...I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life,
that you and your descendants may live... Deuteronomy 30:19
What a line! It's the ultimate pick up line. Seriously, who could ever
refuse such an offer? You would have to be crazy to choose a curse
over a blessing, death over life.
It has been used countless times by preachers and travelling evangelists
to make their point that you have a choice and that that choice involves
life or death, Heaven or Hell.
In Heaven you will have eternal life, joy and peace. Oh and did I forget
to mention, you will look great. Some holy Botox and sacred Lipo will
have you looking divine for all of eternity. You didn't really think you
were going to be fat in Heaven did you? After all, Jesus wants you to be
thin and hot! At least that's what the Gospel Aerobics shows have been
telling us!
On the other hand, in Hell you will either experience death or eternal
suffering or both depending on the church you go to. Some view it as a
lake of fire where you will be eternally tortured by little screaming
monsters. Sounds a little bit like Nickelodeon but you get the idea.
Some view it as being eternally separated from God, whilst others see it
as the end of your existence. Game over if you will.
So let's take a step back and take a closer look at the better of the
two options: Heaven. In Heaven we are told that we will have eternal joy
and happiness. It will be a place of blessing and peace where we will
worship God and be one with God for all eternity. Sounds swell. It will
be great to share this place with our spouses, our families and friends.
But what if they didn't make it? What if your husband, your wife, your
child or your parent didn't make it into Heaven? What if they chose
death instead of life? I, for one, would mourn eternally if I made it
into Heaven but my wife ended up in Hell. If anything, having any memory
of any person who did not make it into Heaven would make Heaven Hell for
me. For all eternally you would have to live with the fact that your
loved ones are either suffering in Hell. The only solution to this would
be to have your memories erased so that you can spend eternity with God
without remembering the people that made your life on earth worth
living. You cannot be allowed to remember your wife, your children or
even your name.
The second thing that stands out about Heaven is that there will be no
sin. We are told that we would not want to sin anymore when we are in
the presence of God Himself. The desires which the Bible consider to be
sinful would have to be extinguished. Desires such as sexual lust,
greed, selfishness and pride could have no place in Heaven. The problem
being that all these desires are central to our need for self
preservation. As we need to preserve our existence and we need to
procreate, hoard food and material possessions. It's the very thing
which causes us to survive and it's the very root of our personalities.
It's our ego, our drive, the very thing that gives us our dreams and
aspirations.
In Heaven this drive for self preservation, the cornerstone of our
personality, would have to be disabled if we were to "lose the desire
for sin". The interesting thing is that medical professionals already
have a term for this procedure: a lobotomy. Your personality, your drive
and your ego would have to be disabled. As a result you will be like a
zombie. Half dead. Worshipping a god for all eternity without having any
identity, personality or free will. In addition, your memory would also
have to have been removed in order to forget about your loved ones being
tortured in Hell. You will be a machine, a shell of your former self,
trapped in this state of eternal worship of a cosmic entity.
I don't know about you, but that sounds a lot like Hell to me and the
idea of an eternal slumber sounds well, like Heaven...
By Ruhan van Vuuren
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