Some people I have spoken to do not believe enjoyments (that is, mental enjoyments, like love and our imagination as oppossed to nature and the Universe) bare any resemblance to God, save that He is found to be enjoyable. They say the pleasure of Him and that we shall have in Heaven, is of an utterly seperate kind and that the things we enjoy don’t reflect Him and niether does the ‘type’ of enjoyment we get from those things reflect the ‘flavour’ of joy we shall have seeing Him.
This seems the opposite of what Tolkien thought- he felt fiction reflected God as did our reactions to it.
But does niether concept have an assured Biblical basis? Bearing in mind that the nay-sayers I have heard were professional members of the church.
Sounds very Calvinistic to me… from sin you came, in sin you remain, and in sin you shall die, unworthy of the salvation of heaven and only thru the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ and the acceptance that he is your personal Lord and savior may you be admitted into his Kingdom of Heaven.
- Convert, heard that speech or ones like it for years.
That said, this is a very difficult topic to take on… I think in a very simplistic statement, as I don’t want to really get into a deep debate, that any good, non-sinful, pleasure governed by temperance
(CCC 1809) is most certainly a “flavor” of what we will experience in heaven. By way of an arguably poor analogy, sticking a 9V transistor battery against one’s tongue is a shock that one could liken to the pleasures we have of the mind or of the body that we have in life… grab the outlet mains of a power-plant and ground yourself… this would be the experience of God the Father in heaven.
Or perhaps, sitting thru a concert by the senior orchestra at a High School performance and then attending a concert given by a major professional philharmonic… both are pleasurable (ok, give a bone here, I’ve been to some excellent HS-Orchestra performances
); however the philharmonic can seem to bring the emotions out…
Attend a play of Fiddler on the Roof… one by the local actors and a second by the original cast… you may not cry at either… and yet… I know I did for Tevye in the play I saw as a child… I can remember that play, by the original cast to this day some 40+ years later. I can not remember that same play that I attended as a senior in high school, and one of my best friends played the lead
All very poor analogies I admit… however, I hope one sees the point… what we experience in life is good and profound and yet nothing compared with that same experience in heaven.
The laugh of a baby is an echo of God’s laughter of joy for us… nothing good can come except from the Father. (paraphrase of
John 3:27)
No, Our Father made us of the earth, of the dirt, and by his breath, in an image of his own likeness… all that we see, all that we do, all that we are, are originally from the Father; thus, the Son, for one cannot have one without the other… did not our Lord heal the blind man using the dirt of the earth and our Lord’s own spit and finally the water created by the Father?
I know that this isn’t the most cogent train of thought; however, IMnsHO Tolkien was and is right… we are an image and likeness of God the Father… maybe imperfect… flawed in many ways… and if our image is so good and great… can we but dream of that that creates the image and how much more there is to that reality than the reflection of the likeness that we perceive.
How can we possibly not experience pleasure at how much God favors us over all other animals, and how can God possibly not feel pleasure by our willingness to comply with his graces?
If God is so completely other no human love could resemble God’s love for us, why did Jesus die on the cross? Merely to make an atonement for us? Why, then, did He ask us to take up our crosses and follow Him? Why does St. John write of God being love, and of loving the world so much He sent His Son. Do not Protestants believe Jesus was man as well as God?