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.
I grew up around in and around Mayo Clinic, Rochester. I cannot help but see the allopathic medical institutions as the temples of the utilitarian moral stance described in the beginning of this post. The religion of safety has one commandment: Thou shalt be Nice.
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad there is a realm where things can't be manipulated and co-opted. And that it's bigger than the human society where such things happen so frequently.
ReplyDeleteWhat would it look like if that was not the case?
If in Heaven all beings are harmonized, then this would mean that no part of Creation could be used against another. You couldn't shape metal to make a saw to cut a tree, for instance. But in addition to using parts of Creation against another, in mortal life we also make use of mechanical processes. If mechanical process is understood to mean the use of things instrumentally.
Could there be a machine in Heaven? Maybe there could be mechanical processes, but I don't think there would be any *purely* mechanical processes.
Though there needs to be a certain amount of cohesion for Creation to work in the first place, but maybe this is imposed top down. So there would be a difference between top down Creation and Creation that is both top down and bottom-up.
@NLR - When Heaven is understood as the domain of loving and eternal Beings, their relations can be imagined as the perfection of an ideal, mutually loving family.
ReplyDeleteSo no Being would want to "use" another, instead they may choose to do things together - create together.