My Sunday Thought for 052018: Heaven Can Wait!

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,

Love like you'll never be hurt,

Sing like there's nobody listening,

And live like it's heaven on earth.” 

-- William W. Purkey, author, educator, counselor

Oh, ya, you betcha mon!  If I have anything to say about it, heaven can definitely wait for me.  Of course that is purely dependent on the validity of my view of heaven being more even handed than what I was spoon fed in my youth.  There is not one righteous among us.  Not one!  I am, certainly, not one... not yet.  I know of a young lady in northern Tennessee that is closer than she thinks she is, most of the time, and if I ever feel the need to reaffirm my baptism, I think she would be my pastor of choice.  She is graced, so very blessed, and I hope realizes it each and every day.  I also hope she discovers her path while she is young enough to do some serious good in this world.

I rediscovered my path late in life.  With age I've come to realize I have no time left and, yet, all the time I need.  If our souls do, in fact, live on forever, heaven can wait!  I have much to do in this world, and the next, and the numerous more after that.

"These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.

1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all."

-- Gospel of Thomas

Thomas recorded, in his gospel, "secret sayings" that Jesus spoke to him.  "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death," so I have read, and reread, time and again, these sayings in the gospel of Thomas, and have come to two conclusions.  One, Jesus was speaking of things far beyond our understanding, and two, the only secret Jesus kept, the secret we will find "disturbing," is that there is no secret. What Jesus imparted was a quintessential riddle which, in its simplicity, is so complicated and confusing as to have only one obvious interpretation which we can find in the challenge itself... there is no secret interpretation.

I equate the "riddle" to a Zen exercise.  When a novice hopeful goes to the master seeking enlightenment and the master assigns him to stare at sand until he attains enlightenment he discovers, after many years of staring, an enlightenment that the assignment was stupid.  Or, was it?  Was he not enlightened?  He was trying so hard to attain that which he already possessed, instead of emptying his mind allowing the obvious truth to prevail.

Life, like salvation, is really that simple and it always has been.  Nothing about God's love, forgiveness, understanding and such, was ever meant to be complicated, but religion would certainly have us believing it.  The more complicated something is, the more you need guidance and the more you'll be willing to pay for it.

In the mid-1800s Matthew Arnold wrote, "Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power."  It might be time for us to wake up and stop buying into these great deceptions concerning a God we need to fear.  Maybe we should all accept ourselves as children of loving God so we can view God as a loving "father" who simply wants the best for us, and the best from us, so we can truly be all we can.  Maybe there's a reason why, as Lenny Bruce once noted, "People are leaving the church and going back to God."

“Earth's crammed with heaven... But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.”

― Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), poet, author

The everlasting life has been with us all the time.  The "Tree of Life" is the knowledge we keep seeking.  Mankind was thrown out of Eden before we had the chance to discover and understand the "Tree of Life" as we did the "Tree of Knowledge" and the concept of good and evil.  I believe the interpretation of Christ's teachings, the secret behind His philosophies, might just be that we have all the time in the universe.  What will we do when we discover this obvious secret?  Will we use forever to do great things?  I don't know.  Heck, if I'm wrong I might find myself burning in hell just for writing this post... or, maybe not, if God is a loving God.  

I think we need to stop reading about "what God really meant to say."  We don't know.  We have scripture which religious scholars and clergy all agree is simply written by man but inspired by God.  Really?  So, "what God really meant to say" was set forth in the only WORD of God written in stone; ten very simple, easy to understand rules, which have been further simplified into: Believe in a power greater than ourselves, and do unto each other as you would have others do unto you.  Scripture repeats this very same philosophy over and over again, ad nauseam, and I have to keep asking why.  Are we really too dense to understand two simple instructions given to us by a superior power?  Two simple instructions which are the foundation of ten simple laws which we felt required volumes of explanation in which to couch religious control over the masses?  Are we really this dense?  We must be, as we have over 33,000 Christian sects which interpret this scripture differently.  Perhaps being this stupid is divine justification to prevent us from living forever, but we are going to, anyway, until we learn.  Maybe this is our hell: Remedial Life.

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), poet, philosopher, naturalist

Scripture seems to be another example of trying to perfect God's creation.  Now we're trying to genetically alter living things, God's creation, God's perfection, in order to make it better.  I remember when tomatoes smelled like... well, for one thing, they actually had smell.  You could smell them up the hill from the garden.  Now they are pale, not red, and if you do find a red one it will be hard are yellowish-white on the inside.  Now, science has perfected the art of removing smell, flavor, and color, from fruits and vegetables for the sake of convenience.  Lucky us?  Convenience is just another way of saying we're too lazy to buy fresh groceries every day.  We have forsaken God for science, for better living through chemistry, and forgotten all our ancestors were taught by God, back in the day.

We have, most of us, taken the wrong path.  We have forsaken real fruit for what science tells us "tastes like fruit."  We have forsaken tomatoes for flavorless quasi-red balls that are pale inside.  Meat for consumption is being grown in a lab and, soon, our children will be grown there, as well.  We accept what is happening as better, but many of us have never tasted a real tomato, or smelled a rose that smelled like a rose... or, smelled like anything.  We are forgetting this heaven here on earth and are replacing it with a hell created by man.  Why?  I think we need to rediscover the wonders of this heaven we were given to enjoy. 

“You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.”

-- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), author, playwright

It seems like there are four types of people in this world.   There are those who find tooth and nail to live at the dying of the light; there are those who welcome release from their living hell; there are those who simply accept the inevitable; there are those who see the release from their mortal shell as the next great adventure.  I think we prepare ourselves in this life for the next great adventures to come, and there will be many before we reach our destination.

We do have forever, after all.

So, for me, heaven can wait.  There is so much left to do, so much left to experience, to rediscover, so much path left to travel before my journey is done.  I want to take more detours, have a bunch more potty breaks, and meet more interesting people.  I want to rediscover a tomato that tastes like one.  Actually, I'm not sure I ever want my physical existences to end.

If there is an eventual heaven, I hope there are challenges.  I hope it's is like here, at least for now.

Editor's Note

(Re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card)

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so. This is also why, occasionally, I will present an "opinion" just to stir an emotional pot. Where it may sound like I agree with the statements made, I'm more interested in getting others to consider another viewpoint. 

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and while engaging in peaceful and constructive discussion in an arena of mutual respect concerning those opinions put forth. After over twenty years with military intelligence, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we learn from the experience, and what we do afterward.

Pastor Tony spent 23 years with United States Air Force Intelligence as a planner, analyst, briefer, instructor, and senior manager. He spent 17 years, following his service career, working with a world renowned Institutional Review Board helping to protect the rights of human subjects in pharmaceutical research. Ordained 1n 2013 as an "interfaith" minister, he founded the Congregation for Religious Tolerance in response to intolerance shown by Christians toward peaceful Islam. As the weapon for his war on intolerance he chose the pen, to wage his "battle" in the guise of the Congregation's official online blog, The Path, of which he is both author and editor. "The Path" offers a vehicle for commentary and guidance concerning one's own personal, spiritual, path toward peace and the final destination for us all. He currently resides in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where he volunteers as lead Chaplain and Chaplain Program Liaison, at the regional medical center.