Heaven and How to Get There

Revival Movement Association

revivalmovement.org 

 

 

I. 

 

One of the ironic consequences of mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa is that there are suddenly lots of evangelical Christians on the street corners, preaching the gospel and reaching out as missionaries. 

 

In other words, having been colonised and converted by bible-bashing Europeans in the nineteenth-century, they are now attempting to undo secular modernity and effectively plunge us back into a world of religious mania.   

 

Thus it was I was given a little leaflet this morning, encouraging me to turn away from sin and put my faith and trust in Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour, as well as promising to reveal not only what Heaven is like, but, more importantly, how to get there.  

 

 

II. 

 

According to the leaflet, Heaven is a wonderful place whose beauty is incomparable:

 

The God of the Bible is a God of beauty, and this is why Heaven will be perfectly beautiful. It will be so beautiful that it cannot be compared to anywhere here on earth.   

 

Note how Heaven is capitalised, but earth is not: Nietzsche would argue that this provides a crucial insight into the Christian mindset; to the fact that Christianity prioritises that which comes after life whilst, at the same time, devaluing material (mortal) existence and is therefore profoundly nihilistic [1]. 

 

But let's leave aside the anti-Christian case against Heaven until later and continue with our reading of the leaflet ... 

 

Interestingly, no sooner are we told about the beauty of Heaven than we are informed that this is its least important aspect. What matters far more is the fact that Heaven is the place where all the purest, humblest, most unselfish people the world has ever known finally come together as one flock. 

 

And, to top it off, Jesus Christ Himself is there - as well as God in all His glory! Thus, in Heaven, we will finally have the opportunity to see God with our own eyes! 

 

I find the emphasis on this selling point a little perplexing; I'm no bible scholar, but didn't Jesus say somewhere or other that blessed are those who who have not looked upon the face of God and yet still believe in his majesty? Are we not encouraged to doubt our own eyes on the grounds that the senses can deceive us? [2]  

 

 

III. 

Moving on ... The little leaflet also tells us that Heaven is a place of happy reunions - i.e., a place where the dead and the living can catch up and renew relations, reminisce about old times, etc. 

 

There's no consideration of the fact that not everyone wants to meet with their former friends, partners, and family members - and certainly not if we are then never more to part. For as Larry David (mistakenly) reveals to his wife Cheryl in an episode of Curb, the great attraction of an afterlife is the thought of being free and single once more and able to make a fresh start: click here [3].  

 

 

IV. 

    

Clearly, as much as those who long for Heaven hate earthly life, the thing that really motivates their faith is fear of death, as this (inadvertently hilarious) passage makes abundantly clear:

 

Another great truth about Heaven is that there will be no death there. We will never have to endure the heartbreak of watching a loved one passing away. We will never again have to watch the undertaker as he screws down the coffin lid on the one we loved, there will be no black ties, no funerals passing through the streets, no standing by an open grave and watching a coffin lowered into it, no listening to the clods of earth as they fall remorselessly on the box that contains the remains of the one we love so much and whose death has left us so sad and broken. Thank God there is no death in Heaven!

 

Now, experiencing Angst - as Heidegger was at pains to explain - is a fundamental aspect of being human. Angst isn't merely a form of anxiety born of thanatophobia; rather, it is how Dasein grasps the idea of finitude and confronts the void at the core of existence [4].

 

In other words, angst allows us to understand that being-in-the-world rests upon non-being. An unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately a liberating one that dares us to live and become who we are (or find authenticity and accept responsibility for our own choices, as Heidegger would say).    

 

And those who would deny us this - and who would, in effect, rob us even of our own deaths - deserve our contempt.  

 

V. 

 

Finally, as to how to get to Heaven ... 

 

There is, apparently, only ONE way: and that is by accepting Jesus as your Lord and Saviour:  

 

Jesus is the only way, and no man can come to the Father except through HIM. If you reject Him you shut the door to heaven on yourself. 

 

Well, that's unfortunate, perhaps, because I do reject Jesus - and I don't even think, like Lawrence, that there are many saviours and that man can secure himself a spot in paradise via a number of paths leading to God [5]. 

 

And - just to be clear - I wouldn't want to go to a Heaven in which the purest, humblest, most unselfish people are all gathered; because these people are very often nothing of the kind and they seem to spend a good deal of their time revelling in the misfortune and torment of those burning in that other place, which, let us remind ourselves, has a sign above its gates declaring: Built in the name of eternal Love [6].  

 

Ultimately, I stand with the naked and damned and not the smug and saved in their new white garments; and I choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" [7].   

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche speaks of afterworldsmen who create a vision of paradise born of suffering, impotence, and an impoversished form of weariness: "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven [...] They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them." See Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 60. 

 

[2] See John 20:29. The KJV reads: "Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 

 

[3] Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 9: 'The Survivor' (2004), dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, starring Larry David and Cheryl Hines.    

 

[4] See Heidegger, Being and Time, Division I, Chapter 6, where Heidegger not only discusses Angst as a fundamental mood, but relates it to his important notion of Sorge (usually translated into English as care and which provides the basis for Heideggerian ethics).   

 

[5] See the fragment of text written by Lawrence given the title 'There is no real battle ...' in Appendix I of Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 385. 

      In this piece, Lawrence argues that "the great Church of the future will know other saviours" and that the reason he hates Christianity is because it declares there is only one way to God: "'I am the way' - Not even Jesus can declare this to all men. To very many men, Jesus is no longer the way. He is no longer the way for me." 

 

[6] This idea of the sign is found in Dante's Inferno Canto III. Lines 5 and 6 of which read: Fecemi la divina podestate / somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore (My maker was divine authority / the highest wisdom and the primal love). But note that Nietzsche says it displays a certain philosophical naivety on the part of the Italian poet and that if there is a sign it is placed rather above the entrance to Heaven, with an inscription reading: Built in the name of everlasting Hate. See my post - 'A Brief Note on Heaven and Hell' (18 October 2014): click here. 

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.   

 

Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum: A Post for All Souls' Day in Memory of My Mother

Traditionally, candles are used on All Souls' Day to provide 

light for the poor souls languishing in purgatorial darkness.

 

 

All Soul's Day is a day of prayer and remembrance for those who have departed this world but failed to make it straight into heaven; i.e., those poor souls who find themselves hanging about in that afterlife destination known as purgatory [1].

 

To be clear, these people are men and women of faith; they are not evil-doers who are ultimately bound for hell. Nevertheless, due perhaps to the taint of venial sin, or having failed to fully atone for past transgressions, they require some form of spiritual cleansing before they can ascend unto that place inhabited by angels and saints. 

 

The Church - and when I say the Church I mean the Catholic Church - teaches that this purification of souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the living (thus the call to commemoration) and I like the idea that just as the dead can look on and help us, so too can we help them and, indeed, have a duty to be kind and generous to the departed. 

 

It's wrong for the dead to haunt the living and to resent their happiness; but it's also wrong of the living to curse the dead and deny them their entry into the highest place where they will know the gladness of death (which some believe to be oneness with God and others think of as oblivion). 

 

D. H. Lawrence was often respectful and tender towards the dead in his late poetry. He asks us, for example, to show pity towards the dead that were ousted out of life, but are not yet ready to make the final journey and so linger in the shadows like outcast dogs on the margins of heaven [2].            

 

In a very beautiful poem entitled 'All Souls Day', Lawrence writes:

 

 

Be kind, oh be kind to your dead

and give them a little encouragement

and help them to build their little ship of death.

For the soul has a long, long journey after death

to the sweet home of pure oblivion.

Each needs a little ship, a little ship

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey

Oh, from your heart

provide for your dead once more, equip them

like departing mariners, lovingly. [3]

Ultimately, it is our love and warm memories which purify the souls of the dead; the compassion of still-living hearts that helps them on "to the fathomless deeps ahead, far, far from the grey shores of marginal existence" [4].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although many people confuse and conflate the terms, purgatory is not limbo and whilst the former is Church doctrine, the latter isn't - despite the fact that many Catholics believed in it and wrote about it, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. 

      Whilst purgatory is reserved for souls ultimately bound for heaven, limbo was believed to be the final destination for the souls of babies that had died without being baptised. In other words, a kind of posthumous neonatal unit either on the edge of hell or the lip of heaven. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI requested that Church theologians reconsider this idea and argued that the truly Christian thing to do was to pray that God's mercy be shown to all deceased babies.     

      As for purgatory, it's probably best to think of it as a state of being or condition of the soul, rather than a place. That way, one can avoid having to try and give coordinates as to its location. This seems to be the line that is presently taken by the Church.  

      Readers who are interested in this subject may like to see Diana Walsh Pasulka's book Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture, (Oxford University Press, 2014). 

 

[2] See Lawrence's poem 'The Houseless Dead' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 635-36. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'All Souls Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 635. 

      I read this poem in full at my mother's funeral service in February of this year: click here.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'After All Saints Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 637. 

 

This post is also in memory of Felisa Martinez and Angeliki Thanassa.   

Of Virgins and Raisins

According to Christoph Luxenberg's controversial reading of the Koran, one of the better known inducements offered to young Muslim males prepared to martyr themselves is not, in fact, a heavenly harem of virgins, but, rather, a fistful of raisins. 

However, without wishing to doubt for one moment Luxenberg's scholarly credentials or the painstaking nature of his research, I have to say I'm not entirely convinced by his argument that the Aramaic word hur, meaning white raisins - a great delicacy in the ancient world - was mistranslated into the Arabic term for a fair maiden (and subsequently transliterated into Latin as houris). It just seems a revision too far; that is to say, too good - because so splendidly amusing - to be true.

One fears that Luxenberg has some kind of anti-Islamic agenda in wishing to strip Jannah of its sexual promise. Accused by some of being a Christian apologist, perhaps he can't stand the thought that whilst all that he's offered in the afterlife is, at best, a family reunion, a bit of a sing-song, and the chance to hang about with Jesus, Muslim martyrs hit the jackpot.

Delights on offer include: rivers of wine, milk and honey, young boys of perpetual freshness to attend to one's every need, fine silk garments, and, as mentioned, 72 virgins. And when Allah provides virgins, they're not just any old virgins - they're übervirgins, the purest of all pure beings with lovely gazelle-shaped eyes, naturally large breasts, hairless, translucent bodies and inviting vaginas; immortals who have no need to urinate, defecate, or menstruate.

Despite Luxenberg's etymological argument, it's difficult to assign a raisin - no matter how plump and delicious it might be - such physical attributes. The fact is, the Islamic paradise is a far more sensual and priapic place than the sexless Christian heaven, which is free of pain and tears, but also lacking in erotic joy.

Some might caricature the former as nothing more than a celestial brothel, but that's a slightly more appealing prospect if I'm honest than a great care home in the sky.            


See: Christoph Luxenburg, Die Syro-Aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache (Verlag Hans Schiller, 2000)