Club Paradise
November 21st, 2008The imagined paradise by so many religious followers is simply going to be a disappearing mirage whether Christian, Muslim, or others. American churches have too often, consciously or not, created a country-club heaven. Streets are made of gold and mansions are enormous out there in the midst of celestial clouds. This depiction of a physical heavenly realm is enormously false.
The Creator of the universe (God) isnt some grand-fatherly image (to start with Goid isnt a He) somewhere in the mid range between a rough and tumble desert patriarch and a jolly old laughing and kind Santa Claus who cant wait to pass out gifts every day of the year.
Year? Is there time and space in heaven? :-)
Heaven isnt some sort of expanded Garden of Eden with the finest golf courses at every turn where Baptists get to shoot a round or two of golf with Peter and the Saints. And where the Catholics get to hang around for a couple of drinks on the 19th hole with the Michael and the archangels.
And no one has a handicap at the golf course named Sweet Bye-n-Bye. Heaven is not physical. Heaven is not a literal place!God is Spirit, not matter!
I know thats hard to comprehend since we identify so much with our physical bodies. We think this physical frame that we inhabit is reality. Have you seen the Matrix (all three?). The Bible speaks of a new heaven and new earth (will that arrive in 2012?), but NEW means alot more than we make it out to be. Were taklking totally new- material, physical, mass to spirit-consciousness.
Mass just may be an illusion Neo!
Could mass just be an electromagnetic phenomenon? That I leave to the scientists: mainly the physicists like Stephen Hawking, who while brilliant beyond measure, has a few theories not in the right place. I say that because of his statement, When we find the answer as to why the universe exists, it will be the ultimate triumph of human reason- for then we would know the mind of God.
Human reason can NEVER approach the dimensions of the mind of God, especially when were preaching adn teaching a literal heaven and physical God.