Heaven- Adventures in the Afterlife Season 1

I love this book.  It takes a Pluralistic World View on the afterlife. The author explores what the afterlife looks like for all the different religions, and even different animals. actually my favorite part is when the characters go to dog heaven. So if you haven't listened to it yet stop reading my blog post right now and go listen or read it.

Who is God thought and what is heaven like? These are questions that everyone asks. I want to use this book to talk about what how Christians have portrayed their God and their concept of heaven.  (By the way Mur, if you are somehow reading this know that I am not criticizing your portrayal of these things. I found them amusing.) 

In the book God is not the creator, all powerful, all knowing, one True God of Christianity-he can't be this book understands all religions as 'equal' the general pluralistic understanding of the world. instead he is how the characterless understood god with their own misconceptions.  Misconceptions which we all have, and have to fight against.  What I find is sad, or laughable, and both, is that the misconceptions have become the Stereotypical understanding by those one the outside.  The kindly old gentlemen, the Englishmen are pictures of God which some how get lodged into our minds when we don't truly seek after who God is.  Some people would blame Michaelangelo for his Sistine Chapel portrayal of God, but I think the old man in the sky is connected to the seeping in of the sky/ruler gods from the pagan religions which were over taken by Christianity.  The question is how do we over come our misconceptions and the misconceptions or the world about God?

In the book Heaven is supposed to be Paradise. In it the author explores the question what does paradise mean? What does it mean to have paradise and what if your paradise includes people who have a different idea of paradise. Paradise must be all we've ever wanted, this means that paradise would have to be based on  the narcissistic wants and desires of the individual. But is this what Christians mean by haven? The place where everyone we want to be with are there, the place where we can have all we ever wanted. The Christian idea of heaven is vague and people have always wondered what the afterlife is, and this can lead to more misconceptions.  What are our misconceptions? How can we accept the vagueness of what the bible says about heaven and get past the misconceptions?

Next week: Hamlet