Scott Carson makes some thoughtful comments in his blog about a recent Time Magazine interview with Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright on the subject of concepts of heaven.
I was interested in Bishop Wright's comments because they were much like what I believed about heaven when I was a Christian. (I once shocked a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses by agreeing with them that Jesus will rule on the earth.)
As I read Wright's interview, it occurred to me that ruling the new earth sounds like a recipe for an eternal Excedrin headache. It makes Scott's facetious remark about eternally milking the cows sound idyllic.
Scott's suggestion is "Don't worry about what it's like; it just is."
I think the point he's making is to not try to project too much of what this life is like into the next one. If we weren't at all concerned about what heaven is like, we couldn't say anything about it at all. After all, it would certainly be a bummer if heaven turned out to be like the popular image of hell.
So what can we say about heaven? To me, that's the tough question. I can't come up with a plausible description. What that says to me is that I can't conceive of an afterlife.
I was interested in Bishop Wright's comments because they were much like what I believed about heaven when I was a Christian. (I once shocked a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses by agreeing with them that Jesus will rule on the earth.)
As I read Wright's interview, it occurred to me that ruling the new earth sounds like a recipe for an eternal Excedrin headache. It makes Scott's facetious remark about eternally milking the cows sound idyllic.
Scott's suggestion is "Don't worry about what it's like; it just is."
I think the point he's making is to not try to project too much of what this life is like into the next one. If we weren't at all concerned about what heaven is like, we couldn't say anything about it at all. After all, it would certainly be a bummer if heaven turned out to be like the popular image of hell.
So what can we say about heaven? To me, that's the tough question. I can't come up with a plausible description. What that says to me is that I can't conceive of an afterlife.
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