Thursday, 27 May 2021

If you don't want resurrected eternal life in Heaven - well, then you aren't a Christian (surely?)

If you don't want resurrected eternal life in Heaven - then you aren't a Christian. That seems straightforward fact - because, if you want something else, then you don't want this. 

Yet when I have previously written on this subject, I have received comments and communication that seem to emanate from a feeling of hurt or exclusion - as if I was somehow preventing access to people who (instead of resurrection and Heaven) wanted Nirvana, to be reincarnated to further mortal lives, to become a spirit, or insensible, or have their Self/Ego annihilated. 

(Positively to be a Christian needs more than wanting resurrected life in Heaven - because Christian also requires a conviction/ faith/ trust that this can only be attained by (in some sense) following Jesus Christ - although Christians differ widely in their understanding of what 'follow' means and entails.) 


Reflecting on this strange matter - whereby, for example - people seem to want both 1.) to be resurrected with an eternal body, living as a person in Heaven, in the presence of Jesus Christ and God the Father; and simultaneously after dying to become to be a spirit (with no body); not a person - because without agency or self-awareness; and assimilated-into or absorbed-by a God who is an impersonal deity.  

How could such contradiction and confusion arise? 

I think the reason is simple - which is that people do not think seriously about what happens after biological death - and self-identified Christians do not think much about what actually happens at resurrection and in Heaven. 

Resurrection has become so uncertain, people seem afraid to think beyond it. Furthermore, by some doctrines, resurrection is delayed - perhaps to the 'second coming', day-of-judgment (something not told us by the Fourth Gospel - where both Lazarus and Jesus resurrect within a couple of days, and there is no such thing as the 'second coming'). 

At any rate, resurrection is treated as if far-off, and in some sense is regarded as not-our-concern; and indeed there is a superstitious sense that it is presumptuous (hence unlucky) even to think about it but certainly to speak or write about it. 


I sometimes feel this myself - even though I don't agree with it; that I am 'tempting fate' by 'taking for granted' my resurrection to the extent of thinking beyond it- despite that (in the Fourth Gospel) it seems clear that Jesus wants us to be confident about our salvation (in the same way a young child should be confident about the love of his parents). 

At any rate; this mental block on resurrected life has many malign effects. For one thing, it makes for this confusion as it what is, and what is Not, Christianity. For another, it has made people massively over-focused on this mortal life - as if what happened here and now was the 'main point' of Christianity; whereas exactly the opposite is told by the Fourth Gospel.

Christianity is primarily about what happens after biological death; and that is made clear in principle: resurrected, eternal life, in Heaven, as Sons of God. It is by the implications of this other-worldly fact that we may infer what Christianity means for this-world.  

The effect that Jesus Christ has on this mortal life can be imagined as a glorious light cast back from the reality of our life-beyond-death; and this means we need to regard that resurrected life as real. 


We need to expect our own personal resurrection into Heaven with maximum confidence; need to dwell upon it - including the details and specifics, as best we may. Only thus can we combat the colossal weight of totalitarian materialism that presses-down upon us; a mass and detail of this-worldly-ness - that otherwise would tend to crush us into hope-less-ness and despair.