Identity, personality, and Heaven

[sgriggs3]

Hello all, I come out of curiosity. I have been struggling with my beliefs and raging philosophical questions that I cannot find answers too. I have a question pertaining too Heaven. Heaven is said to be the place we will go to spend all eternity with God and Jesus. There will be no suffering and pain, only bliss. The part I am struggling with is this…

Our personalities are said to come from genetics, environment, and behavioral response patterns. What makes up an individual is their Earthly memory, thoughts, and feelings. Where I am going with this is, when the physical body dies, so does the brain. The brain is responsible for memory, thoughts, and feelings which give us our own identity. Without memories, thoughts, and feelings isn’t our identity gone?

This is what I am struggling with the most. If we lose our identity don’t we lose what makes us, “us”. So in the afterlife, how would I know “me” and that I am actually in Heaven. How would we recognize loved ones? If the “self” becomes separate from its’ Earthly memory, thoughts, and feelings wouldn’t it lose its’ identity. If our soul in Heaven has no memory of Earth then it would not truly be the “self” right? I mean, I have no memory or recollection of “me” before birth.

I hope this makes sense to everyone. Just trying to get a better idea on this.

 

[thenobes]

Hello all, I come out of curiosity. I have been struggling with my beliefs and raging philosophical questions that I cannot find answers too. I have a question pertaining too Heaven. Heaven is said to be the place we will go to spend all eternity with God and Jesus. There will be no suffering and pain, only bliss. The part I am struggling with is this…

Our personalities are said to come from genetics, environment, and behavioral response patterns. What makes up an individual is their Earthly memory, thoughts, and feelings. Where I am going with this is, when the physical body dies, so does the brain. The brain is responsible for memory, thoughts, and feelings which give us our own identity. Without memories, thoughts, and feelings isn’t our identity gone?

This is what I am struggling with the most. If we lose our identity don’t we lose what makes us, “us”. So in the afterlife, how would I know “me” and that I am actually in Heaven. How would we recognize loved ones? If the “self” becomes separate from its’ Earthly memory, thoughts, and feelings wouldn’t it lose its’ identity. If our soul in Heaven has no memory of Earth then it would not truly be the “self” right? I mean, I have no memory or recollection of “me” before birth.

I hope this makes sense to everyone. Just trying to get a better idea on this.

HI, Mr. Sgriggs3

I see what you getting at.

To me however, the spiritual side of us, the soul that is, is an overlay of our physical self. The connections and physical goings on within us are just a paatern upon which the soul shapes itself, and the soul itself inturn lends shape to the body.

That’s why we really are a soul and body entity, and will not be complete until the resurrection at the last judgement where those who are alive in Christ will be reunited with their perfected bodies.

Someone else may have a different view. If theirs is in synch with the Church’s teachings and what I said is not, believe them and not me, as my view is fallible, but the Church is not.

peace
steve

 

[devoutchristian]

The soul is per se the essential form of the body. The spiritual intellect and the physical brain compliment one another. While emotions die with the brain they are not essential to our personality and they return (perfected) on the last day.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Our personalities are said to come from genetics, environment, and behavioral response patterns. What makes up an individual is their Earthly memory, thoughts, and feelings. Where I am going with this is, when the physical body dies, so does the brain. The brain is responsible for memory, thoughts, and feelings which give us our own identity. Without memories, thoughts, and feelings isn’t our identity gone? . . .

:twocents:

there is more to it than genetics, environment and behavioral response patterns
these are assumptions, which may have some validity, but attempt to make the complexity of human behaviour fit into scientific sounding explanations

we as persons are a whole which has features that can be described as body, mind and spirit
if you think about what is happening right here, you can observe that you are seeing a monitor
close your eyes and it is gone; photons are being emitted, striking your retina and setting off a series of traveling action potentials through the optic nerve and through a variety of cerebral structures - this is the physical world
mentally what is happening is light of colour and understanding - your mind
all this is happening within a whole that exists, and does so separate from the beingness of the totality of creation and its Ground - this is the world of the Spirit

at the moment, you are identified with the totality of the experience your mind has elaborated - a “me” watching the screen and understanding ideas
one cerebral infarct and these words will be gibberish - your reason, mind and body are required to construct this

the brain is not so much responsible for mental processes such memory, thoughts, and feelings as it is necessary for these to occur in time and space
these mental processes are the outcome of learning that has taken place because our being human psychological beings living in society

to get an understanding of the spirit you have to leave your thoughts and focus on what is
the spirit has to do with the real, transcending the images your mind conjures to explain reality
there is a dot of being that skims the written page, attends to sensations and thoughts
it is who you really are, identity having been constructed through social interaction
the totality of who you are, knows of your past which it recollects - a process involving neurological events
our existence as spirit is understood not by analyzing, dissection but by opening up our hearts and minds to a greater whole

the beloved’s eyes
reveal His truth in beauty
beyond time and space