Why is everything concerning God and heaven unfathomable?

Question

Like when people say "Heaven will be like nothing we've ever experienced!"

There seems to be a flaw with this. When a human experiences something they never have before, and it's extremely pleasurable, they indulge in it. If heaven is the truly great experience that it is, it seems like it would be the equal to someone who hasn't smoked in 30 years getting a sudden nicotine injection.

I'm an animal lover, I once had a discussion with a Christian friend of mine, went something like this:

-"What if I'm happiest when I'm with animals?"
"What about it?"
-"Well animals don't go to heaven right?"
"No."
-"Well what will be waiting for me in heaven then. It's in my personality that I love being around animals, they make me happy."
"In heaven you won't care about things like that"

wtf? So essentially you have to lose your sense of who you are when you're in heaven? This also goes along with the "what if my relatives are in hell, that won't make me happy in heaven" question.
Help me out

Answer 1

Sweetie your friend misled you! There WILL BE animals in Heaven. Read what the Bible says:

Isaiah 11:6
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

Answer 2

The way I look at it, heaven should be an experience of bliss. It is said to be completely unique, greater than any other. I agree with you in saying that a description like that is somewhat useless. And how could the same thing be good for everyone? Your animal example is a great illustration of that.

In my opinion heaven offers us a happiness that is unique in some ways but familiar in others. I believe that in heaven we are given understanding. We are given understanding of something so fundamental and vital to the universe we live in that we experience a joy like never before. And that understanding would make it easy for us to overcome grief or sadness or anger that we had before.

On the other hand, hell would be the opposite. It would give us knowledge that there is something absolutely vital, but it would deny us understanding of what it is. The ones in hell would be faced with a question whose solution would mean everything, but they would be denied the answer, forced to spend an eternity in confusion and doubt and anguish.

That's about as close as I can come to describing what I think those places are.

I do not think heaven or hell are happy or sad. I think whether you end up in heaven or hell depends entirely on who you are and how you see the world. Which is incidentally how the "judgment" is made.

I hope this gives you an idea to ponder about :) The difference between knowledge and understanding is best illustrated when a man walks off a cliff. He knows he cannot fly. But he fails to understand what that means in his life :P

Answer 3

On the one hand, it seems appropriate to emphasize that God, being utterly transcendent, is beyond anything we could ever hope to comprehend. On the other hand, the doctrine of a heaven that involves personal immortality is problematic for a number of reasons, including the ones you mention. If I am not the same person I was when I was 5 years old in any real sense, why should I think it makes sense to speak of a personal immortality that will last forever? If I will remember everything that ever happened to me, then I will be other than who I am now, and if I won't, then the same is true.

The question also arises of whether people will have free will in the afterlife. If so, then it could all go horribly wrong. If not, then why did God give free will in the first place only to take it away?

If one wishes to believe in a personal afterlife, the most appropriate thing is to say we don't know, and that if it happens it will be beyond our comprehension, and leave the rest up to God. If human beings cannot speak coherently about it, then we shouldn't be arguing over it!

Answer 4

It can be understood. But Satan rules this world and has blinded people. (2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 John 5:19) Find the ones who study the Bible and have the one true religion. They believe the verses in Revelation 21:3,4 apply to the earth, not heaven. Why pray for God's will to be done on earth if we are all going to heaven or hell? What is God's will for the earth? Did he make it just so later on it could be destroyed when everyone went to heaven? That wasn't his purpose. Genesis 1:28 was God's purpose for the earth. We were meant to take care of the animals on earth, that's why we were put here and not in heaven to begin with.

Answer 5

I have read the entire bible, and I have understood it. Here is my logic to it:

The bible reads like fiction. As a matter of fact, it reads like a type of fiction where the writer(s) were on LSD whilst writing it. However, that does not mean they were. The bible, if you study ancient history, is written based on specific big events. The flood Noah went through was probably based on a tsunami that really happened.

Much of the bible is just a history lesson of what was happening in that point of time that the specific part of the bible was being written, then tries to understand it by employing a larger power. It also tries on occasion to predict the futer based on what is happening and has happened.

It is employing the "History always repeats its self theory" basically. However, still, this does not mean that god actually exists and that the bible is his word. The bible was written over several HUNDRED years by several different people. These words could have just been the writer trying to make since of things.

Jesus might have really existed and thought he was Gods son. He also might have hat nuts for parents and brains. He could have been crazy. Think about it. If a guy was to come along and try to convince the world that he was god's son today, what would happen? He would end up in the loony bin!

Now, I am not saying that god does not exist and that the bible is not his word. I am simply saying these are possibilities. Thank you for reading my opinions, and I hope you respect them.

I can already see that some one does not respect other peoples opinions. Please do not mark down my answer just because you don't believe the same thing. You mark down answers because they are bad, not because they are not the same as your beliefs. If you mark them down because of that, it just proves you are a stubborn, close minded fool.

Answer 6

Well think about it? Is Heaven really a place were you want to go? Jesus claims that in heaven, all tears will be wiped away and all things will be made new. As human individuals we must have memory of our past experiences for our lives to have any meaning to us personally. If your memories were taken away, the person you were would cease to exist to you, so conscious memory of who you are (self-realization) is what gives your life true meaning.

Will you maintain your self-realization and memories in heaven? Not if you plan on having a life with no pain or suffering. Who we are is based on our past life experiences, both joyful and painful, and the memory of a painful experience causes a re-living of the pain that memory involved. To live a life of no suffering would require that all memory of suffering be erased. Who you were would have to be altered drastically in order for you to never suffer again. The person you know yourself to be right now could not exist in heaven.

Answer 7

No one really has any way to know for certain that there even IS a heaven waiting at the end of their life. Some of us prefer to believe that this IS heaven, here and now, and it is whatever you make of it. Think about it...how can anyone actually know that there are no animals in 'heaven'? Have they been there? Are they just assuming, based on faith? No amount of reading that one misguided dusty old book is going to give you the definitive peek into the afterlife. Try reading other religion's ideas of the afterlife, and you will see the variety of viewpoints mankind as a whole has regarding the afterlife, or lack thereof. Decide for yourself what you believe, or hope for, and live your own life accordingly.

Answer 8

In a convoluted illogical and unsubstantiated mish-mash of imaginings that is a religion, there has to be a mechanism to keep people in the fold when they realize what a convoluted illogical and unsubstantiated mish-mash of imaginings it is. Generally it's along the lines of "it's supposed to be beyond understanding" (aka the "I meant to do that" clause.) Enough people buy it to make it an prominent part of successful religion memes.

Congrats on escaping the mechanism.

Answer 9

I don't believe that at all. I think Heaven will be the very best of what we have experienced here on Earth--amplified 100 times. I think Heaven will be very comfortable, filled with familiar things that we have grown to know and love.

Concerning animals--I have no idea why animals would not be in Heaven. Are they suggesting that animals don't have spirits? Have they done something evil that would send them to Hell? In my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), we believe that animals do have spirits and that they can also receive salvation. Everything that God ever created will receive a degree of salvation. The founder of our church, Joseph Smith, said that there were animals in Heaven.
So rest assured that you will not have to relinquish your love of animals when you get to Heaven.

You do not lose your sense of who you are when you get to Heaven by any means. You will still love the things you loved here on Earth. You will be happy to have your family and friends around you that you loved during your lifetime.
If you have any more questions on this, or you would like specific quotes, please let me know.

Answer 10

I agree with you. In my own conception of "heaven," there is no hell, and nothing with consciousness is excluded. In fact, to state it stronger, everything with consciousness IS INcluded. I think the best metaphor is the "borg" in star trek. a merging of consciousness. so, yeah, I think we will lose our individuality, but in becoming a part of something so much greater than ourselves, it won't matter. it will - according to my hypothesis - be like joining with everything, and as a "single entity," we will be of one mind.

Granted, this sounds pretty hoaky. I'm thinking of the soul as being made of quanta and unbinding with the body at death, at which point it would be drawn to other such quanta. Just a hypothesis, but there it is.