Where was God when my wife died

[josh987654321]

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I forgot to add in one of my previous posts something I picked up from the TV psychologist Dr Phil which I believe is very true, is, remember that the length of time you grieve is not a measure of how much you loved your wife.

God Bless

Thank you for reading
Josh

 

[Nan_S]

So when you suggest that we could get bored, I would say, remember that heaven, God, is outside of time, as it say’s in the Gospels, God is not slow with keeping His promises, it’s just that 1 day is like 100 years and 100 years is like 1 day for Him,God Bless

Thank you for reading
Josh

Because God transcends time and experiences everything “all-at-once” there is no such thing as a slow-to-keep promise. God has already fulfilled the promise, is in the process of fulfilling the promise, and always will fulfill the promise.

It just takes us a while to catch up with Him.

You mentioned Screwtape. If you’ve never heard, Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord of the Rings) recorded The Screwtape Letters for Focus on the Family Radio Theater. It’s one of my absolute favorites. You can get a taste of it here:
screwtape.com/

 

[josh987654321]

Because God transcends time and experiences everything “all-at-once” there is no such thing as a slow-to-keep promise. God has already fulfilled the promise, is in the process of fulfilling the promise, and always will fulfill the promise.

It just takes us a while to catch up with Him.

You mentioned Screwtape. If you’ve never heard, Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord of the Rings) recorded The Screwtape Letters for Focus on the Family Radio Theater. It’s one of my absolute favorites. You can get a taste of it here:
screwtape.com/

Thank you Nan S

 

[oldcelt]

I’d like to hear someone explain how a being that exists outside of time can influence events within time.

 

[Nan_S]

I’d like to hear someone explain how a being that exists outside of time can influence events within time.

You’ve discussed this plenty of times before in other more appropriate threads. If you didn’t get a satisfactory answer there, you won’t get one here either.

Please don’t hijack a thread opened by a man struggling with grief over the loss of his wife.

Thanks.

 

[inocente]

Time doesn’t exist in heaven.

I don’t think it’s possible to analyse the nature of heaven in great detail but I’m sure being reunited with your wife will give you the greatest joy you could ever experience. You will never want to be parted again from her - or from Our Lord and the saints.

Love inspires us to be creative and appreciate the beauty of what God and His children create. The great masterpieces of art, music, literature and philosophy in this world give us some idea of the unfulfilled potential and power of reason, emotion and imagination. The sheer size of the universe makes us realise how little we know about eternal life. As Hamlet said, there are far more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy…

If time doesn’t exist in heaven then it would seem hard to make sense of lines such as “The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time” (Gen 22:15) or “At that moment heaven was opened” (Matt 3:16). And how could we experience anything changelessly?

John 17:3, of course, defines eternal life simply as knowing God.

I was hoping a philosopher or theologian has tackled these kinds of question in depth.

 

[inocente]

That reference is that of St. Stephen’s vision as he was being stoned to death for the sake of Christ. What it says is that even in our worst sufferings Christ sees and knows all and he is supporting us. He never promised we’d have a life free of pain, suffering, persecution. Indeed, he promised just the opposite. To embrace Christ is to embrace the cross for without the cross there can be no redemption.

Oh right, that makes sense.

*It’s not metaphorical it’s spiritual–those terms are not interchangeable. And indeed, our hands helping others are God’s hands in this world. Sometimes he steps in and allows healing and other miracles to happen, but that is for his glory as much as for our good. By and large, we are to be Christ in the world. That’s why we’re here.
*

Agreed.

Which is why the Bible isn’t enough. it’s doesn’t speak for itself, it needs an interpreter, as do all written documents sacred or otherwise. Who has been given God’s word but his Church? Seek your answers in her because Jesus promised he would lead his Church into all truth.

Maybe we’ll meet in Apologetics some time.

You are thinking in strictly physical terms not spiritual. You’re like Nicodemus asking Jesus how he could enter into his mother’s womb to be born again. We have to look beyond the merely physical understanding of time and space. Eternity is now–not some day. And it doesn’t last years because time has no meaning in eternity. It is the eternal now–when everything is what it is. What name did God give Moses when he asked God for his name? He said, “I am that I am.” IOW, he simply is. Time has no meaning to God. He exists outside time and space, which are his creations. We too will exist outside time and space after the resurrection of our bodies, whether that be with God or without him.

As with Tony above, there are many questions here. Such as, why would we need a body outside time and space? Indeed does a body make any sense outside time and space? (calling it a spiritual body would seem to torture the English language). I vaguely remember past threads on the nature of heaven and how there seemed to be as many views as there were posters!

 

[inocente]

Welcome back, inocente.

My condolences on your loss. I’ll pray for you today, and if you don’t mind, I’ll pray for the repose of your wife’s soul at my Mass tomorrow…

Thank you, that is very kind.

To be fair, when posting in an apologetics or philosophy forum here, you’re asking to be engaged in a conversation about theology, not asking for compassion or condolences. I’ve seen much of the latter in our prayer forums, though. Either way, though, considering that you’re reaching out today for compassion, please know that our thoughts and prayers are with you…

I posted this in the philosophy forum partly because it’s where I’ve spent most time, but also because I know people like to debate here, and debate engages me. That helps to take my mind off my grief and open me up to others. This is what professionals recommend.

For anyone coping with bereavement, this has only recently been recognized as important. In the West there has always been a propensity to concentrate on grief (looking back, wearing black for a year and so on), but this increases the chance of clinical depression. Other cultures concentrate more on what is called restoration, on looking forward. I’ve only studied this a little, but for instance:

*“The Muslim community on the island of Bali would be described as restoration-oriented, showing little or no overt sign of grief and outwardly continuing daily life as though nothing untoward had happened. By contrast, the Muslim community in Egypt expresses their grief openly, gathering together to reminisce and share anguish over their loss.” - baywood.com/comppdf/0030-2228.pdf (pdf, Stroebe & Schut, page 283) *

You spoke of ‘fairness’ in one of your posts in this thread. I’ve meditated on that question recently, especially in the context of the young man in California who recently committed a killing spree, before killing himself. He was mentally disturbed, to be sure, but his perspective was that it “wasn’t fair” that other young people were having sex and he was not, and therefore, it was clear to him that there was an inherent unfairness in life. My ruminations led me to ask the question “what does ‘it isn’t fair’ mean, really?” It seems to me that, on some level, it means that we believe that we are entitled to some good which we are not receiving. So, the question boils down to the question of what God owes us. OldCelt would have us believe that there is no God, since we don’t get what we perceive of as our due. I’m not at all certain that this is a reasonable perspective.

Americans really should do something about gun control. Did none of them ever read Hobbes’ Leviathan on how to organize a fair and equitable society? You write well btw.

*Rather, we need to ask ourselves what it is that God has given us – and what obligations God assumes by virtue of that gift. As Christians, we also – I think – must ask what we’ve forfeited, individually and as the human race, by virtue of our choice to reject God and to sin.

So, in a way, you’re right, inocente – at this point in your life, I’m not certain that you want to debate*, but rather, you need to grieve. When you want to discuss the question at a theoretical, theological level, however, it might be helpful to discuss what it is that God does (or doesn’t) owe us. Does He owe us a long life? Does He owe us any minimum amount of time on this earth? Has He ever promised us a certain length of time here? Or, rather, do His promises have to do with eternal life, lived in heaven?

From what you say I think us two are probably agreed that getting angry with God about fairness is, as it were, unfair to God.

Though I suspect we would disagree about exactly why it is unfair.

I’m fine with discussing it here, but perhaps a new thread would open it out to others who are interested. What sayest thou?

I’ll be praying for you, brother…

Thank you.

 

[Gorgias]

Such as, why would we need a body outside time and space? Indeed does a body make any sense outside time and space?

Well, strictly speaking, it seems that there will be ‘space’; that is, in the eschaton, we have been told, we’ll be raised with bodies. So, although we don’t know much about those glorified bodies, it would seem that there will be some sort of physical extension in heaven for eternity.

The question of time, then, is an interesting one. Aristotelian philosophy describes time as a measure of change. In that context, then, we see time as part-and-parcel of this physical universe. Will this exact notion of time be present in the eschaton? It’s difficult to see how it would. By the same token, however, it’s difficult to see how there wouldn’t be something akin to time, given the fact that there will be a ‘new earth’ to go along with a ‘new heaven’. The $64,000 question, though, is what the nature of that ‘new time’ might be. When the issue is discussed, the debate seems to get stuck on emotional terms – the notion of ‘statis’ (and subsequently, of ‘boredom’) gets juxtaposed against the consideration of the differences between ‘eternity’ and ‘a really long time’.

I vaguely remember past threads on the nature of heaven and how there seemed to be as many views as there were posters!

Yep; until we’re ‘there’ – and by that, I mean both ‘on the other side’ and ‘in the eschaton’ – we don’t really know details of this sort, due to the lack of this kind of description in Divine Revelation!

 

[inocente]

I may not always know why we suffer, but I do know that it’s not because God doesn’t love us, God loved us so much that He gave his only son and in turn the son loved us so much that he gave His own life for us (The love of agape confirmed through works by the father and the son). I believe actions speak louder than words and such actions speak volumes for an all loving and merciful God. (I believe our suffering has to do with our sin and our fallen world that we live in).

You’ll know that this issue, the issue of why there is suffering, is called The Problem Of Evil and some posit there is natural evil, meaning the natural processes such as disease and earthquakes which result in victims.

Though as a Baptist, I’m allowed to believe that we are not in a fallen world, this is the world as God intended and therefore natural evil is not caused by A&E, it is just how the world is. Therefore asking why God didn’t make it different is a bit redundant, we’re here because we’re here because we’re here, God is what He is because He is what He is.

*I think what your trying to imagine would be like trying to get a man born deaf to imagine what it would be like to hear, or trying to get a man born blind to imagine what it would be like to see, I believe we simply don’t have the faculties to fully appreciate what Heaven is going to be like, in other words, I believe we will never fully understand until we are on the other side. So when you suggest that we could get bored, I would say, remember that heaven, God, is outside of time, as it say’s in the Gospels, God is not slow with keeping His promises, it’s just that 1 day is like 100 years and 100 years is like 1 day for Him, in fact when it comes to our Catholic mass, it is said that we are all brought to the foot of Jesus’ cross at the instance of the crucifixion, so as the examples above, I believe we will never be able to fully appreciate or grasp the reality of heaven until we are on the other side and as has been revealed to us through Jesus, it is greater than we could ever imagine. *

I have some sympathy for this view, I like there to be concepts which are too great to be put into words, but let’s remember that hell has been articulated in excruciating detail over the years, so it’s hard to see why heaven can’t be described even in outline. After all, we are to spend eternity in one or the other…

I just found that Peter Kreef gives some fairly detailed answers about heaven. I’ll read it properly later but I don’t think he says heaven is timeless or indescribable.
catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0462.html

 

[inocente]

I forgot to add in one of my previous posts something I picked up from the TV psychologist Dr Phil which I believe is very true, is, remember that the length of time you grieve is not a measure of how much you loved your wife.

Yes, thanks. There is a lot is misinformation about supposed stages of grief (there aren’t) but neuroscientists have shown (via scanners) that it is what’s called a neural network, which means that it is a complicated process, we should expect that each of us will experience it differently. So that’s strong evidence that no one should feel guilty about how they grieve.

 

[inocente]

You’ve discussed this plenty of times before in other more appropriate threads. If you didn’t get a satisfactory answer there, you won’t get one here either.

Please don’t hijack a thread opened by a man struggling with grief over the loss of his wife.

Thanks but that’s OK Nan, as I said to Gorgias, a bit of debate helps me forget myself. But as you say, somewhat off-topic.

 

[Nan_S]

If time doesn’t exist in heaven then it would seem hard to make sense of lines such as “The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time” (Gen 22:15) or “At that moment heaven was opened” (Matt 3:16). And how could we experience anything changelessly?

John 17:3, of course, defines eternal life simply as knowing God.

I was hoping a philosopher or theologian has tackled these kinds of question in depth.

Picture a child’s rubber balloon and an ant.

Originally the balloon was very tiny. In fact the balloon was so tiny that the ant could stand on the balloon and touch all places on it at once. The ant didn’t need to move to do so. He was simply “there.”

Then the Breath of God inflated the balloon. Suddenly it went from teensy-tiny to huge. No longer was the ant everyplace at once on the balloon, and he started scurrying frantically around the outside of the balloon to touch as many places as he could.

God, of course, was not constrained by the enormous size of the balloon. God reached out and touched the balloon in several spots.

As the ant scurried along he encountered God HERE, and then THERE, and then OVER THERE he encountered God for quite some distance because God’s finger touched a large expanse of the balloon.

From the ant’s point he encountered God once, then a second time, then a third time when he had God with him for quite a while.

From God’s point of view He merely touched several spots all at once.

God, of course, is God. The ant is you. The balloon is the universe, and the perimeter of the balloon is Time. The ant is traveling the perimeter of the balloon, across time. God is everywhere along time, all at once. But since all the ant’s perspective is limited to his own movement, he describes his encounters with God as “He called me once, then He called me again, then He walked with me for a long while.”

I realize this is a crude, childish analogy, and overly simplistic. Still, I hope it helps.

 

[oldcelt]

You’ve discussed this plenty of times before in other more appropriate threads. If you didn’t get a satisfactory answer there, you won’t get one here either.

Please don’t hijack a thread opened by a man struggling with grief over the loss of his wife.

Thanks.

First Nan, you have me confused with someone else re: the time issue. Second, I’m merely responding to people using the unsubstantiated to answer a man’s question to their satisfaction. Third, this is still a philosophy thread the last time I looked. and my (name removed by moderator)ut is every bit as appropriate as yours.

But you are right, your analogy is crude, childish and simplistic. Maybe you should discuss it in a more appropriate thread.

Thanks.

 

[inocente]

God, of course, is God. The ant is you. The balloon is the universe, and the perimeter of the balloon is Time. The ant is traveling the perimeter of the balloon, across time. God is everywhere along time, all at once. But since all the ant’s perspective is limited to his own movement, he describes his encounters with God as “He called me once, then He called me again, then He walked with me for a long while.”

I realize this is a crude, childish analogy, and overly simplistic. Still, I hope it helps.

Don’t put yourself down, the standard analogy for the big bang also uses a balloon - astro.ucla.edu/~wright/balloon0.html

But I don’t think your analogy works. If the perimeter is time then the ant can’t choose where to scurry, it can only move at one rate along one path (we can’t choose to move into the past or future, we can only be carried along in the current of time). I think that means God has to predetermine where the ant encounters Him, which implies God predetermines the entire path, the ant has no free will, and fatalism is true. Which seems a bit of a high price for us ants to pay.

Another problem with timeless heaven is that God is necessarily changeless (to be perfect), so if we become timeless in heaven then we share in his perfection. But what is perfect cannot be duplicated (or else God is no longer uniquely perfect), and therefore the only way we could be outside of time is to merge into the essence of God.

Which is fine and dandy if we’re a Spinoza pantheist.

I’m OK getting into this, but conscious that a new thread might be better so as to pick up posters who may not reading this thread. What do you think?

I’d like to hear someone explain how a being that exists outside of time can influence events within time.

For the same reason of attracting a wider audience I think you’d be better off starting a new thread on this.

 

[Nan_S]

Don’t put yourself down, the standard analogy for the big bang also uses a balloon - astro.ucla.edu/~wright/balloon0.html

But I don’t think your analogy works. If the perimeter is time then the ant can’t choose where to scurry, it can only move at one rate along one path (we can’t choose to move into the past or future, we can only be carried along in the current of time). I think that means God has to predetermine where the ant encounters Him, which implies God predetermines the entire path, the ant has no free will, and fatalism is true. Which seems a bit of a high price for us ants to pay.

OK, ok, so it’s a very big, but very flat balloon. The Ant is scurrying to run the length of the outside edge, not taking a shortcut across the middle.

We encounter God constantly. Being as God is God, and therefore omnipresent (else He would not be God) He has to be everywhere. If you’re in a swimming pool 24/7 you can’t say you’re predestined to be wet at certain times; “wet” is an inseparable part of the whole pool experience. But sometimes we feel His presence more intensely than others.

God lets us exercise Free Will to determine whether or not we pay attention to those encounters.

I’ll look for the new thread.

 

[thirdn6]

I don’t know.
I was looking for Him too when my wife was ‘euthanized’ back in September! Ten days of intense grief … could not find Him. Felt like hell.
But Jesus said suffering in hell is a lot lot more intense compared to what we feel here. And it is eternal.
I guess we have to move on and continue doing what is good. We don’t want to go there.

 

[inocente]

Well, strictly speaking, it seems that there will be ‘space’; that is, in the eschaton, we have been told, we’ll be raised with bodies. So, although we don’t know much about those glorified bodies, it would seem that there will be some sort of physical extension in heaven for eternity.

I just read Peter Kreeft’s Q&A on this. He says “Heaven is big enough so that billions of races of billions of saved people are never crowded, yet small enough so that no one gets lost or feels lonely.”

Come again?

Some of his questions are good, like can we sin in heaven (or do we no longer have free will), but I could never get on with his brand of apologetics.

The question of time, then, is an interesting one. Aristotelian philosophy describes time as a measure of change. In that context, then, we see time as part-and-parcel of this physical universe. Will this exact notion of time be present in the eschaton? It’s difficult to see how it would. By the same token, however, it’s difficult to see how there wouldn’t be something akin to time, given the fact that there will be a ‘new earth’ to go along with a ‘new heaven’. The $64,000 question, though, is what the nature of that ‘new time’ might be. When the issue is discussed, the debate seems to get stuck on emotional terms – the notion of ‘statis’ (and subsequently, of ‘boredom’) gets juxtaposed against the consideration of the differences between ‘eternity’ and ‘a really long time’.

That’s a good point. I would say what is important is that quasi-space and quasi-time would have to “feel” the same as physical space and time, otherwise the experience would be so totally alien as to brutalize our souls.

Most people seem to view the prospect of heaven as a nicer version of what they have here, a condo overlooking the ocean, dogs never fouling the lawn, a happy hunting ground. But it seems to be an unexamined belief. If you like extreme sports, where’s the rush if you can’t get hurt? How many doctorates can you get in heavenly university before you run out of subjects and have to watch repeats of NCIS for eternity? (There’s a humorous thread just started about competition sports, but if no one can ever lose in heaven, there can’t be any competition.)

I can’t help feeling that any heaven in which we keep our identity has major logical fault lines, while any heaven in which we don’t (the universal consciousness type of gig) isn’t worth a visit (because if you no longer have an identify, you wouldn’t be there anyway ).

 

[inocente]

OK, ok, so it’s a very big, but very flat balloon. The Ant is scurrying to run the length of the outside edge, not taking a shortcut across the middle.

We encounter God constantly. Being as God is God, and therefore omnipresent (else He would not be God) He has to be everywhere. If you’re in a swimming pool 24/7 you can’t say you’re predestined to be wet at certain times; “wet” is an inseparable part of the whole pool experience. But sometimes we feel His presence more intensely than others.

God lets us exercise Free Will to determine whether or not we pay attention to those encounters.

Pope Francis said something profound about encountering God, but I don’t remember where or when .

I think your Ant 2.00 )) still doesn’t explain how heaven is timeless. My test is the highlighted bits in At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” - Matt 3:16-17

I’ll look for the new thread.

I’m not sure how the OP would be phrased. Is the timeless-heaven concept part of revelation? If so, which book, chapter and verse? Or if it isn’t in the bible but is part of tradition, can you point me to where it is in the CCC?

 

[inocente]

I don’t know.
I was looking for Him too when my wife was ‘euthanized’ back in September! Ten days of intense grief … could not find Him. Felt like hell.
But Jesus said suffering in hell is a lot lot more intense compared to what we feel here. And it is eternal.
I guess we have to move on and continue doing what is good. We don’t want to go there.

Amen to that. I’m not having too good a day today. Some friends have persuaded me to go to a party tomorrow. I don’t want to be a hermit so agreed. Then when I woke up this morning it struck me this will be the first party without her. I miss her so much at times. But it does get a bit easier as the weeks pass, or at least that’s how it seems most of the time. My condolences.