August 13, 2015
-
do you really want to live with him FOREVER?
Sometimes you may have heard this sentiment:
"I'm not really sure that I would want to live FOREVER in heaven with God. Life up there with Him would get boring. Supposedly God is 100% good. Well, sometimes I like to hang out with people who are a little bit 'naughty'. It's more fun to hang out with people like that, rather than people who are wholly 'good'. Living forever with a completely 'good' God? Sounds boring to me."
I had a thought today in response to this. The "naughtiness" mentioned can actually be explained as two separate factors: NOVELTY, and EVIL.
That is, when you're hanging out with a 'naughty' friend because you like the excitement and stimulation of their company, and the friend proposes a naughty endeavor (e.g. "let's go downtown and smash some windows"), there is a NOVELTY factor ("wow, I've never smashed windows before"), and there is an EVIL factor ("let's pleasure ourselves by hurting someone else or breaking their property").
It turns out that NOVELTY is good... God created us humans to enjoy novelty... trying new recipes, creating new poems, novels, songs, dances, etc... building beautiful new woodworking artifacts, new pottery, new paintings, etc... new electronic devices, etc. God Himself is extremely creative in this regard... in fact, He is the most creative person in the universe. Think of the most exciting, fun, creative, humorous, witty, energetic, scintillating people you know. God designed those people.
Life with God in heaven forever is life lived with the most interesting Person in the universe, whose track record is one of dreaming up amazing, new, creative, delicious, surprises, and who shows every sign of continuing to innovate in the future.
On the other hand, EVIL is in getting pleasure out of hurting someone else, or corrupting or breaking something.... not merely in using something in an inappropriate way (that is partly EVIL and partly NOVEL/CREATIVE), but in essence, the delighting-in, the savoring-of, causing pain and harm and damage to another.
It turns out that God has no evil streak in Him. He is completely, 100%, good. As the Bible says, "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all."
Life lived forever with a "naughty" friend would be one with all creative powers bent more and more increasingly toward hurting other people more and more. As should be obvious, this would eventually cease to be fun.
But life lived with God in heaven will be one lived in enjoying and learning from His creativity, and appreciating His goodness more and more. "God is love", and that word "love" ("agape" in Greek) signifies putting the other person's interest ahead of one's own. So life in heaven will be one in which God is constantly thinking of new ways to bless us, and we are constantly enjoying His blessings with gratitude, reciprocating and learning to excel in new ways to glorify and thank Him, and so on and on, 'higher up and further in'.
Down here, our best human heights of creativity are marred by feelings of envy, jealousy, regret, etc. Up there, no more limits. Down here, death eventually stops the best artisans from pursuing their crafts. Up there, infinite time. Down here, we get lazy in pursuing our craft. Up there, infinite motivation, learning from and working with God... "work", no longer in the sense of Monday morning "do I have to go to work", but in infinite delight and joy...
Recent Comments