Those of us that imagine heaven see it not only as a place, but an event that returns us to perpetual youth, a happy healthy time, perhaps our 20s or 30s, when we had healthy smiling children that ran to greet us, and happy healthy parents still vital and active, and happy healthy grandparents still plump an ageless and cuddling their grandchildren.
And so I envision a place where I will ever see my children as children, my parents as parents, my grandparents as grandparents, and I suspect they will see others in much the same way I see them.
Since no one (I know) has returned from heaven to describe what it's like, I'm very happy to imagine it this way.
And since we know there is no reason in physics why time should move forward rather than backward, and string theory allows for an infinite number of time lines - in which we are rich, poor, happy, sad, never born, or forever young - there is no reason why there can't be place like the one I imagine, called heaven or not, in this universe or another.
No reason at all.
[2013-06-04]
c0
My Grandma Grandy (Mom's mom) suffered from debilitating arthritis. She was for the last few years of her life forced to use a wheelchair to get around (which she abhorred) and spent a lot time in bed when home.
Grandma ran everywhere when she was a little girl. Mom said when Grandma died, she pictured her in heaven running again.
[2013-06-04]
c0
I know that perceptions of the afterlife vary by culture and time and many other things. How could it be otherwise? Having a persistent universal understanding of heaven is no more possible than having one of sunsets, sex, or spinach.
[2013-06-04]
c0
"As goes the church, so goes society. What you think is old fogy in the church... is the church trying to preserve sanity in a world that's lost its mind."--Mike Cumbie, Southern Baptist/Catholic and evangelist
[2013-06-03]
c0
So you can imagine a Heaven where anything is possible, and science envisions an overarching reality where anything is possible. Maybe these two paths to knowledge and discovery are not as incompatible as some would imagine.
ReplyDeleteThe science allows for it. Doesn't prove anything, but it doesn't eliminate it, either. If we can let Bob Greene takes us an mental roller coaster ride on PBS's Fabric of the Universe regarding more mundane possibilities (in some universe I am poor, in another rich, and in still another president of the US), why not imagine a universe in which there is a heaven and a loving God who can, perhaps, cross universes? Sure, it opens up the reverse, there will be universes that have no God, or an evil God, but if anything is is truly possible, then there dies exist in some universe a being that is so far greater than we can imagine that we can only call him God, and he is aware of us, cares for us, and wants a relationship with us.
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