The "problem" with Heaven

[StMikhael]

Little has been revealed about heaven from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 21:4 “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more.”

In the world in which we live, aspects of life such as goodness, happiness, pleasure, success…more; all come with their respective counter parts, badness, sadness, pain, failure.

I find I get satisfaction from a job well done; only because I know failure. I feel happy, only because I know sadness.

Has anyone else (I’m sure I’ll find a few) who have pondered this apparent dilemma regarding Heaven? If we can’t fail; how do we know success; if there is no sadness how can we feel happiness; how can we experience pleasure without pain?

Thoughts?

 

[truetofaith]

Happiness will be in The Beatific Vision of God!

We experienced all the negative things while on earth. No need to have the bad in heaven.

You are putting your human thinking into this.

 

[cerad3]

You are putting your human thinking into this.

So no human thinking allowed in heaven?

 

[John_Martin]

From Aquinas: “The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable… goodness presents the aspect of desirableness”

Evil, or badness, is not some “being”, but a lacking of being or some part of being: “No being can be spoken of as evil, formally as being, but only so far as it lacks being. Thus a man is said to be evil, because he lacks some virtue; and an eye is said to be evil, because it lacks the power to see well.” (Aquinas)

A job well done gives “happiness”, not because of former sadness known, but because what is “perfect” (complete) is desirable to reason. When you do a job well, your are in the presence of the thing you wanted to be real, and it is real and finished in front of you.
A child wanting to learn to ride a bike, falling down multiple times, has that understanding in his mind that it is desirable to be like his older brother and balance as he rides. That is the “perfection” he dreams of. And when he does it, he boasts of his balance in happiness, he does not at all review his past disappointments. He is united with his desire of riding; what he desired is really real; he is satisfied, successful, enjoying a kind of pleasure.

Now, heaven is not the completion of everything, but of some things. In the resurrection will be the completion of all things, which is what Revelation 21 is describing. It is where the things we see “missing” now in ourselves will not be missing. We will be complete with God and from God. And that is desirable. Which means Good. Very good.

 

[Ben_F]

The greatest desire I have here on earth is not to offend my creator anymore. In Heaven I can leave sin behind. All the incompletenes I have here on earth will be filled in Heaven. And it will be forever. Really something to work for. God bless:thumbsup:

 

[porthos11]

Little has been revealed about heaven from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 21:4 “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more.”

In the world in which we live, aspects of life such as goodness, happiness, pleasure, success…more; all come with their respective counter parts, badness, sadness, pain, failure.

I find I get satisfaction from a job well done; only because I know failure. I feel happy, only because I know sadness.

Has anyone else (I’m sure I’ll find a few) who have pondered this apparent dilemma regarding Heaven? If we can’t fail; how do we know success; if there is no sadness how can we feel happiness; how can we experience pleasure without pain?

Thoughts?

We feel happiness because we will be in God, who is joy itself.
We will be successful because the end to which we were created is eternity in heaven.
There will be only pleasure because we are in God, who is joy itself.

The fallacious assumptions are that we need the opposite to feel the good. We only need to be perfect in what we were made for. We are not happy because we feel sad. We are happy and successful because we know, love and serve God in this world, and sad and miserable when we don’t.

There is no dilemma because the joy in God is absolute, not relative.

 

[guycatholic]

Up or Down, Left or Right. Being with the Lord is Heaven. In His presence, I don’t believe we will be capable of anything but unending joy. No “problem” there. I don’t need to experience cold to appreciate or feel the warmth of the wood stove. I just like it!

 

[GEddie]

So no human thinking allowed in heaven?

Human thinking in Life Everlasting will be done from the head of an immortal body, “spiritual body” (pneumatikon soma).

So it won’t work the same way as it does now, in our slowly dying human bodies.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[StMikhael]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate them all. Many have stated an infinite sort-of happiness/completeness/joy. What I have trouble with with this perspective is it’s sort-of, frozen-in-time implication. Now I do understand, time, as we know it and experience it will no longer be. It’s probably impossible for most of us (save a few such as Aquinas perhaps) who can truly contemplate and existence without time. I cannot.

We are still to have bodies (following the resurrection at the end of time). Having a body implies using it. Hands and feet do work, mouths and tongues talk and sing. Which brings me back to my dilemma. If we can do work, can we not do it in degrees? Can’t we have done a better job than we may have done. Will every act on our part be perfect?

If we sing will we always sing perfectly?

Will competition be meaningless because nobody can lose?

Can we feel a sense of accomplishment if we cannot fail?

Will there be no need to rejoice of another’s accomplishments because they cannot fail?

I struggle feeling good over the prospect of something I have power to understand.

 

[truetofaith]

So no human thinking allowed in heaven?

I didn’t say that…trying to figure how you can be happy in heaven without some sadness is beyond our human mind, now on earth.

 

[truetofaith]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate them all. Many have stated an infinite sort-of happiness/completeness/joy. What I have trouble with with this perspective is it’s sort-of, frozen-in-time implication. Now I do understand, time, as we know it and experience it will no longer be. It’s probably impossible for most of us (save a few such as Aquinas perhaps) who can truly contemplate and existence without time. I cannot.

We are still to have bodies (following the resurrection at the end of time). Having a body implies using it. Hands and feet do work, mouths and tongues talk and sing. Which brings me back to my dilemma. If we can do work, can we not do it in degrees? Can’t we have done a better job than we may have done. Will every act on our part be perfect?

If we sing will we always sing perfectly?

Will competition be meaningless because nobody can lose?

Can we feel a sense of accomplishment if we cannot fail?

Will there be no need to rejoice of another’s accomplishments because they cannot fail?

I struggle feeling good over the prospect of something I have power to understand.

Singing will probably be perfect for each particular person’s voice. no flat notes!

I don’t think we will compete in heaven. It causes sin.

Accomplishment for completing God 's will.

 

[John_Martin]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate them all. Many have stated an infinite sort-of happiness/completeness/joy. What I have trouble with with this perspective is it’s sort-of, frozen-in-time implication. Now I do understand, time, as we know it and experience it will no longer be. It’s probably impossible for most of us (save a few such as Aquinas perhaps) who can truly contemplate and existence without time. I cannot.

We are still to have bodies (following the resurrection at the end of time). Having a body implies using it. Hands and feet do work, mouths and tongues talk and sing. Which brings me back to my dilemma. If we can do work, can we not do it in degrees? Can’t we have done a better job than we may have done. Will every act on our part be perfect?

If we sing will we always sing perfectly?

Will competition be meaningless because nobody can lose?

Can we feel a sense of accomplishment if we cannot fail?

Will there be no need to rejoice of another’s accomplishments because they cannot fail?

I struggle feeling good over the prospect of something I have power to understand.

Right now, I have confidence of success at the things I do, whether creating a software solution at work or writing to explain this to you. My expectation is that it will be done very well, that it will be “good” in the sense that Aquinas defines “good” in his Summa (“goodness signifies perfection which is desirable”). So I work in the hope, the expectation, that my software or my words will fit that description, my goal, and I will see the smiles of satisfaction from the user, or see you write, “What you said is true and good”.

Now, I do experience imperfect or relative goodness from my compositions. But my actual feelings in doing the work are the “image” of a good result all the way through the work, so that I feel the completion, the goodness, when I release the software or click the “Submit Reply” button below this little Reply to Thread window. Yet upon the users or the readers accessing it, the relative goodness is plain. Yet I never entertain the expectation of that in my work; I don’t ever say, “this is good enough for government work” and have a goal that is relatively good to begin with.

In a way, this experience is a mirror for what is in the resurrection. We will have a vision of “something” that we want to accomplish bodily, or with our whole being, and we will want to present it to God as “complete”, as “good”, just as God had a vision of “something” called creation and human being that he wanted to accomplish and is happy in bringing it to perfection, to goodness, to share himself in this goal with the creatures that were his goal.

Only envy or jealousy or pride require someone to be a loser in order to feel like a winner. The fact is that effort at doing good work will still be effort and focus on the goal there. You will not “mindlessly” turn out perfection as if you were a perfection machine, just as God does not mindlessly turn out creation and love, but is focused with every bit of his being; on what is he 100% focused? On You. And he is joyful in his labor (and he is in heaven, and not bored, nor is he thinking you are meaningless because he can do everything well without thinking). Take heart.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Can we feel a sense of accomplishment if we cannot fail?

Will there be no need to rejoice of another’s accomplishments because they cannot fail? . . .

I’m not sure I can answer your questions, but they do bring some random thoughts to mind:

• The joy of success seems to be in overcoming failure - once overcome totally, there is eternal joy. On earth things are different because we have not attained the ultimate success of being with God. Here also, because we cling to things such as success, money etc, rather than their Source (God), the joy fades. We get bored and need new challenges.
• Here we try to be virtuous - not succumbing to sin: chastity, diligence, fortitude, temperance, kindness and humility. Once we succeed, this need is no longer there.
• There can’t be courage in heaven, since it implies a risk of death or harm. Having been courageous in life however, perhaps we manifest that trait in eternity; it is who we have become through our choices.
• The questions actually have to do with the nature of death - all our accomplishments under the sun, our success, fame, riches and power are temporal. Only love is eternal.

:twocents:

 

[Partinobodycula]

Little has been revealed about heaven from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 21:4 “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more.”

In the world in which we live, aspects of life such as goodness, happiness, pleasure, success…more; all come with their respective counter parts, badness, sadness, pain, failure.

I find I get satisfaction from a job well done; only because I know failure. I feel happy, only because I know sadness.

Has anyone else (I’m sure I’ll find a few) who have pondered this apparent dilemma regarding Heaven? If we can’t fail; how do we know success; if there is no sadness how can we feel happiness; how can we experience pleasure without pain?

Thoughts?

This puzzled me also when I was younger. I could imagine hell…pain, suffering, fire, and brimstone, this was easy to imagine. Even if that wasn’t what the bible actually taught, it was easy to imagine all manner of eternal torments. It wasn’t difficult to imagine hell.

But heaven, that was a different matter entirely. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what it might be like, for the very reasons that you describe. How can there be joy without sorrow, compassion without need, or triumph without struggle. As hard as I tried, I simply couldn’t imagine heaven.

But then it occurred to me, that this is heaven, right here, right now. Yes I experience pain, and sorrow, and disappointment, and grief, and injustice, and regret. But it’s through these things that I have gained joy, and fulfillment, and compassion, and wonder, and anticipation, and adoration, and hope, and mercy. And these are the things that I treasure above all else. These are the things that differentiate simply being, from being alive.

And so I no longer mind the hardships. For I am alive, and that is a wondrous thing to be.

 

[John_Martin]

As I think about this thread, I see the OP and many comments are about satisfaction “alone”, within oneself, as if “heaven” or, rather, the Resurrection from the dead would also be a place of one’s own thoughts, strivings, successes, all being in one’s own mind (or that here is heaven all in one’s own perceptions and understanding of the same).

The thing about “failures”, however, is that what you desired to accomplish is incomplete, lacking is some way or another. And, while you can feel some satisfaction that you ran the race your best in what was accomplished, you did not win the first place ribbon, you did not win the contract, you did not get the best grade, you did not understand the chapter you were studying, etc. And so you move on to another “goal” to try to attain.

But why move on to a new goal? Because something is not complete. We take on all the goals because we are looking for a real and final goal or meaning to life that fills the void of needing to be complete, or, to be “perfect” in actuality, which is also equal to the term “being justified in being”. While it may seem that we are doing this within ourselves, for our own satisfaction of “self”, we are doing it all to “appear complete” or appear the winner (in truth, not in deception) to those around us, to the world. We want to stand in the midst of others who appear to be winners as a winner, among the others who succeed as successful. And the failures or losses or lack of understanding all indicate we are not standing among them. And yet, we somehow inside know we are supposed to be there as “complete” persons. We lack completeness in our being, what we know as potential we seem to always lack actually, and each goal we strive for is not enough to fulfill the actuality, whether we succeed or fail or don’t try for it.

The Gospel is about a foreign “justification”, where God himself puts a “completeness” in us, puts “goodness” in us when he gives us Grace by his Spirit in our Baptism and Confirmation, and nourishes it at the Mass, and renews it at Confession. We are there now as a “member of the People”, complete, and in everything we do we are doing not to try to be “good”, but doing it as “good” works. We are “exercising the Virtues of the People of God”, doing only what the People can do, works of Faith, Hope, Charity, from the winners’ circle, and not in an effort to enter the winners’ circle. We are not trying to “land the job in the company” by succeeding, but we are doing successful work inside the company because we have the job, not trying for the promotion, because we have the promotion.

The resurrection will be like that, knowing we are with God, in the Company of the Saints and of our King, and experiencing the celebration and gladness of belonging there.