Heaven would be Hell
It’s not the Paradise you think it is…
Nearly every Christian will assure you that Heaven is a GOOD place! Everyone always says, “Yeah, Man, it’s the place I want to go!”
Not me, of course. NO, thank you, I’ll pass — I’ve got no interest whatsoever in the place if it exists. Funny thing is, all those who complain so much about “here” could simply off themselves and go “there”, yet none of them ever do.
Heaven is probably full of hypocrites, and I don’t want to join the club these people may be a part of: Pat Robertson, Mel Gibson, Sarah Palin, Ken Ham, Anita Bryant and all those abominable Televangelists — those are but a handful. Add in the executives from all the anti-LGTB groups, the anti-abortion groups; Trump believes he’s certain to be there — there are many others, but that’s a story for another time. I don’t even like being in the same country he’s in!
When he gets there, is he going to demolish the East Wing of Heaven? Drain and paint the Heavenly Reflecting Pool? Pull up its Rose Garden that generations have enjoyed, to concrete it over for social events?
Many preachers tells us “God is Perfect!” but that isn’t true, and God’s Official Manal, The Bible, says so.
What is “Perfect”? Wouldn’t that mean without imperfections? Perfection consists only of Positive Attributes. Is it reasonable to say that things which are Not Perfect or which have attributes which aren’t positive… have Imperfections? God Himself tells us He is Jealous, and Wrathful, and Vengeful. Pardon me while I check my dictionary, but I’m pretty such these are negative attributes.
But I can cut Him some slack; like Donald Trump, He’s been doing His thing a long time. He even tells us in The Bible He knows He’s getting forgetful. At Gen 9:16, He tells us He created the rainbow… as a Reminder to Himself… not to do that again. (If He Knows Everything Past Present and Future… why the heck does He need a Reminder?)
The closer you look at it, the more the Bible’s version of paradise seems like a different version of eternal torture: let me spell it out the way *I* see it:
Perfection
Everything in Heaven, of course, is supposed to be Perfect. Perfect. Again, what is “Perfect”? Sameness. A “perfect” package of 10,000 ping-pong balls means that any and every one of them looks the same, weighs the same, and IS precisely the same as any and every other one. Everybody is going to be just another Ping-Pong ball.
For all of us, much of what makes life worth living is our differences from others, as it is the process of learning and discovery, growth and change. We enjoy novelty, and we laugh because we are startled by the unexpected. Curiosity is one of our greatest pleasures, and personal growth is one of our deepest values and satisfactions.
Our whole psychological make-up is designed for tuning in to change, including our senses.
When a sound is continuous, we mostly stop hearing it; when we look at anything too long, it begins to vanish into the background. Even art relies on imperfection and newness to create beauty or to trigger our aesthetic sense. We enjoy life most when it’s dynamic when anything and everything constantly changes, and when everything forever becomes new.
Contrast that with “Timeless Perfection,” which is static and unchanging, as Christians are reminded in the traditional hymn., “Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise.” — We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree/ And wither and perish but naught changeth Thee.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells us, “Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect,” and we’re constantly informed that in Heaven, everything is Perfect. Problem is, Perfect… means finished and complete. That there is no room for improvement — for our personal change, growth, and learning. In other words… Perfection is sterile — in every sense of the word.
Individual / Personal Qualities will become irrelevant in Heaven
If everything is perfect, many of the qualities we most value in ourselves and each other become irrelevant. Compassion and generosity are pointless because nobody is hurting or in need of… anything. If no one ‘needs’ you for anything, what good are you? You’d basically be good for nothing. (wink, wink)
Where we can often feel useful and gain pleasure from helping reduce others’ pain, that won’t be needed in Heaven. Consider it for a moment: what need would there be for specific, individual talents such as creativity? Or courage? Or resilience? Or decisiveness, or vision, which is one’s ability to take a problem today and imagine how it might be resolved. None of those will be needed. Nobody will be an “individual”; everybody will be just like everybody else.
I remember Sigmund Freud once said mental health is the ability to love and to work, but in Heaven, in the state of Perfection, neither of those has any meaning. There won’t be any need to create or produce, and there won’t be any value in offering our affection and commitment to another person who is 100 percent Perfect and complete without us since all of their needs — all of them — will already be met.
Risk
There won’t be any Risk in Heaven. There is no danger of getting harmed or killed — which would totally take away the thrills we all enjoy so much from driving fast or skiing, or from any ‘daring’ things we might do such as acting or performing. Those are meaningful to us here because we might fail — yet often, we master both our fears and the skills we need to develop to accomplish what we try. In Heaven, there won’t be any chance to fail, so many of the things we enjoy here will become… boring.
Pleasures we enjoy on Earth — won’t be available to us anymore
Food, drink, sleep, sex… none of them will exist in Heaven. It seems reasonable that when we ascend into Heaven, none of us will have a penis or vagina. Jesus said there’s no marriage in Heaven, so obviously No Sex / no need for those. We won’t have an anus — why would we, when there’s nothing to do there with them? Eating, drinking, and sex depend upon our having a hunger of one sort or another, and we won’t have those. I don’t think you could call anyone an ‘asshole’, because A) nobody would know what you’re talking about, and B) that’s probably considered to be derogatory, so, not allowed.
Heck, there won’t even be any fishing or hunting in Heaven, because, No Pain. I wonder, if you did catch a fish or kill a deer — what then? You couldn’t eat them. I don’t think they’d allow fish or deer heads to be mounted in your Mansion; having a trophy would mean you’d probably want to boast about the experience. I’m pretty sure boasting isn’t allowed. And what happens to the carcass, since there won’t be any ‘rotting’ in Heaven? I guess it would just [blink] disappear?
Sex
You can forget about having sex in Heaven. As I just mentioned, Jesus said there’s no marriage in Heaven, and I consider him to be an authority. But it’s reasonable to bet — if it’s Heaven — and there’s no marriage — there won’t be any sex. Ever. Not even any thinking about it. I assume we’re not going to be a ‘woman’ OR a ‘man’ in Heaven, because there won’t be any genitals on anybody.
So you may as well enjoy sex here on Earth — and get as much as you can, while you can. Oh, and you may as well get down and dirty as much as you dare. It’ll be OK — you know you’re going to be forgiven.
Probably.
So if there is any chance you won’t be — you may as well make your experiences worth it!
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Needing others
Since everyone’s every need will be fulfilled, no one will “need” anyone else for anything. Unfortunately, gossiping won’t be allowed — that’s terrible, considering how much we humans love to talk about others. So I wonder: what would be even talk about, especially for an Eternity — without saying the same thing over and over and over? We wouldn’t be having any “new” experiences; we would just experience the same Bliss all day every day forever.
Housing
There are Many Mansions in Heaven. You can forget having housekeepers for cleaning them, because everyone is equal. (I’m unclear about the “servants” thing, because God’s Official Manual specifically authorizes having servants. But that’s above my pay grade.) And they won’t have bathrooms in them, because of course they won’t.
Do you remember how, well, heavenly ice water tastes when you’re hot & thirsty? You won’t experience that in Heaven.
- If you think you might want a cold beer, forget it. All the bars have to offer is Holy Water. (Maybe Sparkling Holy Water, if you want something different?)
- What If? the only thing to eat and drink in Heaven… is Jesus’ flesh and blood? Do they offer Bloody Mar- nevermind.
- I suppose the good news is there will be a lot of blood in Heaven? Because Jesus’ blood is what we’re told will wash us White as Snow? And if Heavenly Dryers are hot as Hell, what if our robes… shrink? Or when we toss them in those dryers, will they come out Angel Soft?
- You can forget the pleasure of quietly admiring the ethereal enchantment of astonishingly beautiful scenery — everything’s going to be breathtakingly beautiful, remember? There won’t even be any paintings or art to admire!
- Or, consider how great it sometimes is to fall asleep when you simply can’t stand to be vertical any longer or hold your book up while you’re reading. Won’t need to sleep in Heaven… so you can also forget the pleasures we now experience from dreaming.
- Plus, it’s going to be Light all the time.
Free Will
As we think we know it here, Free Will won’t exist. Many Christians will tell you that the presence of suffering and evil exists here on Earth because God gave humans Free Will so that humans could love Him freely — by giving us the option to reject Him.
But in Heaven, there isn’t going to be any sin or option to sin or even any thoughts or desires to sin — so, by Christianity’s own definition, there won’t be any free will. We’ll become soulful robots; every one of us exactly like every other one of us, needing nothing, desiring nothing, being refused nothing. We won’t want for anything, so we won’t covet anything — and there won’t be any reason to have pride in anything we do because there’s nothing to do but be Joyful! We won’t even be able to ‘show off’ our possessions, like “dress up”, since everyone’s clothes will all be the same! Heck, we can’t even to go classes to learn anything, because we’ll already know Everything. There’s never going to be anything “new” to do or learn!!
A Heaven full of fetuses
One minor (but major) little matter no one ever seems to think about… is that 99% of all of Heaven’s occupants are going to be embryos in various stages of development plus fetuses that self-aborted (aka miscarriages), followed by infants, older babies, then little kids. I can’t predict if those fetuses will be slithering/sliding around; if so, then where to? For what? What would they know of… anything?
A Harvard researcher once estimated that it seems at least 75% of all pregnancies fail or miscarry (most of them because the body recognizes a fault in genetic sequencing or that the pregnancy, if it continued, would be deformed / defective somehow…). Since those embryos/fetuses/infants never had the chance to “sin,”…. And the anti-abortion crowd assures us “they’re people”…
Well, anyway, the estimates are that there will be at least 350 billion of them up there. You’ll have to watch your step. (If you accidentally stepped on one and squished it, does it work on up towards the 7th Heaven? Would you feel… grief about — well, I guess ‘killing it’ doesn’t work, does it? Would you feel Joyful for helping it progress?)
The ratio of adults to embryos has profound social implications as well. Pastoral counselors often tell a woman she will get to apologize in Heaven to the fetus she aborted, which they assure us “will be a fully developed person there”. I can’t even imagine what this can mean for that environment because the brain and mind, our individuality and identity — all those qualities that define our personhood: empathy, sympathy, feeling, concern, anger, joy and all the rest… develop only via experience. Imagine if 99.99% of the ‘people’ around you… had never made a decision of any nature, had never felt any emotions of any nature, had never had any ‘people’ experiences of any nature, or ever experienced anything akin to an adult conversation; could never plan anything for Tomorrow, had never felt any Responsibility… Could you really call them ‘people’?
Then, there’s the City of Heaven itself
The Bible assures us that Everything’s Going To Be Made Of Gold and Precious Gems — so that Rolex or diamond you’ve enjoyed or wanted so much isn’t going to be very meaningful when everybody has several of each.
I guess there will be spectator sports, kind of: According to the Bible, those in Heaven will be able to look down to those in Hell. Some theologians have argued that witnessing the torment of the damned will be one of the joys of paradise. One superstar preacher, Jonathon Edwards, preached a whole sermon on the topic and informed his congregation:
“When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so exceedingly different from it! When they shall see how miserable others of their fellow creatures are, who were naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the meantime are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!”
To be fair about it, many Christians consider such… spectacles… would be, um, undignified; that there’s something unChristian about our taking pleasure in other’s pain. I would hope perhaps the Heavenly occupants somehow might not even know about the possibility of such… pleasures… existing.
Let’s not forget that Revelations tells us that our celestial day (and night) job is to sing God’s praises. That we’ll do the same thing the angels do: they worship God and sing his praises, over and over and overandoverandov… forever. The writer of Revelation even offers us a sample song: in one passage, 24 elders…
“fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:10–11).
I can only speak for myself when I tell you that if I had to listen to (or especially sing!) the same thing over and over and over, endlessly… after three repetitions (that’s my ASD / autistic spectrum disorder limit) I’d go stark raving nuts.
Further, I agree with whoever once said that the only god worthy of worship is one who neither wants nor needs worship or praise. I wouldn’t be much impressed with some God that… demanded or even needed… endless worship, adulation, and praise. I don’t even like Donald Trump, and I must assume he’s a rank amateur narcissist compared to God. (Though he seems to think he’s pretty close?)
I urge you to keep in mind that this Heaven goes on forever and even longer than that. Think of it this way: consider any pleasure you’ve ever experienced: conversations, a particular musical passage, a particular wine, a scent; heck, even the most intimate and erotic sensuous experience ever — and stretch any of those into Infinity. Would it still hold the same reward and appeal for you? (Probably not…)
OK; OK — I’ll concede that an Omnipotent God might very well create an Afterlife that actually IS some form of Paradise for us, even if it’s necessary that we somehow become brain-dead for us to actually, um, ‘enjoy’ it. So far as we know, it will be ‘wonderful.’ But that, alone, would be the only possible way for me to envision the ‘Perfection’ of Heaven as enjoyable.
Me, my version of Heaven… is that once it’s “lights out” for me, I’ll become just like I was before I got here: nonexistent. I won’t have any regrets about anything: I won’t miss admiring beautiful scenery, won’t have any wants, no thoughts, no needs, and especially important for me, no fears of being alone anymore.
I almost can’t wait.
