How could heaven be heaven?

[Muttly]

I am trying to conceive what kind of place heaven must be that we can life there in peace and harmony always joyful, always serene.

What might that actually look like. Does anyone have any ideas. I am thinking tropical island feel with a cool breeze although all physical needs would no longer exist. Spiritual needs are entirely met, I guess.

What would heaven look like for you, who would be there? How are the hours to eternity whittled away? What do people do?

If you read “Take a Break Fate and Fortune” ( which I do recommend, it’s hilarious.. they have a psychic horse!) then heaven is exactly like here only you have more time for your hobbies and the weather is better.
If we do have an eternal soul, then there is no way that we can imagine it’s experience from here in the mortal world. Like an earthworm trying to imagine being the Pope I should think!
Personally I like the idea of my atoms coming from stardust and that eventually they will return to stardust once I am gone.

Personally I like the idea of my atoms coming from stardust and that eventually they will return to stardust once I am gone

Yes there is something nice about this too. “From dust we came to dust we shall return”

There's a poem that starts "Had we but world enough, and time..." and goes on to describe all the things the writer would do with his love if he could.

To me, that's sort of what heaven might be like. The potential to go anywhere, try everything, learn everything, without the constraints of mortality to interfere.

A christian perspective of heaven involves having a greater understanding of who God is. Jesus was the greatest fulfilment and revelation of God’s word to us. Jesus says that He prepares a place for us. We are spirit and our spirits belong with the Lord. Heaven is home. Its wholeness, completion and perfection. While we’re in our fleshy bodies, we lack wisdom and awareness of life and it’s full meaning. The Holy Spirit guides us and helps us connect with the Godhead. Scripture says we are made like the angels when believers enter heaven. We’re also blessed with the knowledge of all things. Heaven is colourful, peaceful and glorious like the Lord.

My relationship with God has shown me that this life is temporary. Many of us are called to bring others to salvation, to extend the invitation of everlasting life. God doesn’t want any of us to perish.

To answer your question about who gets to enter heaven. It’s only those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. If a child/adult of another faith dies never hearing the salvation the Lord prepared, they are saved regardless. Innocence prevails in this scenario. God is all knowing. He sees our hearts so no one can sin all their life and then just slide in an “I’m sorry” before they die. You have to truly repent and seek forgiveness. It’s not something that can be faked.

Hell is a place created for Satan and demons. Mankind was never meant for enteral punishment. Man chose to rebel against God but nothing would stop the Lord from trying to save us. Jesus chose to sacrifice himself, pay the price for sin so we could be reconciled to God. It’s our choice whether we want to accept God’s salvation. God says, choose me so you don’t have to go to hell. He waits patiently hoping all will come to truth.

@HmmGrey

A christian perspective of heaven involves having a greater understanding of who God is. Jesus was the greatest fulfilment and revelation of God’s word to us. Jesus says that He prepares a place for us. We are spirit and our spirits belong with the Lord. Heaven is home. Its wholeness, completion and perfection. While we’re in our fleshy bodies, we lack wisdom and awareness of life and it’s full meaning. The Holy Spirit guides us and helps us connect with the Godhead. Scripture says we are made like the angels when believers enter heaven. We’re also blessed with the knowledge of all things. Heaven is colourful, peaceful and glorious like the Lord.

My relationship with God has shown me that this life is temporary. Many of us are called to bring others to salvation, to extend the invitation of everlasting life. God doesn’t want any of us to perish.

To answer your question about who gets to enter heaven. It’s only those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. If a child/adult of another faith dies never hearing the salvation the Lord prepared, they are saved regardless. Innocence prevails in this scenario. God is all knowing. He sees our hearts so no one can sin all their life and then just slide in an “I’m sorry” before they die. You have to truly repent and seek forgiveness. It’s not something that can be faked.

Hell is a place created for Satan and demons. Mankind was never meant for enteral punishment. Man chose to rebel against God but nothing would stop the Lord from trying to save us. Jesus chose to sacrifice himself, pay the price for sin so we could be reconciled to God. It’s our choice whether we want to accept God’s salvation. God says, choose me so you don’t have to go to hell. He waits patiently hoping all will come to truth.

But an omnipotent deity doesn’t need to allow anyone to ‘perish’. Or to create a hell to which to banish his own creation if it doesn’t jump through arbitrary hoops whose exact nature is fought over between different faith beliefs..

But an omnipotent deity doesn’t need to allow anyone to ‘perish’. Or to create a hell to which to banish his own creation if it doesn’t jump through arbitrary hoops whose exact nature is fought over between different faith beliefs..

However, if an omnipotent deity wants to create beings which can have unity with that omnipotent deity they need to have the power to choose the ways of that omnipotent deity. Otherwise how could they have unity with omnipotence?

I meditate - not every day but I try to do it quite regularly.
After 40 mins of quiet breathing, allowing thoughts to flit in and then out of your mind, calming down. I feel very calm and relaxed and happy (though I hadn't actually thought about that bit before).
But it is a sort of calm, accepting happiness.

To me heaven looks like the gardens at Castle Howard on a warm summer day. I hope I'm right.

I worry that hell is personal so for me it would be 5.20pm on a Friday afternoon in a certain job where my bastard boss would invariably give me one last task around that time so I could never enjoy that winding down Friday feeling and in hell the weekend would never come...

I really love these ideas and perspectives of heaven. There are always going to be cynical postings on this topic and I completely appreciate those too.

In the main I think heaven and hell and God and the devil are human conceptions of things we can’t understand and maybe perhaps even don’t exist.

For me personally I find spirituality offers really good means of meeting psychological needs when there are not other means to meet them. I’ve experienced significant trauma in my life, so for example for me confronting the reality that my abuser will go through life without ever having to face up to hid actions is so uncomfortable that I am happier conjuring up a place where he will be faced with his actions. It actually doesn’t matter to me whether that happens or not for me the concept is comforting.

In times of trouble including my experiences being able to rely on God offers huge mental comfort for me and following inevitable bereavement of loved ones it offers a place to meet loved ones again.

Being spiritual certainly offers me additional coping mechanisms and strategies to deal with some of the chaos and negative experiences I have dealt with in life, many of which are completely random and beyond my control. If it helps me in life and then turns out not to be true in death then there is absolutely nothing lost for me. I totally get how others feel it is much more concrete than I do and others still completely find faith unnecessary.

@Muttly

And in response to just your subject line my first thought was - how could heaven be heaven if you knew there were people in hell?

Serenade my conceptualisation of hell is very different to what I was taught. I believe that when you are awaiting heaven (which I struggle to conceptualise) we have a compassionate supportive being who helps us to reconcile any seriously immoral choices from our lives if we choose to do that. God’s forgiveness for me requires that we ask him for forgiveness with a clean heart, by that I mean that we genuinely face up to that shadow part of ourselves and we are completely open to making things right with God by facing up to any wrongs.

So for example if you consider an extreme example in Hitler he has the opportunity to reflect on his life, on his actions and he can return to any moment in time to learn how to do things differently. He can choose to learn about all of the different choices he could have made, better choices and he could face up to the unfathomable harm he caused. Someone as limited as Hitler would likely never choose to face up to and reconcile his past dealings so he spends an eternity choosing not to do so. An eternity alone in denial about what he has done is his own personal hell. That is my conceptualisation of hell, something of your own choosing, choosing never to go with God because facing up to who you are is so painful. But the option always exists to change it.

I can go along with this idea. It’s the eternal torture that I can’t get my head around. I think if we saw our own actions or even somehow experienced them, from others points of view then it would be hell enough for us to face up to some of those things.

Heaven is a state of mind, it's not outside of us. It's the thoughts we choose to think. Our mind can either become a battleground or a place of serenity. .
Heaven or hell. We have a choice.

It’s the eternal torture that I can’t get my head around. I think if we saw our own actions or even somehow experienced them, from others points of view then it would be hell enough for us to face up to some of those things.

I think this it might be something of our own choosing. If we stubbornly cling onto our own wrong thinking/ incorrect beliefs. This would keep us being essentially evil and unable to have unity to all that is good/God in heaven. So imagine Hell is the opposite of heaven, there is conflict and disagreement instead of unity. Like if someone clings onto hate they cannot have unity in love.

@Serenschintte

The Catholic interpretation of heaven (to my understanding) is that you are with God’s - who is all good. So you are happy in the presence of the beatific vision. I used to explain it to my children as a place where we can do whatever we want. What we will want to do is worship God. Then after the end of the world we will get our bodies as well to join our Souls. But our bodies will be perfect. And we will be happy all the time. I was thinking about this recently about how amazing it is that we are immortal. Scary, wonderful and exciting all at the same time!

I'm a Catholic too and yes it's seeing God the Father's Face and being bathed and suffused in His Love for ever, with perfect bodies that never age nor sicken nor tire. It's shared with the angels and saints to which will be amazing and many of our loved ones will be among those saints. I'm thinking more and more about the 4 Last Things as I age, especially Heaven as I hope very much to get there and that all those I love will too, obviously! God bless and keep you and yours!

I don't believe there is a literal, physical heaven, or a literal, physical hell. I think it's more about our souls being at one with God. I don't think we'll be 'conscious' or self-aware as we are down here either - so I don't think we'll be able to be aware of ourselves in some other form or place, as in 'Oh here I am, isn't it nice,' and so on.

I find it so strange that people can not only believe in things for which there is not the tiniest shred of evidence, but also totally invent their own totally fabricated ideas of what those things are like!

I mean, I get that people find the idea of dying and losing loved ones terrifying and upsetting, and that it would be comforting to believe you are all going to a lively place together, but how do you actually convince yourself it's true?

Also, it's funny how many people embrace the idea of heaven but conveniently sweep the idea of hell under the carpet. People can get their heads around eternal bliss, but apparently not eternal torture...Surely quite a few people's loved ones have done sufficiently bad things to end up in 'the other place'?

Also, wouldn't an eternity of just floating there adoring god and being bathed in his light be quite boring after a while?!