I have always found the concept of Heaven fascinating. One of the first questions I asked myself as a child was:

“Will I like heaven when I get there?”

As the underlying motivation behind Christianity, it was an important question to consider.

I immediately ran into problems with the Christian view of Heaven. The qualifications for deciding who should go to heaven seemed a bit iffy. The Catholic idea of ​​being judged for our consistency in performing certain rituals sounded a bit superficial as a criterion for eternal liking. And the Protestant view that nothing counts except submission to Christ also seemed like a very confusing proposition.

The first problem I had was with the apparent uniformity of the Sky. Here was a place that they all inhabited, with all their differences and quirks, and yet, for each one, Heaven is the epitome of bliss.

A perfect Heaven, with no moral choices, no contrasting viewpoints or conflict between individuals, didn’t seem like a place he would find very interesting.

Of course, it could do without the hate, deceit and injustice that we experience on a daily basis, but the Heaven described in the Bible speaks only of harmony, love and, of course, praise and adoration. There was no celebration of the individual, or of personal achievement, or of learning or growing as a person.

In general, the Bible seems to suggest that, once stripped of evil and sin, the human spirit is also stripped of its individuality.

This did not seem right to me. I had always felt so different from those around me, and it was difficult, and discouraging, to think that those differences represented everything that was wrong with me.

I also didn’t give much thought to the idea that I would spend eternity singing praises to God. For one thing, I can’t sing to save my life, and I always hated that part of the Church. Also, most of my personal pleasures had nothing to do with God. Trading those personal pleasures for something I really didn’t care to do anyway didn’t seem to make for a very satisfying afterlife.

But because I still felt I needed a better understanding of Heaven, I examined the only specific example of a physical, literal, Heaven-like place described in the Bible: The Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis.

In the Book of Genesis, the Bible tells us that in the beginning the world was “good.” And the Garden of Eden was chosen by God as the dwelling place of Man. Little else is said about this world that God had created for man, other than the obvious about dominion over animals and going out and multiplying and so on, but that all sounded pretty much like the world today, so it didn’t help me. much to understand Heaven.

So instead I examined the event that is at the center of this story: the fact that God expelled Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit. I decided that the key to understanding Heaven must lie in this act that banishes them from it.

Genesis mentions two specific trees that exist in the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Only the Tree of Knowledge, which is located in the center of the Garden, receives a location.

Whether you think Genesis is talking about literal trees and fruit or not, I think the most important question to ask yourself is why such a forbidden tree was in the Garden of Eden in the first place. If the Garden was God’s perfect vision, and the closest we’ve ever been to Heaven, why was it there? And should we expect an equally dire surprise upon entering heaven?

The only other tree mentioned in the Garden, the Tree of Life, was obviously not touched by Adam or Eve, although it does not seem to be forbidden to them.

We know this because in Genesis 3:22, it tells us this:

And Jehovah God said: The man is now as one of us, knowing good and evil. He is not allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.

From this verse I think we can conclude two things: 1) eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a significant step towards becoming like God, and 2) the final step towards Man’s divinity would be eating from the Tree. of Life, granting Man immortality.

The most amazing thing to me is that the happy couple considers the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which was forbidden, over the fruit of the Tree of Life, which bestowed immortality. After all, immortality would have given them plenty of time to come up with a better plan to steal some fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The fact that they made such an obvious mistake makes it clear that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge not only granted a knowledge of Good and Evil, but also a capacity for rational thought.

In fact, I bet the first thing they thought after eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was, “Shit! We should have eaten from the Tree of Life instead!”

Imagine how different things would be if there were… But let’s skip this sorry thought, to examine sin itself.

In Chapter 2, verses 16-17, God tells Adam and Eve:

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat from it, you will surely die.”

Even at this early stage, it is clear that death is the threat that motivates obedience. But there are two things that stand out to me about this statement. First, if Adam and Eve had never experienced death, how was this an effective deterrent? But even more peculiar is why God uses the threat of death in association with the Tree of Knowledge. Would it not have been better served as punishment for taking from the Tree of Life?

Shouldn’t the punishment for taking from the Tree of Knowledge be to spend an eternity as an idiot? …Oh wait. They were already.

It becomes apparent that God was actually lying to Adam and Eve about the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. They would surely die, but not as a consequence of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It would have been more honest to say that they would gain an understanding of their own mortality, which would have been terrifying enough for someone who had never met death. .

We know this to be true because of God’s words quoted in Genesis 3:22. Here he reveals not only that the Tree of Life would give Adam and Eve eternal life, but also that they had not yet eaten of it. He hadn’t forbidden it either.

If Adam and Eve became mortal as a consequence of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, then they must have been immortal before committing the act.

But this cannot be true when considered with the mention of the Tree of Life. Why would it be mentioned, and why would God express concern about them eating from it if they had already been immortal?

Therefore, Adam and Eve were mortal before they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, in which case “death” could not have been the consequence of taking from the Tree of Knowledge.

God lies.

The final step in our journey to understand Heaven is to examine the sinful act itself.

Defining exactly what sin Adam and Eve were committing will actually give us a glimpse of what won’t be allowed in Heaven either, bringing us one step closer to a truer picture of that elusive place.

Superficially, the sin is obvious: disobedience. But, as our legal system well knows, it motivates 90% of the crime. And there’s only one motive they could have had for stealing the forbidden fruit.

Curiosity.

Before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve had no concept of Good and Evil. Therefore, they could not have had evil motivations. Now, if they did, they couldn’t have been aware that they were evil.

Basically, their sin was as complex as that of a baby reaching out to touch a hot stove despite being told not to by mom or dad.

Adam and Eve’s terrible sinful act was simply one of innocent curiosity.

With this in mind, the terrible wrath and punishment of God seems a bit exaggerated.

But when you think about it, is it really that amazing? It has been a tradition for millennia of the great religions to stamp out individual curiosity as a threat to doctrine. Killing heretics, dissidents, and basically anyone who had the tenacity to ask questions about religious truths that didn’t make sense to them.

Even more interesting is how this brings us to the starting point of our initial investigation of Heaven.

The missing ingredient in heaven is personal individuality. And what else is the ultimate expression of individuality than personal choice? And what drives our personal choices? Curiosity.

But is this really that amazing? The history of the Christian Church, the Jewish faith and a multitude of secular doctrines have shown us that the first

Since they had yet to eat of the fruit, they could not have any concept of what that knowledge would be, so they could not have had any clear intentions. In fact, since evil enters the situation only after they partake of the fruit, their motives cannot be as complex as the intent they show to God by disobeying him.

No, without possessing evil or understanding of it, the only possible motive they could have experienced would be innocent curiosity.