If You Were Living An Eternal Life In Heaven Now, Would You Behave The Same Ways You’re Behaving Now?
The above artwork is by Cosimo Tura (1430-1495), “Spring (The Muse, Erato)”
It’s fascinating to me that women back in the 15th century were so involved in their physical appearance, plucking their eyebrows like its the early 21st century.
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If You Were Living An Eternal Life In Heaven Now, Would You Behave The Same Ways You’re Behaving Now?
~ by OneMoreOption
I’m not a religious person. But I work to respect people with different devout relgious beliefs. I don’t believe in any of the humans who thought they were God or God’s only messenger, sent down to Earth to save the day.
I was studying Gothic and Renaissance Art today and these thoughts came to mind:
Let’s pretend your religion is the one true religion. Let’s suppose you’ve lived a life that met whatever criteria your religion deems sufficient to get your ticket punched into an afterlife of neverending reward. If you were living in that environment now, would you be spending your days doing any or most of the activities you spent your time doing when you were on Earth?
Let’s just concede you’re right and you’ve made it into the “most favored” club with your perception of God. How similar would your daily activities be to your daily activities now? Let’s say you’re sitting up in your Heaven, in your own private thrown room. What would your concerns be?
Would you be worried about staying within the ongoing favor of your God? Would you create a perception of yet another after life after that life? Something else to shoot for? Would you still be evangelical in that environment? Or would that pursuit be moot because everyone in your Heaven would agree with you and already be a part of your “select” club.
If you knew you had eternity to act and find time to do everything you wanted to do, would you behave differently than you behave in this fearful, brief life on Earth?
My intent is not primarily to promote suspiscion; rather, I think people may sometimes do more or larger things if they did not have an expectation they might have eternity in an after life to do more.
I’m a person who doesn’t believe in Heaven. The only “Heaven” I can conceptualize is the most heavenly environments I can create and support here on Earth. I don’t hope to do more things in an after life. I don’t hope for some undeserved reward. I don’t hope for eternal existence – enabled through believing in things unseen.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in “The Hereafter;” so, instead, I focus on trying to make “The Here” as pleasant and artful as it can be. And if I get sent to Hell because of that, I’m not sure that’s a deity I’d wanted to follow anyway. What kind of God says: If you don’t love me, I’ll send you into eternal suffering? What kind of God would ask his creations to so hinge their beliefs on what cannot be seen, then when “the truth” is finally visible, He would not allow for another chance or reconciliation? How brutally obscured and archaic are those constructs?
Because I don’t believe in a “happily forever afterlife,” I think that’s a reason I may have more difficulty than most dealing with being abandoned by people I love. I don’t believe there will be an opportunity in Heaven to remedy the relationships that were lost on Earth. So, when I’ve lost rapport with someone, if I can’t reconcile that loss in this lifetime, then for me the loss is eternal. The relationships lost here on Earth are lost forever. The boundaries erected here are the boundaries forever. For me, those losses are a more understandable, palpable, and disquieting “Hell” than some imagined threat of being burned in a lake of fire.
From my perspective, when you don’t reconcile with someone here on Earth, for whatever reasons you think are so important you’ve burned your bridges, then you’re also burning those bridges forever - for the rest of this life and the rest of any hereafter.
But who knows? It’s very likely I am wrong.
If I was living in an eternal existence in an afterlife now, I’d probably be writing a blog and sharing new & novel ideas & artworks with others. Because with my limited abilities, that’s the best thing I can think of doing . . . forever.
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For regular readers: Thank you for the comments and kind words today. Thank you to each of the 3,233 people who stopped by in the last 24 hours. That’s the most since I returned to writing on September 6th.
Tomorrow there will likely be a new post.
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Interesting piece. I once had an argument with a devoutly religious acquaintance (cards on table: I’m an atheist) who asserted that Heaven must be a highly creative place. I disagreed – being in a state of perpetual bliss would seem to me to stifle creativity, which I asserted came from dissatisfaction (you’re not happy with the tool you’re using, so you invent a better one).
Eternal life is a seductive idea (Christianity has done mighty well off it), but the practicalities of a hereafter are a bit terrifying – how could you stave off an eventual state of hopeless, unending boredom? Would it really be possible to find enough things to do to fill eternity? I seriously doubt it…
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Omo: Thank you very much Alice.
Would I behave the same? Absolutely not! I would be pacing in my cell, looking for a way out of my eternal paradox…
(I am so glad you’re back! I missed you. I kept an icon for your site, but i never posted. I really, really should have. All the better, i can go through all your posts all over again. You’ve made an online friend for life! and after life, too, if there’s some truth to that…)
If Lucifer had a reason for rebellion I think it would have been from boredom – or out of protest. I think life is animated by death, afterall, Eros from Thanatos. Connection and separation are so much a part of us, I don’t see how an afterlife could eliminate those things without also eliminating the individual, which was the problem in the first place, i think.
I don’t know, but I’m a follower of Wonka on this one: “I’m not going to live forever.. and I don’t really want to try.” For me, I am earthbound, content for friends and affection, and deeply grateful for the short time i do have (that, and reading another thoughtful post from OMO!)
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Omo: Thank you for sharing your perspectives. Very clever, well written, and thought provoking.
In Islam, the Eternal Life is either in Heaven or Hell. In Heaven you don’t have to work or do anything to enjoy that life; work and activities are required from us here on earth because this what Allah created us for; to search for the absolute truth and discover his secrets in many of his creatures such as all the industrial and technological discoveries to date, humans will continue their search, and while we search we worship Allah the creator according to how we are directed in Quran. If you think we will be doing things in the Eternal Life that we do here on earth you are just comparing oranges and apples; Heaven is for those who were good on earth by the criteria of Allah, for those who believed in his messengers, for those who worshiped and worked hard, the reward is an everlasting enjoyment with “no effort”. Those in Hell you don’t need to know of their life, sufic to know that everytime their skin get burned Allah changes their skin to a new one so that they continue feel the pain, for they have refused messengers from God, and denied the Eternal Life.
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Omo: Thank you for taking the time to carefully write and share your knowledge. I appreciate it.
You may be so used to the story that you are numb to its practical implications. Can you imagine if a human said, “I’m going to burn your skin, then heal it and burn you again”? I guess I don’t understand how such actions, plans, or intents are made any less barbaric when performed by a God.