Thursday, December 30, 2010

Some thoughts about heaven and eternity


As a kid, I never really believed in heaven, but I heard about it so much I couldn't help but think about it. So my idea of heaven started out like the cartoon version, like we pretty much all imagine, but that's where the similarities end.

See I was having a real hell of a time imagining eternity. I was trying to figure out how the hell I would spend my time up there. I heard people at church talking about how they were looking forward to an eternity praising god, and as a kid, I was like... "dude I can't even do that for 5 minutes with you freaks without going nuts from boredom." (Side Story, they said "Oh it will be much better praising god when god is actually with us" I responded "I thought you said god WAS here with us" She replied "Oh, well he is but we can't see him, it will be better when we can see god" I said "so if I close my eyes up in heaven it'll be like down on earth?" And she said "Oh you won't want to close your eyes up in heaven!" Yeah, that's word for word)

So where was I? Oh right, eternity. So I was trying to imagine what I would DO with my eternity. My first idea was, just watching, everybody. I would watch people live their entire lives, and I would do that, for everyone. I figured, I would start with the people I knew best, like my best friends, and family. I was curious to see what they all did when I wasn’t around. What I missed and stuff. Then I thought “Wow I’ll be watching a lot of people just watching TV a lot… oh well”. So yeah, after I watch all my friends, I’ll watch all their friends and so on, kind of in an outward circle from myself.

Another idea I had was that I would almost HAVE to be able to read their minds. I thought, “you know it would be fun to know what people were really thinking. I would read the mind of every liar. Know every reason for every action. Not only would I see the people do the things, but I would know why they did it. I would know why people were mean, know why people were nice. So yeah, when I die, I’ll watch everyone and not just watch, I’ll read their minds too.

Then it hit me, if I was going to do this, I would have to watch everybody die. If I was going to watch the entire life of everyone who ever lived, I would have to watch the deaths to, and some would be very early. I thought about all the little kids that died. For a brief moment I though “Well that’s ok because when you die you just go to heaven right? It’s not really a big deal”. Then I remembered not everyone goes to heaven. So I would watch people live their lives, know their every thought, see their death, then know they’re down in hell. And it would happen a lot. Probably most of the time, if what the church people say is true, only a few people are going to heaven. They said “You probably have friends at school that are going to hell” (Yeah it was a real nice church…)

Then I thought back to the praise thing. And thought, well what makes a person go to hell. Because I went to a church that said all the time “There will be good people in hell!” that was what I heard as a kid. “There WILL be good people in hell!” That angered the crap out of me. I’m going to go to heaven and watch good people, live their lives, hear all their thoughts, then watch them die, and know they’re in hell, forever. I would know that for every second I’m sitting up in heaven bored out of my mind, there were good people down in hell, that were there because they didn’t say some stupid magic word. They didn’t praise the stupid god that I didn’t think deserved praise.

Then I continued to think about eternity. I though, ok so maybe watching people live their lives is out. I just can’t handle thinking about the good people that were sent to hell. So what AM I going to do? I sure as hell don’t want to praise god. I’m not spending one second of my eternity singing stupid songs at god. So what AM I going to do? I never did come up with an answer to that question. And while I was thinking of one, I realized that even if I DID watch the life of every single person that ever lived, it would still be instantaneous in the face of eternity. So what would I do with all that friggin time? I don’t know. Would god eventually get bored with us and go off to start a new universe? Hey, maybe we aren’t the first. Why the hell did god make us anyway? What are his motives? Are our lives really just entertainment to him? Did he make us just to watch us? What happens when he gets bored? Will he just send us all to hell and start over? What if god stops loving us? If god can send people to hell for such a stupid reason once, who’s to say he won’t do it again.

It was questions like those, that helped me realize, it’s all nonsense. None of it makes sense.
I started looking around, people would give thanks to god, when god didn’t do anything. They would just thank god for everything. If someone looked like they were going to be late, but showed up just slightly late instead “Oh thank god you’re here!” Why thank god? He didn’t do anything. People would give god credit for stupid stuff, and claim that was proof of his existence. People would pray, and nothing would happen. It didn’t seem to make any difference.

So I began wondering, what proof do we have that there even is a god? The story doesn’t make any sense; the Bible is full of crazy garbage, all the people that believe seem like lunatics…

So yeah. It’s not true. Not one word of it. There is no god. There never was one. We may not know how we got here but it certainly wasn’t the Christian god. I would bet my soul on it, but, well it’s kind of hard to since they don’t exist either.

I just find it unfathomable how people can believe this garbage. They look forward to praising god for eternity. That alone it astonishing. They can’t have given it much thought, they just can’t. Like, what happens if you want to take a break? Is god going to glare at you and say get back to singing and praising my name!” That lady at the church, like, she actually believed that once we finally get to heaven and see god, we are NEVER going to want to take our eyes off of “him” and that we will be happy and honored to just sing about how great he is, forever. And I guess they don’t envision god ever getting bored with that.

I once got into trouble for posting a number, it was a 1, followed by a lot of zero’s. I don’t remember exactly how many, but the number was so large it was crashing peoples browsers when they clicked the topic. That number, is less than 1/ that number of eternity. So let’s say:

900 billion, to the 900 billionth power = N,  

And “N” will basically be an insignificant amount of time. Basically like a fraction of a second down here. Only much, much smaller. I could say “A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second” but that wouldn’t even begin to express how small “N” is next to eternity. We seriously can’t fathom it. Heaven would be hell. I can only imagine what hell would be like.

People like to throw around words like “Fire” and “Freezing cold”. They like to speculate. Wonder what’s in store for all the “good people” that didn’t ask Jesus into their hearts, as their personal lord and savior.

I swear I can get so wrapped up in this crap, I have to remind myself why I’m mad. I’m not mad because I think this shit is real, I’m mad because I know it isn’t, and I think everyone else does too. They HAVE to. There’s no way anyone can think about “N” and think, “yeah, I want to praise god for N to the Nth power, and then I’ll want to praise god some more!”  I know they think stupid shit like “Yeah I’ll get to see grandma again and we’ll go on picnics!”

People don’t think about monotony. A day in heaven won’t be amazing. It will be tedious. If we even have days, and why would we really? Will heaven revolve around a sun? Will it be spherical? If you dig into the ground in heaven what will you find? Will there be dirt in heaven? Will there be worms in the dirt? I guess so because I know there’s a shit-ton of people looking forward to “goin fishin with god up in heaven”, so I guess they’ll have to have worms. But what if you don’t like worms? Well you can just go to the other side of heaven right? Away from the worms? Well, what if someone picks up a worm and tosses it at you? Will it still be heaven?

Also what about football? We can assume there will be a lot of football players in heaven right? So what happens when they both pray to god for a victory? What if someone dodges a tackle, runs 99 yards in for the touchdown, then thanks god for the help. Will the person he dodged feel cheated? Will he ask god “why did you help him and not me?”

I know I know, this is getting stupid. I could do this forever though. (No not really, that was a joke).

Heaven is such god damn bullshit. Just think about it for five seconds.

Maybe I’ll write more about this later. But just think about the largest amount of time you can fathom, being absolutely insignificant. Less than a millisecond. Far less. The tiniest fraction of a millisecond you can imagine. That’s how insignificant the largest amount of time you can imagine is.

And what are you going to do with all that fucking time? Look at your watch and pray that some day it will stop ticking? Well it won’t. There’s no escape. Well, maybe god will notice you aren’t praising him and send you to hell. Forever. And ever, and ever. Halleluiah.

 So be thankful death is the end. Because forever is a long, long time.


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