This post has been ‘brewing’ for some time without making it into the blog! For the purposes of this bit of writing we shall ignore the many mysteries surrounding the ideas of heaven and hell and simply assume that there is really a “good place” that we can all aim to attain. Some of those mysteries, by the nature of the question will need to be mentioned (but certainly not resolved) as we explore who we will meet there.
As Christians the idea that we will all be reunited in heaven is something that is central to the Faith. The words of a hymn strike me as significant here….
And I am safe on that beautiful shore, …
When, by the gift of His infinite grace,
I am accorded in heaven a place, …
Friends will be there I have loved long ago; …
Of course it is difficult to define what heaven will actually be like – there are many differing interpretations – but assuming that we meet everyone who has been important in our lives once more – which version of them do we meet? This is particularly relevant for those to whom we have a ‘connection’ stretching over many years because people change – our relationships change – do we get to meet again with all the different facets of that other person – or is it only a single version of them that reaches heaven. If we meet them multiple times – is it always the same version?
So – the seemingly simple statement in the third verse of the quoted hymn turns into quite a complex idea when it is given some due consideration.
There are some people that I have only ever met in a single place and time. For those, is it safe to assume that when we meet up again in the hereafter they will be as they were from that single meeting? If that is true, does that also mean that as far as they are concerned I will be the same also? That immediately brings to the fore the conundrum that I will ‘appear’ differently to different people. Of course this is the ‘simple’ case.
Inevitably people change, of course in appearance, but also in personality and character. So a single person could – potentially – appear in many alternative guises – or even multiple different guises. Will I meet the ‘version’ that I grew up with? or the version that I met again several years later? or whatever version that person continued to grow into? Thinking about the people I know – and therefore presumably fall into the “Friends will be there I have loved long ago” category – it is clear that my memories of them are very definitely set in a particular time. Almost all of them have “moved on” from the person they were when I ‘knew’ them. (that is, of course, heavily caveated by what I have written about not really knowing anyone)
As I write this I am very aware that it becoming a litany of questions – things to be pondered on – and that every single one of the questions is inherently unanswerable because none of us has any idea of what ‘heaven’ might look like. That’s OK though. I would always prefer the complex unanswerable question to the simple – and inevitably incomplete – answer.
This has been turning around in my mind over the last few weeks and there are many aspects to this to explore.
Whenever I start thinking about this topic the questions only pile up. It seems to me that whatever the answers to these questions are (and I don’t have many – any?) the way in which it must work is very different to the way in which the ‘real world’ works. That – I think – is almost a given as it seems nonsensical to explore the topic with real world constraints in place. The only caveat to that which is worth highlighting is that I am uncertain whether “the real world” is fully understood. Certainly not by me and I suspect only very few people, if anyone, has the full picture there.
There are many people – scientists, authors, film makers, philosophers, and more – who have one way or another explored the concept of what I will term “alternative worlds”. The one alternative world that almost everyone is familiar with is the world of dreams. In that world many things happen that are simply not possible in “the real world”. In the same way as I ask the question about which version of a person do we meet in heaven, so we can ‘meet’ different versions of a person in the dream world. Sometimes the person will simply come from a different time, when they were younger for instance, but sometimes they may be nothing ‘like’ our normal memories of that person – but you still ‘know’ that it is them in the dream setting.
Equally, the situations, the locations, the perils, the mix of people, and many other things can be a long way from the possibilities in “the real world”. Of course, the interpretation of dreams is something that has occupied many minds for a long time and I am certainly not going to try to address the meaning, my purpose here is to draw some sort of parallel between how we perceive dreams and how we envision heaven.
Sticking with the main topic of this particular post – the dream world suggests that we can envision people differently at different times without losing their identity – they remain identifiable even when they ‘appear’ different. So this sort of goes along a path which leads me to think that who we meet in heaven is too simplistic – when we meet a person there is it in some way the ‘essence’ of that person – some might call it the soul I guess – that thing (or those things) which define them as being X rather than Y. The view that we get is less to do with an accurate picture of them at a particular time, but more to do with some ‘creation’ of how they should ‘look’. I have put ‘look’ in quotes because I am also unsure whether seeing is a thing when you start talking about either dreaming or heaven.
Thinking again about the many people I have known, only a few of them are represented in my memory by a recent picture. If I visualise them they appear “as they were” at some point in the past. Even those for whom I do have recent views, my visualisation is not necessarily in line with that. I am also well aware of some who have appeared in dreams looking nothing like my memory of them. Another aspect here is that, for many, the last days/years of life are not how we would want to remember them – so I guess that if and when they turn up in our heaven they will not be ‘as they were’ towards the end of their life.
The fact that I just said “our heaven” highlights another aspect of this. Different parts of the world, different religions and just plain different people all have differing views on what ‘heaven’ is. Surely that does not mean that only people who share our religion (or whatever) will be met in ‘our’ heaven. If heaven is a personal thing then admittance would be open to anyone of whatever race or faith or whatever.
I also think about situations where two people who I am friendly with do not “get on” with each other – does that mean that they never show up together in ‘my’ heaven?
This, for the time being, along with all the other enigmas set out in this post will simply have to remain open questions with no clear answers. Perhaps in time all become clearer, although I suspect not given the nature of the subject.