Modern people, including most self-identified Christians, are usually scornful and often angry, on the subject of Heaven.
This is because modern people see the world through spectacles of the leftist and utilitarian ideology, which regards relief of suffering - here and now, in this mortal life - as the highest value.
From such a perspective, Christianity is (or ought to be) about Helping People and "Making this world a better place".
When such modern people hear about the idea of a post-mortal Heaven for those who choose to follow Jesus -- they perceive this scheme to be a vile action of withholding immediate relief from those who are suffering, and making that relief conditional.
They perceive a cruel God who chooses to allow the world to suffer; in order to blackmail Men with a promise of relief but only after death, and relief only on condition of subordination to a church.
That's why Christian talk of Heaven is regarded as not just unbelievable, but actually horrible: evidence of the evil of Christianity.
The perception is that even-if Heaven was real and true and attainable by the procedures described by some Christian church; this is evidence for a cruel and manipulative God who cares more for his own power, than He cares about the sufferings of his children.
And this would be a just criticism, If God really was omnipotent in the way described by mainstream Christian theology...
Which is one big reason why the false and destructive (as well as un-Biblical) insistence upon God's omnipotence, needs to be abandoned by real Christians.
Does it follow that if God is not omnipotent he is also not eternal?
ReplyDelete@ag No it does not follow.
ReplyDeleteThese are metaphysical assumptions. It seems to me that it is natural and spontaneous for people to assume tha all beings are eternal, remaining who they are but going through transformations. But omnipotence is a philosophical abstraction, which is why it leads to incoherence/ nonsense.