First, how do you picture the afterlife you believe in?
Second, do you believe you will automatically be filled with perfect peace and joy and (fill in your description of a positive emotional state here)
Third, do you believe you will prefer whatever it is to the experience of being alive, particularly if you actually like life? (It’s easy to imagine the afterlife being great if your life mostly blows)
I ask this mostly because I find the idea of an afterlife boring. It seems to me that the most delicious things are all associated with being alive, and that “heaven” in any of the forms I’ve heard about, would be a complete snorefest.
I’m not mocking (and please, no one else mock. DO NOT come in to threadshit all over the beliefs that other people share, that’s not what this is for. I’m genuinely interested in understanding the thoughts and feelings of people who believe things so different from what I believe. Thank you in advance.) I’m serious. This is why I think the Mormon theology has such appeal for people: the promise that you can basically have the same experience of being after you are dead that you had alive, including love and sex.
Knowing how these threads usually turn out, I’ll probably regret this, but here goes:
I’ve been giving a LOT of thought to this lately since I lost my mom. I find myself really curious about what she’s doing in heaven, who she’s ran into up there, etc.
I honestly don’t know what to picture at this point. (FTR my view of the afterlife is the garden variety Biblical version.) The Bible says there are streets of gold and gates made of pearl - whether that’s literal or figurative, I don’t know (maybe both?). I do believe it’s an indescribably beautiful place. I’ve struggled lately with being a bit irritated that all we’re told is “there is a Heaven and you definitely want to go there” without at least seeing some kind of preview. I don’t know why God set it up like that and wish He hadn’t, but He didn’t ask my opinion.
My view of Heaven doesn’t have people sitting around playing harps all day. I think we’ll have jobs to do. Maybe God lets people have their own universe to play with (not that they become a god themself, but I figure one of the perks of heaven might be having the power to do stuff you couldn’t do on earth, like, oh, blow up a star just to see what happens). I truly hope that we have the ability to learn new things in Heaven. And I hope there’s books. Lots and lots of books.
Another way I see Heaven is somewhat like Earth in the sense that there are places in Heaven. For example, here on Earth you may live in the US but you can get on a plane and fly to Japan. I think travel is probably instantaneous in Heaven but I can see how maybe Heaven has different sections. The Bible says God builds a mansion for everyone – what I’d like in my mansion may not be what you’d like in yours, and since He made us, He knows our individual tastes … so I can see how maybe there’s different parts of Heaven that have different climates, etc.
Oh, and another thing - I think there will be colors we’ve never seen. I also think we’ll be able to experience everything fully. If there’s music playing, we’ll be able to hear, taste, smell, touch and see it. I think we’ll know who everyone is and who they were when they were alive.
And of course … in Heaven you can stand face to face with God and ask Him all of the stuff you wondered your whole life on Earth. I think we’ll have answers to all of our questions and I think things will be revealed to us that we had no clue about - for example, perhaps a near-miss with death that we were unaware of, etc.
Yes.
Yes. I’m pretty happy with my life, too … but yes I think Heaven is better than any possible life I could have here on Earth. I’m in no rush to die (I have a kid to raise, things I want to do, etc.) but this world isn’t soooo wonderful that I’ll be sad to exchange it for what God has promised. Even if I don’t understand those promises, I trust Him. Life, even with all of its joys, is very much a pain in the ass sometimes. I particularly look forward to not needing money anymore - having no bills is gonna be awesome (and I’m not trying to be funny here).
All I know is that what keeps me going is the thought that when I get to Heaven I will be reunited with all my pets that got there before me and we will live happily ever after.
But pretty much everything that PandaBear77 wrote is what I believe too. Very well said.
I don’t believe in an afterlife but I hope there is one.
I like to imagine it like in Revelation 21.
1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’** or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
The rest of chapter 21 continues to describe the physical aspects of the new Jerusalem.
Revelation 22 describes a little more.
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
I’m Christian and I don’t have a strong opinion on the afterlife. My duty is to this life; it’s up to God what comes next. Changing one’s life based on possibilities in the afterlife is missing the point–doing the right things because they are the right things to do.
In many ways, an “afterlife” in the traditional sense of Heaven/Hell/some higher plane (plain?) of existence does sound pretty horrible. At least in the sense that it is commonly portrayed in terms we can comprehend.
First of all, there is the question of how much of your memories, feelings and perceptions you would retain? It seems to vary, depending on which mythology you follow. How much of “you” remains if they are significantly altered? And what would be the point if the answer is “not much”?
Then there is the actual setting. Afterlife has been portrayed as anything from a big field of fluffy clouds (dull), a blank sort of dreamscape you fill with whatever you like, some sort of mundane (but pleasent) analogue of the world we know (think the urban setting depicted in the film Defending Your Life), some other familiar geographic location, otherwise inaccessable to the living or litterally being overlaid on top of the actual world, just unable to interact with it as much (ie ghosts).
And how long do you stay there? Is it just a temporary limbo where you chill out until you are recycled back into the world. A purgatory where you are forced to stay until you figure out whatever the heck you are supposed to figure out? Forever?
Who else is there with your? No one? Other people? Are they actually there or is it just your projection of them? Do they have a choice in hanging out with you and you with them? “Heaven” could easily turn into a hell of clingy exes. Maybe I don’t want to spend eternity with my family. I did say “til death” bitch!
Though I believe in an afterlife, I don’t picture it: I’m pretty much agnostic as to its nature. For all I know, it may be totally beyond anything I currently have the ability to imagine. We may, for example, have 120 senses instead of five. The afterlife may be 7-dimensional, or 20, or Aleph-null. It may be as far beyond our current existence as our current life is beyond what we experienced in the womb. I just don’t know.
Although I do find interesting what C.S. Lewis had to say in his essay/sermon/address “The Weight of Glory” (available here as a PDF).
He’s an artist! Look at how beautiful some parts of the world are. Or look at some Hubble pictures – mindblowingly gorgeous! He’s all about details – why else would He make flowers - mere plants - to give off different fragrances and have different colors?
Here’s a description of what Lucifer looked like before he was kicked out of Heaven:
*
You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared.
*
Pretty serious bling for a being that will eventually be thrown into the abyss.
Solomon’s temple was built according to God’s specs … were it to be built today, it’d cost billions. Parts of the building had floors AND walls overlaid with gold.
If He’d put that much detail into all these things that are one day not going to exist … how much more is He going to make Heaven beautiful, considering people will be living there forever?
I don’t have a physical picture for it; it’s very much non-physical (or maybe extra-physical, in the sense of outside/not limited by/to the physical).
Knowledge. No limit to knowledge and comprehension. Understanding everything (all that has ever been, is, will be) with the same effortlessness with which a normal person breathes, where the understanding we can get while alive is more like being in the middle of a mild attack of asthma.
Well, my mental image is “better than life” by definition; it’s a projection of what I’d like to be able to do, so I ought’a
PandaBear, the bible does not say heaven has streets of gold. People may commonly think this, but its not in the bible. What the bible does say about mansions is that “there arre many houses in my father’s mansion” not “everyone gets a mansion.”
The Bible never promises that people in general “go to heaven” per se. What it does promise is the above, that there will be a new city on a new earth. We will also be given new bodies.
Modern day Christianity has just as much Greek mythology in it as it does Hebrew influence. The modern Christian “heaven and Hell” is just rewarmed Elysian Fields and Hades. The Hebrews had no concept of hell other than the grave where a person isn’t eternally punished–he’s just dead.
When the greeks conquered the holy land there was a desire to unify the cultures, and the greeks and greek-loving Hebrews engaged in the activity of explaining the Hebrew concepts in Greek terms, saying, see, your Yahweh is simply Zeus and all our lesser gods are your angels…the idea continues today with angelology insisting that this or that angel is in charge of this or that thing. It’s also been translated into patron saints.
This passage is addressed to the King of Tyre, not satan. The kings of the day all had a claim that they were god and the prophets mocked them for it. These god-kings were also known as “lightbringers” (head of their religion) to the people, hence “lucifer.” There is a satanic connection, of course, since satan is behind false claims of godhood and false religions of god-kings.
Pharoah was mocked for the claim that he created the Nile, just as the king of Tyre was mocked for his claim to have been on earth since the beginning–in a succession of bodies, that is. The king of Babylon was also mocked by the prophets.
For some reason people think the king of Tyre passage has a literal claim in it of being in Eden, but of course it is a metaphor (not literal) when the passage is addressed to the King of Tyre. It should be viewed the other way around–it is the address to the king of Tyre that is literal while his claim of being around since the beginning is not literal–it’s a mockery.
Of the three passages mocking the god-kings, only this one is selected for this (backwards) treatment. I believe that Bible exegesis should be consistent. Otherwise, since the address to Pharoah is literal, if we subscribe the same treatment of the Pharoah passages as we do to Pharoah, then the claim that Pharoah created the nile is literal–which proves Pharoah is “god.” It is a mockery of Pharoah’s claim as a god-king, in truth. Pharoah is not God. Nor were the kings of Tyre or Babylon, but they all made outrageous claims which put them in the position of being God.
Nowhere in the bible is an angel said to be dressed in the finery of jewels. Nowhere in the bible is it directly said that lucifer is satan. But some people who isolate the passage from the other three have said, “ah ha! since you were in eden, and you’re not adam, eve, or God, you must be satan,” completely NOT understanding that the passage is a mockery. But if one wants to be consistent about things, one has to also believe that Pharoah created the Nile.
In modern day usage Lucifer has become another name for satan because of this mistake.
