There is limited information in the Scriptures about the nature of heaven, but there is considerable speculation on earth about what happens to persons after death as relates to any heavenly journey and presumed experience. The Catholic faithful must deal with purgatory in their transition from earth to heaven. Some eastern religions teach that the faithful should develop hope that they are good enough to be dissolved in the cosmos and do not have to return again to earth life. There are the soul sleepers, the deniers, the speculators, annihilators – even those who resist heaven by worshiping Satan. Wherever Satan may be found, they expect to be there, or to join with those who believe in annihilation of the soul. Many secularists, good citizens by human standards, believe that annihilation is death’s proper meaning to nothingness. It may be a common faith.
The emotional view of heaven is common in democratic societies like the United States. The young person who recently died is presumed to be aware of the attention his family is giving his memory in the closure programs related to funerals. The father of the gifted athlete is looking down on the honors that Junior is receiving for his game exploits. So the story goes. But, there is nothing in natural or scriptural evidence that the dead pause from time to time to look down on the human condition characterized by stumbling human efforts to make sense of life and manage earthly conditions. I believe the earth, in nature or life, is closed to the deceased of humanity.
The passage in Isaiah is striking. Whether the passage deals with a period, like the thousand years reign noted in the Bible, or some other interim situation, the implication is that there will be a moment in time when all that has transpired on earth, including the end of the age, will conclude what we know and remember from earth. As once the earth did not exist it will not exist in the future, but will be replicated in a new creation of earth and society. There will be similarities, but the new will greatly exceed the old. The former will be expunged from memory, even God’s. God will have gained what he wanted from Earth One. Isaiah embellished God’s concepts.
What will we who love the earth do in that idyllic place – we who love the life, work and the families God has granted us – we who accept our failures and sins, relieved through repentance and forgiveness? Will I know the person with whom I shared fifty seven years of marriage? Will I know my mother? What about my children? What about friends? It is interesting that Isaiah did not state the matter of relationships in clear terms, but the implication is that our earthly sojourn is not only ended, but erased from memory. We need imagination that comforts us in this loss, if indeed we do lose connections. So magnificent is the promise of heaven, its structure, its forms, its environment, its constancy of light emanating from God, that the earth experience will hardly be memorable. Why would we want to remember that which is so greatly the lesser? Scripture asks us to be aware of the magnificence of what awaits us, if we are in Christ. Such a word is paradise, a word given by Christ to the thief beside him, also on a cross, as the future home for him. The thief will never remember that he had been a thief. Will we forget all in the privilege of forgetting our good as well as bad, our lives, loves and deaths? God lifts us higher. Our earth experience will have something to do with whatever occurs. Our presupposition is that everything has meaning in the mind of God. The ultimate will have some thread with that preceding, but we will not be able to make the joining. The umbilical cord with mother earth is cut. All this seems too wonderful for us – for present consideration. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020