a death to nature. Thus by obliterating one’s own soul apart from God and hence becoming one with the Holy Spirit one attains God. Since the Spirit can’t be divided against herself, when this is all the remains it is what can not perish – not to presume upon God’s mercy of course (it is hard to explain this the way they explain it.)
I find their answer to the OP rather elegant, really.
First off, this is very peculiar, because this is the fourth time in the past month I have encountered someone comparing the non-religious to flat-earthers. Who started this? And how can I make it stop?
More importantly, the question still lingers for me: If individuals are “transfigured” or otherwise altered when entering the stage beyond death (assuming there is one), it makes me wonder what connection that transfigured entity has to the person I am now.
Take personal relationships. We struggle to balance our social lives, make friends, woo spouses. But in Heaven (as I read it), there is no marriage. Why make friends in this life if it is unimportant to who you are in the “next”?
Not that I deny that your are transfigured upon death (I do, but go along with me on this). When you die in the Christian scheme, you are confronted with undeniable proof of God’s existence: you either meet him, or he tells you to get lost (or his secretary does). Sadly, God doesn’t seem to allow anyone to make the choice then & there whether to believe or not. You have to make your decision before you die (often in the absence of conclusive evidence). Therefore I conclude that humans neccessarily undergo change in this scenario: they lose the ability to choose God. Don’t ask me why, though.
–Grump “flat tired” y
Is this a reference to the old joke? Dave and Bob are avid baseball fans. They both agree that Heaven just wouldn’t be heaven if there were no baseball there. One day, while sitting out on the porch discussing the scores, they agree that whichever one dies first will contact the other and tell him if there is baseball in Heaven. One sad day, Bob dies. That night, Dave is elated to see his old friend standing at the foot of his bed, beaming down at him. “Bob!” he cries. “You did it! You came all the way back to talk to me!” “Yes,” says Bob. “And I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is, there is baseball in heaven.” “Great!” cries Dave. “And the bad news?” “You’re pitching Saturday.”
Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
All the ghosts I’ve ever talked to have had personalities, and the ghosts I’ve talked to that I knew when they were alive had the same personality they had when they were alive. So yes, we do keep our personalities in the afterlife.
Naahhh…that doesn’t work. Because the whole reason you got into heaven in the first place is that you were able to live sin-free in spite of your free will. So heaven is just a continuation of your sin-free life.
OR…even if there is no Free Will in Heaven, it would certainly make the afterlife happier, in the sense that dogs are happy.