What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern SoulSwain, Richard La Rue
Religion
What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul
Swain, Richard La Rue
Christianity; God (Christianity)
Heaven is some place, or many places, in our present universe. God will
never leave His beautiful universe that is so infinite in its
complexness, so vast in its dimensions, and so rich in its millenniums
of development, and go off into nothingness to build some sort of
mystical and ethereal heaven. Heaven will be as much a part of the
universe as is this earth. And this earth is infinitely closer in its
relation to the whole than we are now able to comprehend. Almost daily,
scientists are discovering new bonds between the earth and the rest of
the universe. The inhabitants of heaven will not be less closely
connected, but much more vitally and intelligently related to nature
than are we.
There are doubtless many spheres in this universe that would make good
sites for a heaven. And it would be interesting to know how many of them
are already so utilized. "In my Father's house are many mansions." When
we speak of mansions in the skies it would be well to remember that the
earth is a pretty good mansion in the skies. The trouble is, being such
poor Christians, we have not built upon it a very good heaven. While we
have not been wholly recreant in building a heaven on earth, yet we have
often cursed this mansion by constructing many hells of smaller or
larger proportions.
Another reason for believing that God does not plan for a heaven outside
the objective universe, is the deep desire of man to make his richest
ideals tangible and objective in a book, a piece of art, a musical
composition, a noble building, or some splendid institution. Life
without expression and achievement, as we know it, is both
unsatisfactory and dangerous. The same must be true in relation to God,
as evidenced by His vast and beautiful works that have come forth
unfolding out of the infinite past and now promise to expand and
differentiate into the infinite future. Even in the sphere of human
lives He has impelled men to express His wisdom, beauty, and purpose
according to human modes of expression.
It evidently is not God's design to abandon His works of nature and draw
back into His own thoughts and spend eternity in self-contemplation. He
rather intends to utilize the unlimited capacity of nature, and the
unbounded ability of His children, to give the fullest possible
expression both of His children and of Himself in a kingdom which has
form as well as soul.
In Chapter III I gave a description of the kingdom of God on earth. I
shall now repeat that statement as an equally good description of the
kingdom of God in heaven:
"The kingdom of God is a loving intelligent family, organized around the
Father's good will, living in the universe as His home, using the forces
of nature as the instruments of His will, and making all things vocal
with His wisdom, love, and power."
So little has the kingdom of God been realized on earth that it is like
a kingdom on paper in comparison with what has doubtless been realized
elsewhere in the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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