6/19/2014

I don’t want to go to a place called heaven

          I remember as a child when I was first taught that there was a place called heaven. I don’t remember how old I was but I do remember the kind of emotions I felt when somebody told me that there is another world or reality where I can cuddle with a lion, swim with the fishes, fly with the birds, wrestle with a bear, fly in space, visit different planets, and so on. Basically, there was no limit to what I can imagine heaven would be like and what I can experience there. I especially wanted to make it to heaven because I could live forever and ever, I would never experience death if I made it there. I was taught that after I die, I would either end up in heaven or be forever annihilated if I don’t make it there. My religious upbringing taught that people who didn’t make it to heaven would be destroyed and die forever, I guess that would be better than eternal torment that certain religious Christian traditions taught if you didn’t make to heaven. As far as I can recall from childhood, it became instinctual for me to think and feel that my ultimate purpose in life would be to make sure that I make it to heaven and that this should be everybody’s ultimate purpose as well, hence evangelizing. Life for me was to make sure that everything I do in life will hopefully lead me to this magical place. I refuse to die forever no matter the cost, I can’t bear the thought of ceasing to exist forever and ever as well as having no consciousness.

 My solution or formula to make sure that I make it to heaven was to remain true to the things I was taught by my religious culture. To be certain that I make it there, I must remain a “believer in God” and live life according to what my religious culture taught and expected of me. As a practicing "religionist", I tried to pattern my actions and behavior to conform to what I believed was the larger reality. If I can do this, I will make it to this place called heaven. “What would it profit a man to gain the world, and lose his soul”, isn’t that what Jesus said? Yes, I want to be “saved”, who wouldn’t want to be saved? Salvation for me was to be able to make it to haven and escape death. It was the opportunity to someday experience bliss and live happily ever after next to God, my family, and my friends who hopefully make it to heaven like me.

            Progressively through the years, I began to concern myself with my existence, as in learning to reconcile what I’ve come to know and what I experience in my daily life. Something like Soren Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism which focuses on finding meaning in what sometimes feels like a meaningless existence. The living breathing me that experiences doubt, fear, vulnerability, anxiety, apathy, despair, contradictions, feelings of failure, antagonism, cynicism, and most things humans experience that make us wonder whether life is all worth living. I have also experienced inspiration, hope, gratitude, connection, motivation, love, joy, peace, beauty, laughter; all those positive adjectives that make it seem worth it being human.

Jesus made a statement about the Kingdom of God as being among us, he also described the Kingdom of God as being within you. In the past, I have always equated the Kingdom of God as heaven. The place I want to go to someday and hopefully make it there if I live the kind of life my religious culture and paradigm expected of me. When I reflect on Jesus’ Kingdom statements, I can’t help but think of the “moment” rather than that of an imaginary place somewhere in the clouds as when he states that the Kingdom is among us. I also can’t help but begin to see the Kingdom as a state of “being” in contrast to some material place that I will be rewarded with for “believing” or achieving a “sinless” life, as when Jesus states that the Kingdom is within you. Salvation seems to be more about recognizing what’s true without and within me and then desiring to “become”.

Recently, I have begun to see spirituality as more of a quest for recognizing what we are blinded to rather than something that we try to create or make happen. When we see what we have been blinded to, that’s experiencing what Jesus probably means by, “you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free”. When we realize something that we haven’t realized before, I call that a change in perspective, and perspective can be the difference between hope and despair. The Kingdom is something we learn to recognize because it is among us and it is within us. Jesus also describes the Kingdom as something like a seed that a farmer scatters on the ground and should grow to become a mature plant. This metaphor tells me that salvation also has more to do with growing and evolving as a human. The Kingdom of God or heaven becomes more meaningful when we see it as something having more to do with growing like a plant, except as human beings we grow into something like being able to create beauty, find peace, and give love; three things that a favorite author named Frank Shaffer describes as the ultimate in the human experience.

            It’s been a while since I desired making it to a place called heaven or be “saved”. Perhaps it’s because my old concept of heaven prompted me to act in a way that was inauthentic, maybe heaven was an escape mentally to justify inaction in a world that needs attention, or maybe heaven just began to feel like a place so small because I can’t seem to imagine or grasp hold of what this place may be like anymore. For now I’m going to see heaven as something that I can work on experiencing in the moment, just as Jesus describes the Kingdom to be as something that’s among you and within you. Maybe there is a place somewhere out there that we can call heaven, but for now, my priority is not going to a place but experiencing “this” place with all the adjectives that make me feel that this life is worth living. Salvation or experiencing heaven is learning to find meaning and experiencing “becoming”, this is heaven to me.