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.

Mama told me...

There’s a song called “Simple Man” by Shinedown (a cover of the Lynard Skynard song) that I really like, because it reminds me of my mom. When I listen to it I can imagine her sitting next to me on my bed and softly singing something like this as I drop off to sleep. I think these are the things most mom’s wish for their sons.

I love you mom. This is for you.

Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this
It will help you some sunny day.
Take your time... Don't live too fast,
Troubles will come and they will pass.
Go find a woman and you'll find love,
And don't forget son,
There is someone up above.

And be a simple kind of man.
Be something you love and understand.
Be a simple kind of man.
Won't you do this for me son,
If you can?

Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul,
And you can do this if you try.
All that I want for you my son,
Is to be satisfied.

Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.
Follow you heart and nothing else.
And you can do this if you try.
All I want for you my son,
Is to be satisfied.

The Mask

Cancer-death strikes.
Another fool lost.
A family un-completed.

Cries stifled.
Griefs hidden.
Faces measured.

Masks molded.
Faces fitted - sorry ceramic smiles now applied.

Single Father instructs
Only Son to love his mask.
Grave-bound Mother remains forgotten.

We don't deal with anything these days. We suffice to hide, cover, bury, run, and disguise; meanwhile the real issues course through us slowly subjugating our whole selves until we succumb to them. At this point we become the very cover of our issues. We adopt out "masks" as our new identities in an attempt to cope. And sometimes, that is who we are for the rest of out lives.

Restless.

My roommate and I have been throwing around the crazy idea of organizing a coast to coast D.C. to L.A. march for Invisible Children. It would be a three to four month undertaking, but the experience would be incredible. Nothing set in stone yet, just a couple of college students dreaming big.

Restless. My heart is restless. My soul is restless. My mind is itchy. From time to time I think everyone has these internal bugs, but I seem to have them regularly. Perhaps part of the problem is that the summer is looming before me and I am doomed to a summer of mindless [work]. I’ve realized that I really don’t like to work. In fact, if I had the choice I wouldn’t work at all. Now, I don’t really mean not work at all, it’s just that I want to do things that I enjoy for work.

The truth is, I really don’t know what I would even want to do given the opportunity. Someone asked me the other day what I would do if I could do anything. I said, “Well, at this particular moment I’m thinking that I want to live out in the country in a place that has a field, some woods, and a pond. And I want to live out there and think, and read about what other people think, and write about what I think. Kind of like Walden.” - at least I have my retirement figured out. But really. I like to read, travel, write, think, play soccer, and spontaneous adventurous things with my friends – how in the world can I throw those things into a job description? Whatever I end up doing, I’m quite certain it will be unconventional, and more than likely I’ll be living in the poor house my whole life, simply because I refuse to give in to stifling world of materialism. I realize this is all so from the perspective of a single college student with little mind or care for future responsibilities, but that is my stage in life and instead of rushing through it, I have decided to instead openly embrace it and if possible, exhaust it.

The first thing I want to do when I graduate is take a backpacking tour across Europe, staying in youth hostiles, working temp. jobs, and then backpacking to the next city. Practical? Most definitely not. It won’t begin to pay off my school loans. But it will be worth it. You only get a chance to do these things once in your life, and that is before the reality of responsibility sets in. To some degree, I hope I am able to escape the domineering control of social expectation and retain some of my more youthful tendencies.

Anyway, I apologize for this unorganized rambling, but not enough to fix it. I think that it’s somewhat haphazard construction only reinforces the ideas in it.

Petrine Easter

This is how I imagine Peter and the disciples at Christ's death. And probably how I imagine myself there as well.

Whips flew, flaying the flesh from your back. Thorns pierced, scraping skin from your skull. Rusty iron bored bloody holes in your wrists, rough wood splintered mercilessly into your bare oozing back. You were hoisted above the jeering masses with contempt. And as you hung laboring with agony over each breath, I stared. Frozen by the horror of the reality that was taking place before me. Stunned by the crucifixion of my teacher and closest friend. Shocked, any thought of encouragement failed me. I could not speak even a word of consolation, nor offer up even a simple prayer of salvation.

Then, even as You screamed your last, a new fear gripped me. I could not stay another second under the shadow of your condemning cross, and so I ran.

Then, stumbling in the darkness outside the city walls I realized what I had just done, and I wept in shame. My heart rended as my eyes were opened to my self-centered state of mind. Forsaken! I had left my friend to die. Forsaken! I had left my Lord to hang beaten, bloodied, naked, and alone, only worried about my own self-preservation, missing His divine example of self-sacrifice. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have been so blind?

O God, I am sorry for this heinous crime of self-love. I repent of placing my life above your love. O my God, hear the desperate cry of this wretched man and have mercy, O Lord, have mercy on me. Bathe me in Your undying love, and let me not soon forget the price that You paid for my soul.

Deconstructionism... Determined Discovery?

The other day I discovered something very unnerving about myself. I find that I am always discovering new things about myself, turning over new stones in my mind and looking behind new doors in my soul; and more often than not I am surprised by what I find – surprised, but rarely unsettled. But, Sunday night sitting in the rain beneath a single lighted lamppost I realized that I was a practical deconstructionist (not to be confused with a theoretical deconstructionist.)

I cannot say that I was awakened from a “dogmatic slumber” for I have always had a subconscious appreciation for the less ordered, but never can I remember a time that I would have willfully ascribed to the deconstructionism such as demonstrated by John Cage in his piece 4’ 33”.

I set out Saturday night to do some artistic journaling; generally speaking I don’t journal simply by writing about what I’m thinking or what I am going through. When I journal I express my thoughts and sentiments through poetic verse. And so Saturday night I set out with my red pen and 4x6 blue notebook to do some journaling. The atmosphere was perfect; I was alone on a bench under a single lamppost in the pouring rain surrounded by a city kept indoors by the dismal weather. (I don’t know what people find so repulsive about the rain – I find it refreshing and altogether inspiring.)

As I wrote, the ink smeared on the pages, sometimes so badly that some of the words were lost. But I had anticipated that, and it was part of the reason I had endeavored to write in the rain on this particular night. It added a certain… artistry. And yet as I reflected on my work I realized the implications of what I was doing. I was encouraging chaos. I was encouraging the destruction of my own work under the guise of deconstructionism.

I would never think about such an idea in the realms of philosophy or theology – to do so would be all but intellectual suicide. However, somehow I had allowed this arbitrary obliterator to enter into my ideas, even ideals of art. I am not sure exactly when this occurred, but I suspect I am in part an unfortunate victim of the venomous fate imposed upon us by the uncompromising war machine of popular culture.

But, despite the discovery and self admission that I am in fact an artistic deconstructionist at least in part, and despite the knowledge of the intellectual implications this holds for me, I cannot reverse the trend inside of myself. Because even as I write I sit here on my bed one sock off, a broken key around my neck, a bass guitar string around my wrist, drinking a Clausthaler and listening to the screaming tones of dissonance and discord on a new album by the Chariot in which the song titles read, “ Back to Back/They Faced Each Other/Th3y Drew Their Swords/And Shot Each Other/The Deaf Policeman/Heard This Noise/Then Came To Kill/The Two Dead Boys/Forgive Me Nashville/The Trumpet” in ascending order from track one.

And so for now I accept my artistic deconstructionist tendencies and will tolerate them as long as they stay within their given compartment and do not seek to corrupt my still constructive boxes of philosophy and theology… and realizing how disgustingly western and systematic this last sentence was, I think my next post will give stage to the battle of opposing ideas raging inside my head. I’ll call it “Systematic verses Synthesis” and advertise the bout saying, “Come see the West’s great Systematic defend his title against the up and coming Synthesis…”

A Social Commentary on Coping

Hey you, in the shadows
in the corner all alone,
Cling to the darkness
to remain unseen.
Cloaked in despair
and shrouded with the mist of dying memories, you hide,
in a fatal attempt to mask your pain.

Hey you, blade in your hand
Wrist dripping and burning
Slash to control
and bleed to replace
Emotive anguish.
Surrogating corporeal angst for dread distress, you subsist;
Draining ill sentiment from the sluice of life.

Hey you, on the barstool
with a mug in your hand,
Drink to forget
and forget, to escape.
Consuming poison
and slowly slipping into graceless oblivion, you laugh,
in a final effort to drown your hurt.

Hey you, with the girl
undressed and in bed,
Roll up the sheets
and engage to re-cover.
Lying to love
and seducing faith into false validation, you lie,
as a last resort to manufacture care.

This piece is a short social commentary on how people attempt to cope with their feelings, and the things they use to cover up naked emotional pain. I don’t know why we bother to wonder why we can't get people to be real with us, or why so many of our relationships seem to be shallow. We want others to take their masks off, but we refuse to first discard ours. If we would first bear a piece of our own hearts, then others would be a lot more willing to open their hearts to us. The problem is that for some reason being open with people about what's going on inside of us, what are feeling, and mostly what's hurting us has become something that we just don't do. Whether it's a fear that someone will betray us, that we will be judged or looked down on, or the idea that no one wants to listen to us I’m not sure. It’s probably a compilation of all three. Interestingly, many times even when someone does “share” something, it is only a surface something disguised as a deeper something. In this way we can pretend we are dealing with things when in fact our admittance of one fault is really only a cover-up for a greater fault. At any rate, something has happened and if we don't seek to correct it, then soon all of our relationships will be characterized by falsehood. All we will ever see of someone is the shell that they have secreted for the twofold purpose of first, keeping their feelings and thoughts inside of them, and second, of having something to show off for everyone else. Something to say "this is who I am, and this is what I do, and this is what I should be known by. It doesn't matter whether you really know me or not as long as you associate my name with this so that you can’t see inside as to who I really am." Everything we will see will merely be a disguise of the truth. And when we finally think someone is sharing something from within themselves with us, it will be nothing but a way to shove off some nosy pestering person who obviously only wants to cause more pain by inquiring as to our state of being.

Verse one is to those that adhere to solitude as their way of escape. Keeping to themselves they rarely have to deal with the thoughts of other people. To you: come out of hiding, crawl out of your holes. You are not alone and there really are people out in the wide world who will love you - only you must first give them the chance.

Verse two has to do with a coping mechanism that is largely overlooked in most of our circles, but it is a problem that any youth minister or counselor will deal with these days. Cutting and self mutilation are nothing but ways in which we try and deal with our pain ourselves. This is an issue I will probably be addressing soon, and so I won’t say anymore about it here.

Verse three is, I think, pretty obvious. Alcohol isn't going to solve any problems. It can't even help us cope right. So give it up. On a deeper level this speaks to all of us. We all have things in our lives that we depend upon to help us cope with our "stress." We all try to escape reality by using temporary relievers; the thing is, they are only temporary. The only permanent escape is death... though that is not a good reason for suicide. I think we all need to look into ourselves and find what we are using as our crutch, and whether it is a substance, an activity, an object, or a person we need to realize that the only thing it is helping us do is cover up what is really happening, and not allow us to deal with things when they need dealing with. Instead of placing our trust in things that are temporal, we need to place our trust in the One who is eternal.

Verse four has a very simple explanation: STOP SEEKING FOR VALIDATION IN OTHERS. We use them and abuse them and program them to see us as we want to be seen, and yet in the end we cast them aside even though they have only done what we asked. Ok, so that's not the only explanation, just the one that hides beneath the surface. The other is obvious though. So many times we seek solace through relationship and we end up making decisions we later regret. We must find our source of comfort, of love, of everything in God – who is love, who is our comforter, and is our all.