Eternal

 A long long time ago, when I was in University, in Calgary, I went to a sort of guest lecture from a Christian evangelist, who was approaching things from a scientific perspective.  His discussion has stuck with me ever since I saw it.  Sadly, I have zero recollection of what his name was, given that I just went to see him on the spur of the moment.  And he talked at least for a while about resurrection.

Up until that moment, I had certainly thought about Heaven, and I had confessed that I believed in the resurrection of the body, but I'd never considered the logistics of the operation.  But I should have.

Considering the resurrection of the body is an important thing to do, because I do sincerely believe that if we examined what we believe properly, it would truly get rid of a lot of our difficulties on these topics. People rightly will get hung up on a couple of topics when it comes to resurrection.  Here are some of the issues that can be dealt with by, shockingly, being orthodox.

1 - If we go to heaven forever as souls, then why were we alive in bodies in the first place?

Answer:  We weren't put on earth just to suffer through having a body for a period of time only to be released from it.  Rather, we were given bodies by the Lord God who looked at us and saw that it was good.  God made matter, he is quite keen on it, and nothing in the New Testament will give you the idea that the end state of humanity is to be divorced eternally from the matter that God made in the first place.  In the Bible, God very much wants to see human beings being human beings forever.  That's the goal, and it is consistent with the beginning of the body, in a way that soul eternity does not.

2 - If souls are the only part of you that survives, then where is that soul located in the body?  And how can your personality and attitudes change due to injuries to the brain, changes to the brain, etc. See Phineas Gage.

Answer:  The Christian perspective doesn't actually argue from your personality, your spirit being completely distinct from your matter.  That is, there is something about your body that is extremely important for your creation.  When Jesus returned from the dead, he came back in his body.  He didn't come back as a spirit or ghost or life force. He came back in his body.  And so too, when we think about our bodies, we can think about our personalities, our humanity, at least being partially bound up on our human bodies, which is good and pleasing, given that when God makes humanity, he makes them out of the base elements of the earth, and doesn't only attribute a body to them later.

3 - If we are supposed to have bodies forever, what do we do with the fact that people die, and get buried or cremated? There aren't enough atoms on earth to resurrect literally everyone on earth at the same time, given that human beings will share atoms between them.

Answer: This was one of the most interesting things that the lecturer said.  When he was talking about resurrection of the body, he talked about our DNA.  That is, we all have a very particular fingerprint of our DNA which is unique to us.  There is a pattern that makes you who you are. That pattern is distinct, and doesn't get replicated.  When we reproduce, we do so by taking two unique humans and combining them to make another unique person.  No replication of humanity.  Now, when we're talking about the pattern that makes us who we are, I want to talk about Isaiah 49:15-16.  In this passage, God says that he has engraved us on the palms of his hands. What does that mean? It means that you, the individual you, for which there is no replacement, that you has been engraved on the palms of the hands of God.  There is one pattern that makes you you.  That pattern doesn't make anyone else. So when God resurrects us, and resurrects our bodies, that pattern, the pattern that is for you and you only, is remembered and redone.  This isn't a matter only of dragging dead flesh out of a grave and dressing it up, for when Lazarus rose from the dead, he rose with his decay undone.  When Jesus rose from the dead, he rose with decay undone.  This isn't a zombie thing, you know. This is a resurrection thing.  The DNA, the pattern that makes you into who you are is crucial, vital.  Resurrection is a rebirth, with all the problems, weaknesses and injurious mutations scrubbed out of that pattern.  But the pattern remains.  The pattern that makes you into you.

4 - Will we know each other in heaven?

Answer:  Yes.  Because you will be you. And your parents will be your parents.  And your grandparents, and great grandparents, all the way back.  God loves you.  He doesn't love a spirit or a ghost, he loves you.  Very sincerely.  And you are what Jesus Christ came to save, all of you.  The you that he made, the you that he sustained, the you that he redeemed.  There isn't a fake you, or a part of you that he came to save.  He came to save you.  Completely.  The pattern that He made, that he loves, that's the you that he wants to save for eternity.  Do you know each other here? Then you will know each other in paradise.  Except now you know in part, but then you will know in full, even as you are fully known.

5- Will we be angels sitting on clouds?

Answer: No. You will be you.  If you don't have wings now, you're not going to pick them up later.  That's a straight up truth.

All in all, these are better answers than the corrupt ones that you will hear.  And in keeping with Dorothy Sayers, the dogma is the drama. We were all conditioned to think about Christian dogma as being in some way a barrier to what is good and true and worthwhile, but in reality, the dogma is the most important part.  Without this dogma of the resurrection of the body, all of a sudden 'resurrection' begins to mean something ghastly.  A false dogma gives you a hope that you may someday see your family in the form of wispy ghosts.  But the truth of the scripture will give you an eternal family that you can actually cling to.  

I'm well aware of which one I prefer.

And in keeping with Dorothy Sayers, show this to a person in the world, and he may not believe it, but he will at least see something there that is worth believing.