14th December 2012

Heaven, in mythologies ancient and modern, is a place or state of delight and satisfaction, the opposite of hellish suffering. What makes people happy varies remarkably. It's expressed in culturally determined ways - dancing, tasting the best food, feasting, singing together, pampered like royalty, ectatic love-making, absorption in exquisite music or sublime worship, beauty and harmony, leisure and recreation - where everyone's value, freedom and equality are expressed and honoured.

These are just a few examples of what conveys sensual pleasure, a sense of intimacy, or a sense of beauty truth and goodness, touching upon physical and mental, social and spiritual dimensions of existence. Everyone has an idea of enjoyment that makes them feel completely alive and fulfilled, embracing every aspect of our selves, not just as individuals but in relationship to others.

The Scriptures describe heaven where worship and celebration occur continually, modelled on an oriental royal court. Jesus has little to say about it, aware that images can give a misleading impression and arouse false expectations. In response to a theoretical dispute about the post-mortem status of a woman married serially to seven brothers, he remarks "in heaven people neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they are like the angels". Normal social bonds and conventions applied to ordering relationships in life do not exist. They serve no purpose. 

Jesus doesn't say there's no intimacy in heaven. In the story of Dives and Lazarus the poor man is consoled for his suffering 'in the bosom of Abraham' - an image of security and comfort. The prophet of the Book of Revelation speaks of heaven "where there is no more death, mourning, sorrow or pain". The new order is a just and true society, in which all who belong to God inhabit a perfectly beautiful city, not ordered according to flawed human imagination, but by the divine mind: "coming down out of heaven from God". 

Nothing of the flawed and failed sinful dimension of human existence on earth belongs here. No more suffering. It's where relationships between humankind and God flourish as intended, no longer subject to the challenges and pressures of passing time. These images represent our deepest longing to be right with God and each other.

It's in moments of life when, for whatever reason, time seems to pass slowly or is suspended, that we experience "peace which passeth all understanding", and gain some finite sense of what eternity might mean, as a state where longing ends and complete fulfilling joy is found, in communion with God and all humankind. 

Is this an immersion in the depths of the common unconscious? What of our present consciousness and self is present? Or is this the state where ultimately all sense of self can be safely relinquished to receive something infinitely better? The End remains a mystery in which "All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". Where God is "All in all".

13th December 2012

From where we are on mother earth, we look up, and we look out, beyond ourselves and our survival needs. The heavens, represent for us the beyond, all that is above knowledge and imagination, and it's a natural desire to reduce the boundaries of our ignorance. Only in the last few minutes of the day in the comparative timescale of human evolution has our species been able to stand completely outside this planet and start exploring the solar system.

As tiny witnesses to the overwhelming vastness of the universe, we are conscious that nothing we know exists without birth and death. The second law of thermodynamics concerning entropy postulates the death of the universe is inevitable, its finite quota of energy will eventually be exhausted long after our solar system and planets have been devoured by stellar and cosmic processes. 

Such a vast timescale is impossible to grasp, as is the moment of our own demise, yet as Christians we live knowing the  inevitable. We strive to make the most of whatever time we receive gratefully, conscious of life as a gift from our Creator. God originates entropy and isn't subject to it.

Christians hope in God's work of redemption: healing transforming and setting all things free, making a disordered world as it was intended to be at the outset of creation. This isn't shallow optimism persisting in the face of daunting facts. It's rooted in a higher vision of life, a sense of meaning which emerges as we tread the path of faith.

The heavens above are a universal symbol of where God the Creator dwells. Christians believe God's presence is made known through divine activity in the universe, but believe there is more to God's being than this. The cosmos itself is not divine. The cosmos, alive with divine energy, is contained within God's being. The more value we place on the gift of life, the less we can be indifferent to its Author. In trust we look beyond everything known or knowable, longing to relate to God, longing to understand the meaning and purpose of this gift of existence.

From the 'beyond out there', we keep being drawn back to the 'beyond within ourselves', equally unknown. Here we learn relatedness to others. Here love becomes the crowning reality of inner experience that dispels fear, hatred and despair, develops compassion, trust and confidence. Love is a gift we receive at the heart of life itself, a gift we learn to understand and use well. It's a gift that grows as we give it to others.

When we reach out with longing to the 'beyond out there', doing so with love makes for a unique kind of growth in the spiritual dimension of ourselves. It percolates into every aspect of relationships. We look to heaven, to the One from whom redemption comes - we know not how, but we trust in love that it does.