I received the following comment as a reaction to my post Is Atheism Bleak?

One of the turn-offs of Christianity is that whole god worship thing. When I was younger, I was told I would spend my afterlife on a cloud with departed loved ones singing praises to god. Compared to unending, repetitious slavery, non-existence doesn’t seem so bad.

Only on occasion have I heard or read heaven described. Usually this is in very vague terms. Heaven is ‘oneness’ with God – some sort of spiritual reunion. Or there is the image of God on His throne with Jesus sitting at His right hand – doing what, I don’t exactly know. Judging people? Some say that in heaven you reunite with all of your deceased relatives – or at least the ones who made it. If your entire family is Jewish and you are the lone Christian convert then that could make for a lonely reunion. Since we do not have our physical bodies in heaven what do people look like? What are we made of?

I suppose the central question I am trying to get at is this: What do people actually do in heaven for an eternity?

Praising God for the rest of time sounds downright dreadful. Christians do a lot of worshiping in this life and supposedly continue with more intense worshiping in the next life. Among believers it is certainly taken for granted that heaven is desirable (as opposed to hell) but, as my commenter noted, that sounds like two lifes of slavery.

Christians – if you’re reading this – explain to me what you will be doing in heaven after you die for all that time and why it is important for God to have us be doing that.

Posted in Christianity, Religion

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