Heaven: The Painless Society?

The notion pain in heaven was brought up in my Genesis class today. I can’t say that I have ever really thought about there even being pain of any kind in heaven. I guess I always kind of assumed heaven was devoid of pain. But after looking at the “paradise” of Eden and reflecting on God and his nature I’m not so sure that this idea of a painless heaven is an idea that we should purport as much as we do.

It seems to me that in Eden there probably was some sort of physical pain; but the pure existence of pain does not necessitate the negativity of it. I think that we view all pain in a negative light, however, we also live after the fall of creation, and so we have no category or context to comprehend an idea of “painless” pain. For example, in Gen. 3 when the woman’s curse oracle is given, God says, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth…” From this we can infer that most likely was some notion of physical pain present in the garden; however it did not carry the negative overtones then that it does now. Whether this was a part of the “innocence” of man or whether “harmful” pain was introduced into the world we cannot say – that aside we can suffice to say that there does seem to exist the possibility of “perfect pain”.

In light of this, it seems to me that heaven is more an idea in which we will be given (and perhaps overwhelmed with) a diving perspective with which to acknowledge, understand, and deal pain, instead of the common concept of a complete absence of physical pain.

To some extent I think we are given a part of this divine perspective, albeit an imperfect one, at the moment of salvation when we receive the mind of Christ (I Cor. 2). A function of this new “mind” is certainly to help us to view and understand things in a new, different, and divine way.

Then, realizing that we will receive new bodies in heaven, I think it is also safe to say that we will receive a new and perfected mind as well – one with this “divine” perspective. It follows logically that if we receive a new physical existence upon “entrance to heaven” than we should also receive a new ethereal/intellectual existence as well – and one that will be in tune with God’s mind at that.

At any rate this is all mostly speculation and probably isn’t worth very much as I don’t have the experience to justify my conjectures, having never actually been to heaven. I do think it is worth issuing a warning about our imaginings of heaven; we must beware of creating a paradise designed to escape earth or our experiences here, as I think we do far too often. I think that heaven will complete and fulfill the natural creaturely joy that we lost on earth (as a result of our rebellion), not necessarily deliver us from all forms of creaturely existence and whatever that might entail for us.

I realize you probably have your own little picture of heaven in your head, but this is a part of mine, and I hope it helps you to think about yours.