An Argument Against Heaven: We Wouldn’t Want Our Lives To Be Perfect

There are many things that don’t make sense about Heaven — or at least the popularized version of it.

Are we frozen at a certain age when we’re up there? Because I doubt 90-year-olds want to live that way for eternity.

If I have a disability, would I still have it in the afterlife? (And what if I embraced that difference and didn’t think it needed “fixing”?)

What if the person who killed me accepted Jesus? Would I run into that person again?

What if there were family members I never wanted to see again?

Could I truly enjoy Heaven if someone I loved on Earth ended up in Hell?

Would I be happy all the time? Because that would get really old after a while, wouldn’t it…?

Answering those questions wasn’t the purpose of David Firth‘s fascinating short film Cream, but I couldn’t help thinking about them — especially the last one — as I watched this. It turns out utopia isn’t always so wonderful.

If there’s a moral to take from that story, maybe it’s that as much as we want to fix all the problems in life, and as much as we’d like to be happy all the time, it’s that roller coaster of joy and sorrow and anger and loss that makes this life — the only one we have — worth living to its fullest extent.

Cream doesn’t exist. Neither does Heaven. And things wouldn’t necessarily be wonderful even if they did.

(via Kottke)