I have a strange question. First, I'm going to talk about three things:
I love stories. The way that you can emotionally engage with them, relate to the characters, share in their joy and pain, their hopes and fears. The way that you can join them on a journey, and end feeling as if you have discovered more about yourself in the process. It's also why I like writing - that I can lead the reader on a similar journey, sharing my own emotions through the medium of a story. Stories are all about conflicts and their resolutions, and we can identify with them because we all share conflicts in our own lives.
A story is also the analogy I hear more and more of in relation to Jesus nowadays. We're going through a series in my church's youth and 20s meeting, 737, which has described God's epic story of the whole of creation, and how we fit into this story, the greatest ever told of a broken relationship, of struggle and redemption, of love and sacrifice.
And the final part I'm going to bring into this question, is the fact that there will be no pain and sorrow in heaven. That all grief will be taken away, and we will be restored into the perfect beings God planned from the beginning.
So. Here's the question.
What will stories in Heaven be like?
It's odd, but I caught myself worrying about it today. In Heaven, could we still read The Lord of the Rings and be caught up in the fear and despair of the hobbits in Mordor, as well as their joy and triumph at their victory? Could we still cry at the bittersweetness of the ending, when Frodo leaves behind Sam to go to the undying lands? Could we still tell stirring tales of war and betrayal, of love and broken hearts, of loss and recovery? After all, they resonate with what we have experienced in our life here on Earth, and with God's story of His relationship with His people. And He was the one who gave us emotions, and empathy to share in the emotions of others, including those emotions we see as negative.
Of course, negative emotions are be painful. They are necessary in this world to stir us to change things that are wrong with it, but at the same time they can consume us and wreck lives. All pain and sorrow will be taken away in Heaven - but will we still be able to connect with a good story, on all emotional levels, even in the bad bits? It's an odd thing to have on my mind. I like stories. I think God likes stories. And I think we will be able to enjoy them in Heaven. But I'm curious as to how.
What do you think?
Friday, 18 February 2011
Stories in Heaven
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2 comments:
It's quite simple. Either there is a flaw in the concept of heaven or there is a flaw in your thinking of it.
I think that if heaven does exist, it is completely unlike our universe and therefore thinking about it from within the our universal restraints is rather pointless.
There would definitely be flaws in my thinking of it, and for the most part I would agree with you - I haven't got a clue what Heaven would really be like, especially since the Bible doesn't give us a huge amount to go on that isn't incredibly abstract.
That said, I think that since Heaven is essentially a restoration of the current universe rather than a completely different place per se (at least, as I've often seen it interpreted as), I would assume that there would still be similarities.
Ultimately, worrying about it is incredibly pointless, but I don't think that thinking about it is, even if we would never be able to grasp it from here. At the very least, it makes for an interesting discussion. :)
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