Heaven

[John89]

i always wondered about heaven… in heaven will you be able to still think for yourself ??? will you know your dead ?? will you see your family and friends ?? can you still see whats happening on earth ?? will God allow you to go back to earth and see your family ?? these are all questions ive wondered about… also when youre in heaven, do you just stand there in a big white place ? what do you do ?? if someone could help me with these id appreciate it, thank you god bless

 

[homeric]

The Catholic Encyclopedia article on heaven answers some of your questions.

 

[Mijoy2]

For whatever reason, God has left “what Heaven is like?” to be a mystery.

We get a variety of answers why this is so. None, so far, has left me with a satisfactory feeling. We (Catholics) use the term “mystery” whenever we are faced with something we cannot answer. It’s our escape hatch.

Pondering Heaven is a troubling and sometimes contradictory topic. On earth we are in constant battle over bad vs. good. I have trouble imagining a life without the battle. It seems a bit like pondering eating without hunger. Hunger, is on earth something we must not ignore or we will ultimately be faced with death (a bad thing). Eating, to counter this “bad thing” provides us with pleasure a “good thing”. If we eat without first being hungry, we are not satisfying an urge to counter this “bad thing”, we are only doing ourselves harm (gaining weight, being generally unhealthy), yet another bad thing.

We work so that we can pay our bills and survive. Not paying our bills leads us to hunger and homelessness (a bad thing). Of course we work for other reasons too, but it appears most, if not all, of these reasons are too alleviate the potential for bad things happening. i.e. a doctor works to heal the sick (healing being a good thing, being sick, a bad thing), a carpenter works to build a home (we need homes or we are homeless, a bad thing, having a house, a good thing).

How do we achieve satisfaction if we have not conquered a bad thing? The student, who studied hard and got a good grade on a test is patted on the back and praised because he/she seemingly understood that his/her efforts are good only because there was a bad that may have resulted otherwise. In Heaven are we guaranteed A’s? If so where does the good feeling come from? I assume in Heaven there is no failing. Maybe this assumption is incorrect.

I have trouble imagining a life were we live without being in a constant pursuit of alleviating bad things or reducing the likelyhood of them happening. When I ponder life in this manner it appears to lend credence to the term “survival of the fittest”, for we seem to be here to survive. We get our life satisfactions from being succesful in our pursuit of survival. If provided with a guarantee of survival, we are lost.

I guess in other words, what I wonder about is, what will we do in Heaven? “Praising God” is often the answer one gets when asking this question. The answer is unsatisfactory. It more answers the question; “how do we pay tribute to” it doesn’t answer the question, “what will we do”? or “what will our existence be like”?

Why the mystery? Why is this unanswerable? Why did Jesus leave this matter alone (not the concept of a Heaven, the tangibles of a Heaven)?

 

[joecap]

I have trouble imagining a life were we live without being in a constant pursuit of alleviating bad things or reducing the likelyhood of them happening. When I ponder life in this manner it appears to lend credence to the term “survival of the fittest”, for we seem to be here to survive. We get our life satisfactions from being succesful in our pursuit of survival. If provided with a guarantee of survival, we are lost.

Ah, I must disagree with you here…
I can easily imagine a life where the constant struggle for survival does not exist…that’s what would make it heaven!
I, for one, get no satisfaction from working or struggling, but I am biased because, being simple and uneducated, have always hated every job I have ever had. I work to pay the bills, not for satisfaction.

In fact, I always tell myself that on the day I retire, I will already have one foot in heaven!

I think heaven will be the pure enjoyment of the love of God, praising Him, and enjoying the fabulous new universe, and being able to do this without worrying about having to struggle for anything.

Remember, eye has not seen, ear has not heard…no matter how great we imagine heaven to be, it will be better than we can possibly know.

 

[Mijoy2]

Ah, I must disagree with you here…
I can easily imagine a life where the constant struggle for survival does not exist…that’s what would make it heaven!
I, for one, get no satisfaction from working or struggling, but I am biased because, being simple and uneducated, have always hated every job I have ever had. I work to pay the bills, not for satisfaction.

In fact, I always tell myself that on the day I retire, I will already have one foot in heaven!

I think heaven will be the pure enjoyment of the love of God, praising Him, and enjoying the fabulous new universe, and being able to do this without worrying about having to struggle for anything.

Remember, eye has not seen, ear has not heard…no matter how great we imagine heaven to be, it will be better than we can possibly know.

I can relate to this way of thinking. I am (hopefully) less then a decade away from retirement myself and certainly look forward to it.

I’m refering to more though, then just working for income purposes. Everything we do in life on earth seems to have a counter balance that, in Heaven, would seem to not exist.

Take the athlete or the sports team. We enjoy watching our favorite athlete or team win a match. But this implies someone lost. If every team in the National Football League won the Super Bowl whoo would watch? We are proud of our child who won “student of the month” (just read the bumper stickers) but this means some other child did not win this award.

How can a perfect society be? I think even a life of perpectual vacation would grow meaningless in time. I think all of us look back on our lives and are more fond of the stuggles we over came
then the favorite party we attended or the best weeks vacation we had.

I just wish we were given a clue of what to expect more then being told it will be better then we can possibly know.

But, I am perfectly okay not getting my own way. Just curious!

 

[cranster]

What is Heaven like. This is one of my favorite Scriptures.

1 Corinthians 2:9 However, as it is written: “No eye has seen,
no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”

It can’t possibly enter into our wildest dreams. Think about it, what would it be like to be in the presence of God who is infinite in all ways, power, beauty, love, mercy, glory, light, intellect etc. there are no limits on God whatsoever. What kind of a dwelling place would a being like that create for Himself… Utterly unimaginable! I would imagine that alot of the things I hope will be there will fade into total insignificance once in the reality. I don’t believe we are even close to as alive as we will be there. I can’t wait, God willing.

 

[spauline]

Pondering Heaven is a troubling and sometimes contradictory topic. On earth we are in constant battle over bad vs. good.
Why the mystery? Why is this unanswerable? Why did Jesus leave this matter alone (not the concept of a Heaven, the tangibles of a Heaven)?

you appear to be stuck in the accomplishment level. let me educate you about the four levels of happiness:

I. Material Pleasures and Possessions
II. Egotistical Accomplishments
III. Intimate Relationships of Love with other Human Creatures
IV. Intimate Relationship of Love with God

The first two levels do not bring ontological happiness. They only enhance. You appear to be stuck on level II, which means you are clueless of the meaning of human existence.

For if in the end, I graduated from high school with a perfect 4.0, then went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, and then became a Gold Medal Olympic Skier, and then led my NBA team to seven consecutive championships, then became the greatest guitar player in human history, being like Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, and Eric Johnson, all mixed together to the 10th power, etc.

and if, in when the night is through, I come home to a house that is empty, I have no family, no friends, much less God, to share it with, in the end then, what good is it?

Why were we created? read Ludwig Ott, Mijoy. Why did God create us? One Reason: LOVE. We were created to give and receive love to and from God and secondarily with creatures, forever and ever. And this love will consist in a gift of supernatural life and love that stems from and is created by the Very Trinitarian Persons themselves.

In the Resurrection, we shall possess a beauty and vision of God that transcends anything that is comprehensible. In the Resurrection, we shall KNOW one another and BE known perfectly. Every instant of our existence, in terms of where we were in our journey with God, shall be known utterly and understood by all other righteous creatures. In effect, for all eternity, we shall all enrich one another with the story of our intimate spiritual lives, our trials and sufferings, and how God loved us through it all.

Even a husband and wife, in the most intimate act, cannot know and give to each other what they shall as brother and sister in the Resurrection. The husband does not know his wife utterly. Not even close. For that matter, the wife cannot even know HERSELF, utterly and totally. For as St. Joan of Arc responded to the trap question in her trial, “Are you in a state of grace?”, she responded only in the limited way that anyone can: “If I am in a state of grace, may it please the Lord to keep me there. If I am not, may it please Him to put me in it.”

So then, the husband does not know every thought and feeling and experience of every instant of his wife’s existence, much less what her true ontological spirtual condition was in those countless instants. Hence, even the marital act, supreme thing that it is on earth, cannot even compare to the unity the earthly spouses shall have in the next age. They will know as they are known and understand as they are understood.

I never hear of a man on his death bed saying, “I wish I would have played more football and had more hockey games and beer with my buddies!” Rather, he says, “Lord have mercy, I wish I would have had more intimate time with my wife and children.”

If all you think about is competition, Mijoy, and football games and defeat, I question whether you understand what Christianity is in its essence?

 

[spauline]

I am sorry, Mijoy, for my harshness above. I am being self-righteous. You probably seek God as best you can, you have simply perhaps never been taught some of the deeper things. I ask you to forgive me for being judgemental.