> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of The Fool
... > http://www.gate.com/~zardoz/heaven.htm > > I can't imagine a more frightening story than that of the Bible's heaven. > Unfortunately most Christians believe heaven as a pleasant eternal vista > for which their souls reside as one with their God, forever. Oh, but what > they have misconstrued. > If one considers the Bible an authoritative source (and after all, that's > where the idea of Christian heaven comes from) then you will find little > to be desiring about the place called heaven unless you wish to become a > mindless soul in a utopian world similar to the world of the Borg as > presented by the Star Trek series. (That's a quote from the start of the article, in case you were confused, like me, and thought it was written by The Fool.) It sounds like the idea of the Borg was influenced by Biblical ideas, especially from Revelation. But that certainly doesn't mean that the Star Trek authors got it right! This essay misses one enormous difference -- the god of the Borg is the collective; the Biblical God is separate. On Star Trek, when one "goes" to the Borg, one is assimilated; this author mistakenly interprets the Bible as saying the same thing. But there is no such language in the Bible and there is evidence to the contrary, such as the resurrection of individual bodies. There's a big straw man in this essay -- the idea that heaven is a pacific zone, where people just hang out with God for eternity, doing little, as in the non-Biblical notion of playing harps while loafing on clouds. While I whole-heartedly agree with the author that Revelation is not to be taken literally, part of its figurative meaning is that our inability to understand everything, especially God, can be frightening. One of my favorite metaphors is that of the firefighters who come to rescue you. I used to do fire safety education with a Sesame Street program that was aimed at preventing pre-schooler deaths. The problem was (and often still is) that children -- and some adults -- hide from the firefighters. They wake up, groggy, somewhat poisoned by toxic smoke, hearing strange sounds, glass breaking and shouts. The lights are out except for pulsing red glow coming from outside... and in walks Darth Vader -- a firefighter in turnout gear, air pack with mask and he's carrying an axe! So it's under the bed or into the closet. We counter this behavior with education -- showing kids what all the gear is for, letting them try it on. For adults, the other part of this metaphor is the fact that in a fire that's grown quite hot, one of the first things the firefighters do is cut a hole in the roof, to let the heat escape. That's how flashovers are prevented, among other things. But homeowners, seeing this, very often become angry, asking why the firefighters are doing *more* damage when the house already on fire! I don't believe in a wimpy God, who only does what is "nice," so I'm not at all impressed by this writer's arguments that heaven isn't the boring playground of childish imagination. On the other hand, I am intrigued that the writers of Star Trek, in creating their utopian Borg, included imagery that suggests they were also creating a vision of a false heaven. Not that there's any shortage of those... Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
