James Swayze wrote:
Eternity tending gardens on bended knee worshipping their deity, no worries,
no woes, need something just wish it into existence! I want problems to
solve! If eternity were too easy I would be bored to insanity! I would beg
for oblivion!
(end)
I can understand the frustration of visualizing such a Heaven. You are not
the only one who has thought this. I remember once a speaker in the Mormon
church who spoke on the nature of Heaven. He said a prominent Protestant
minister said in a sermon how when he died he wanted to hug his wife and
then spend the next ten million years looking at and worshipping God and
doing nothing more. Then he would turn to his wife and hug her, to be
followed by ten million more years of looking at and worshipping God!
This Mormon speaker said he felt God would have better things for him to do
then that! Like paying more attention to his wife! lol! I have always
liked the Mormon view of Heaven, which is in a theological sense similar to
extropianism.
The view is that those who live for God and are sealed in their marriages
for all time and eternity will eventually in the next life become gods.
They will create worlds and have children to people them. Their offspring
will in turn be tested to see if they will live in a way to allow them to be
worthy to become gods and repeat the divine cycle.
And those who did not get the chance to hear the gospel in this life will
get the chance in the next, with no blessings lost. Only those who felt the
spirit of God in hearing the message in this life and then rejected it will
lose opportunities.
"As God once is, man may become. As man is, God once was." This is a very
popular couplet in the Mormon faith. This is often villified though, and
seen as blasphemous within the evangelical realm. In the Doctrine and
Covenants (Mormon scripture) there is the saying that, "the same sociality
that exists here will exist in the next life but coupled with eternal glory"
So the best of this life will continue on. It would be a life of ever
expanding ties of family and friends with the goal of bestowing divine power
upon one's worthy progeny.
I realize there are obvious and vast differences between Mormon and
extropian thought. But I do like the similarities. It will be interesting
to see how Mormon doctrine and practice develop over the coming century with
the technological transformations that are coming.
I want to be around to see these things happen.
best wishes to all,
John Grigg
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