Heaven is not a place or situation of perfect happiness, and people get terribly confused by trying to explain how it could be!
Heaven could, in theory, be a place of perfect happiness; but only by changing people very fundamentally - including permanently destroying their individuality and freedom.
People would need to be re-made as Beings incapable of anything but total happiness.
Maybe this could be done (perhaps by some kind of supernatural-spiritual equivalent of genetic engineering, psychopharmacology and lobotomy?) - and if it was done then the people in Heaven would always be happy, whatever Heaven was actually like.
After all, they couldn't Not be happy!
Such modifications would overcome any and all possible objections of the "I couldn't be happy in Heaven, and would not want to go there, unless..." type. e.g. I would not want to be in Heaven "unless my wife was also in heaven" - or "unless my wife was not in Heaven" perhaps?
The only realistic answer (if Heaven is to be happy) is that in such a Heaven we will be re-made such that nothing could ever possibly disturb our state perfect happiness.
In other words, if we do try to make Heaven a place of perfect and unalloyed happiness, then we have defined Heaven in terms of how people react to it; which makes Heaven all about the constitution of the people in it, their set-up, their capabilities and reactions.
But in reality Heaven is (surely?) what it is - and therefore not how all people will react to it?
In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus tells us that Heaven is the place of eternal life after this mortal life, or life everlasting. He describes its characteristics by means of stories and symbols - in what we might regard as "poetic" or metaphorical language.
Heaven is the "place" where we go when resurrected. Its basis is love. When in Heaven we are fully Sons of God.
Heaven is a choice, and Jesus assumes that some, many or most people will not choose it - will not want it.
We get there by "following" Jesus (the Good Shepherd).
Jesus desires that we shall be his friends, not his servants.
And so on...
The point is that resurrection to eternal life is not described in terms of how we feel about it; but in terms of the new possibilities that Jesus has made available to Men.
Instead of a life of this mortal life of partial and temporary gratifications, lived among evil from others and within our-selves; Heaven is a place of love, with everlasting and transcendent satisfactions.
..As with the "living water" Jesus describes to the Samaritan woman; or the "meat which endureth into everlasting life" he contrasts with earthly food - including manna - he expounds after feeding the five thousand.
But even aside from the descriptions of the Fourth Gospel - based on the assumptions that God is the prime creator, wholly Good, and our Father (and Men His Sons); a Heaven of total happiness doesn't make sense - while a Heaven of eternal resurrected wholly-loving life can make sense.
ReplyDeleteAn important question.
If for the reasons you describe, heaven is not 24/7 happiness then presumably unhappy moments occur.
And for heavenly life to be wholly-loving even amidst unhappy moments and to avoid merely ‘kicking the can’, distinguishing between happy and loving is necessary. Maybe an essential difference between heaven and earth lies in how we respond to unhappy moments. In heaven we stand free in the midst of all that arises. No contraction, reaction, or withdrawal from love, remaining in love, endlessly choosing love. Whereas here we are inclined to abandon love quite quickly amidst little set backs and unhappy moments.
And yet I question what I write. Love seems prior to happiness. I struggle to imagine feeling unwavering love and yet still describe myself as not happy.
@Colin - Happiness in Heaven is just a mistake, and therefore a red herring.
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't need to discuss how a personal emotion could be achieved by circumstances, or squared with Love or Free Agency.
It is just an unnecessary confusion.
Heaven just-is the kind of place (and state) it is.
People who like that sort of thing, will find Heaven the sort of thing they like.
Otherwise not.
This brings up one of the unspoken implications of standard traditional theology. If God is perfectly happy, self-sufficient, and untroubled, then he cannot possibly care about the suffering of his children on Earth, because to have empathy for his children would mean that he experiences our suffering as if it were his own. But if he does have that empathy, then he would not be the perfectly happy untroubled leviathan imagined in theology - he would be the most sensitive "soft" person in existence.
ReplyDeletePresumably the same goes for Heaven. If the inhabitants of Heaven love the inhabitants of Earth, then they experience our suffering as if it were theirs, though probably even more keenly, since they do not see through a glass darkly. This perhaps explains why demons are so intent on torturing angels via torturing and corrupting humans - angels are in fact, infinitely sensitive, therefore Heaven is not a place of unalloyed happiness and pleasure. Or perhaps there is some form of respite, a way of resting from the cares of the world?
@Epi - Yes, I agree that it is ultimately the same underlying issue.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a problem in the Gospels, but later Christians made this problem for themselves - by trying to fit Christianity into pre-existing (and pagan) deism. And theologians have doubled down on the abstractions - such as "impassibility", which is deity without passions - rather than the loving personage of God, ever since.
We have reached a point (indeed it was theologoically evident from after the establishment of Mormonism 200 ya) that we need to set aside the abstract deity, take Jesus seriously; and regard God as (in some human sense) the literal father of Jesus Christ, and we as God's literal and beloved children.
What "literal" means in this context should not really be a problem - the point is that we are talking about living, conscious, purposive people and about love; not abstract entities with "attributes" such as impassibility.
"We have reached a point (indeed it was theologoically evident from after the establishment of Mormonism 200 ya) that we need to set aside the abstract deity, take Jesus seriously; and regard God as (in some human sense) the literal father of Jesus Christ, and we as God's literal and beloved children."
ReplyDeleteI agree. To paraphrase Berdyaev, I sense that this revelation will have to come from within man rather than from up high.I am sure you agree that we cannot wait for some theological committee somewhere to vote this into validity or wait to be swept up in some new external religious movement extolling such revelations. This revelation will have to come from within and, by the looks of it, individually -- one person at a time.
@Frank - "This revelation will have to come from within and, by the looks of it, individually -- one person at a time."
ReplyDeleteYes. Because, even if it comes from (for example) reading the Bible; the individual has to be prepared to set aside conventional external assumptions about how the Bible ought to be read by a Christian. No matter where of from whom we get our ideas, the weight and authority we accord them is going to be personal, and ought to be acknowledged as such.