Age and Aging of Resurrected Bodies in Heaven

People die at all different ages, so does our resurrected body pick up where our physical body left off, or does something else happen?  This issue has come up repeatedly both in things I have read, and conversations I have had over the last few weeks, and was brought into focus by the topic of my last post.  In the book "Heaven is for Real," a scene is described where a miscarried baby is seen in heaven as grown up.  On the other end of the spectrum, someone who is very old when they die might be more interested in rolling the development clock backwards instead of forwards.  Is there any reason to believe that might happen?

Although I am by no means sure that this is true, for the sake of discussion, let's examine the idea that everyone in heaven is about 20-25 years old.  Basically everyone's resurrected body is at the pinnacle of their physical development and growth, but before the aging process has begun to deteriorate it.  I first read about this idea, and now have seen that it can be applied to a number of interesting questions.

We hear of people not initially recognizing Jesus after his resurrection.  At first glance we usually look down on these individuals, asking "how could you not recognize someone you have followed, in person, for years?"  While there could be a purely spiritual explanation for this phenomenon, what if it was because he looked ten years younger than they were used to seeing him?  Imagine you were to meet someone who is very close to you, but they were in the form of a different age.  For example meeting your parents as twenty year olds, or your siblings as they might be ten years into the future.  Without context or introduction, they just show up, and start talking with you.  Would you recognize them?  I suspect not, although you might think, "they seem really familiar, but I can't place them."

Now this is harder when talking about identities that exist only in the future, or before you were born, but what about recognizing a stage that you had witnessed?  If a 15 year old kid walked up to me, no amount of familiarity is going to bring me to the conclusion "I think I went to high school with him," although I might think "did so-and-so have a younger brother?"  But if we got used to seeing things that way, in heaven we would be easily able to identify those we used to know.

Before the flood, it is recorded that people lived many hundreds of years.  I have seen that illustrated as a bunch of withered old men dragging ten foot grey beards, but that is ridiculous.  In order to survive in that environment, people must have aged at one tenth the rate they do now, since they needed the strength to provide their own food.  But they couldn't have grown at one tenth the rate, because that many small children running around would have been unsustainable for families, and because people are listed having had children at age 65 or 70.  While this is later than people today do, the equivalent would be a seven year old having kids.  So they may have developed slower, but not to that degree.  That means that from about age 50-700, they must have maintained an adult body that we associate with age 20-50.  With 90% of their life spent in that state as opposed to a relatively constant progression, they would expect to see themselves in that form.  And it would appear that God originally intended for that form to be sustained for long periods.

And if someone never reached that stage during their time on earth, God obviously knows the trajectory they were on, so that is easy, but what about someone with birth defects.  If you take the approach that those changes happened after conception, then they have a default state that is unhindered by those imperfections from a fallen world, the same as someone who loses a limb would not be expected to do without it in heaven.

I am very deliberately taking the C.S.Lewis approach of presenting an intriguing possibility, as opposed to suggesting that this is exactly how things work in the afterlife.  But it does lead to some interesting ideas, and hopefully sheds some light on existing Biblical truths.

Birth and Death

Two of my friends had babies arrive yesterday.  Neither are people I am particularly close to at this point, but we all worked together at camp back in the day.  These types of changes are things I am still able to keep up with, courtesy of Facebook.  The real-time nature of Facebook has an interesting impact on how involved one can feel, even remotely, as events are unfolding and the outcome is still unknown.

One of these infants was having issues from the moment it was born, and many people from all over were praying for her recovery.  Unfortunately, she passed away this morning, after 28 hours.  Both birth and death bring perspective to life, (and even more so in cases like this) in our search for meaning, both for the lives in question, and our own.

Her parent's response is nothing short of admirable, (at least as measured by her father's updates on his wife's profile) publicly attributing Glory to God throughout the ordeal, regardless of the outcome.  This extended to naming the baby Gloria, and channeling the attention that they were receiving due to the situation all towards God.  These two quotes stand out to me the most:

"Our great God and Heavenly Father has given His infinitely Holy, righteously just, and perfectly loving answer to all our prayers. Just before six this morning he called Gloria to himself as she quietly breathed her last in the loving arms of her mom as I looked on through tears along with her grandparents and aunts. His answer this time was simply: No.”

"We have never been more convinced of the goodness and love of our God for us, nor has our love for him waned in the least. As we watched our little girl die we were overwhelmed with the reality that the same God who gave Gloria to us is the same God who called her to himself and is the same God who loved us enough to send his one and only son to die on the cross for our sin so that he might redeem us and call us to himself through Christ. Indeed He deserves all the Glory."

May God give me the strength to respond with that level of grace if I am ever to face a setback of that magnitude.  Even just observing the process from my fairly removed perspective has been tough, I can't imagine being in their position.  It does make many of my prayer requests seem fairly trivial by comparison.  But it is times such as this, when trust in God is both extremely beneficial, and greatly tested.  Theirs is a trust that clearly has passed the test, and while I have no doubt they have a struggle ahead, in sorting through the issue over the next few months, they seem to have started off in the right direction.  Trials will always cause us to draw closer to God, or push him farther away, that choice of reactions is up to us.

Control - And Desire for it as a Reaction

For quite a while now, I have been consciously recognizing how my natural desires for control manifest themselves.  My last two days at the office provided a pretty clear example of both the benefits and problems presented by that reflexive response.  We have a storage problem at work, in that we never throw anything away, and don't reserve space to store the things we have, in any organized fashion.  We have a lot of technology items that we no longer use, but that are still valuable, at least in some sense.  I know every piece of gear we own, and usually keep track of (or control) where they are located.

I returned to the office yesterday, after being away for a few weeks, to help with some major expansion.  I also discovered that our two 40' shipping containers had been replaced by a single 20' one, albeit a little more densely packed.  My office trailer had also been totally removed, and the previous contents split across four separate locations.

So not only did I not know where any of the items I needed were, but I had no way to find them.  And the only reason we even keep them is for times like this, when we are expanding into new spaces.  I basically spent the entire day searching for things, and nearly gave up on the original task itself.  It would have been faster to send someone to buy the things I was looking for, than it was for me to search for them.  I was pretty frustrated by the end of the day, emotionally affected much more so than I usually am by unexpected obstacles.  I probably would have thrown in the towel and told them I was done until they sorted this and a number of other issues out on their own, but that was already happening anyway, based on my upcoming schedule.  So I had no real outlet for my anger at the lack of control I had over the situation, and definitely had an impulse to withdraw from the situation that I couldn't control.

That evening I came to the basic conclusion that: "if I don't know where their gear is, they might as well not have it at all."  Now there are two interesting things to note about this conclusion.  One is that it reeks of the impulse to totally control one's surroundings.  On the other hand, it is also totally true in an objective sense.  I accumulated those items over the last five years, and I am the only one who really knows how they fit together.  The next person in my position will have to build up his own collection of spare parts and gear, for them to really be relevant and useful to him.

So I decided last night, that it would be better for the company, to throw most of the stuff away, instead of paying to move and store it. (This isn't the first time we have hired an army of PAs to move truckloads of stuff between different spots)  So I took my team this morning, and emptied the container, which had been packed to the brim to the point of being comical.  We tossed over half the contents, and carefully sorted and organized the rest.  The items in question were worth thousands of dollars, but nothing is really worth anything if you have no use for it, or can't find it when you do.  I don't like seeing useful things thrown in the garbage, since that is wasteful, but luckily we had a variety of construction workers on hand who sorted through our pile at lunch.  They salvaged most of the items that were still usable or sellable before the garbage truck showed up to dispose of the rest.

My bosses were all gone or unavailable today, so I didn't clear that plan with them, but I will explain it as soon as they notice that something is missing, which is never going to happen.  But the items remaining are much more likely to get used, and we can actually access them when needed.  (And I know exactly where they all are now.)  So in this case, my desire for control ended up improving my company's position, but my reaction was more emotionally draining than it should have been.  And while many practical situations can benefit from that level of overt control, relationships usually don't respond as well to that approach in dealing with problems.

Children - Unrestrained Natural Desire

I have spent more time with young children in the last few days than over the last 20 years combined.  Children are the essence of what it is to be human.  There is no filter between their basic needs and desires, and their decisions and actions.  We call those filters patience, maturity, discipline, and restraint, and while they are all good characteristics to develop as we grow, they can hide us from ourselves.  Some people get to the point where they have built up so many of those walls, of what others think they should be doing, that they can no longer every recognize or identify what they themselves want or desire anymore.

Children do not have this problem.  If they want something, they are quick to let everyone know, and if they don't get what they want, the reaction can be quite strong.  Patience is not a virtue associated with young children.  "You look busy, I'll wait," is not something you are going to hear from a toddler anytime soon.  And crying is such a frequent response that it is nearly meaningless.

The strange thing is: that is the way God created people to be.  That is not to say that we wants us to act that way all of the time, but that is our natural state.  Before we are taught anything for or against it, selfishness is clearly present within us.  Our needs and desires are there whether we suppress them or not, and many of them exist for our own protection (hunger, thirst, tiredness, etc.).  Our sinful nature can twist them by combining them with greed, but in their basic state, they can be useful.

If a parent gives a child everything they want as soon as they express a desire for it, the child becomes spoiled rotten, and doesn't mature.  I believe most people are aware of that premise, even if they don't recognize that pattern within themselves.  But when God doesn't give us, his children, the things that we want on our schedule, we don't usually see things that way.  Our usual reaction is not unlike a child, since we are all like children to some degree on the inside.

That child-like faucet of our character stands opposed to maturity and discipline, which try to quench it.  But it is those underlying desires which make us human beings instead of turning into robots, by the degree of control we try to exert over ourselves, over both our desires and our actions. 

Isolating ourselves from children allows us a greater level of control over our own lives, but spending time with them allows us to recognize those types of simple desires within ourselves, suppressed for so long.  There is a place for those basic desires, God didn't give them to us without reason.  We just can't let them, or anything else besides Him, to totally rule our lives.  That is where the patience and restraint are needed, to bring balance, which are things that God gives us as well.

Las Vegas

I have spent the last four days in Las Vegas, which is always an interesting experience.  Vegas is not exactly a wholesome place, by any stretch of the imagination.  I only come here to work a major industry event, as a chance to "network," which is not a task that comes naturally to me.  As my career develops, I find myself invited to more opulent events each year.  I just finished having very expensive drinks at an exclusive club overlooking the Bellagio Fountains, which are my favorite Vegas attraction.  I was discussing ways to accelerate particle simulations of that phenomenon, which is probably not the usual line of conversation there, but that's what happens when technology engineers get together.

Last night I attended a much larger party, with thousands of industry people in attendance.  It was a pretty impressive venue, the type of place you normally only see in the movies.  I don't know what I found more amusing, the spas with glass sides, or the beds out in the middle of the pool.  I am not sure about the networking potential of an event with the volume too high to consider communicating with the people around you, but I still find myself going every year for some reason.  This time it was to try to make some introductions that didn't end up happening anyway.

My job here for the week normally entails demonstrating the new features of an advanced software toolset, and coming up with solutions to customer's complex workflow issues.  I am working for a different company this year, and have very little to do besides describe product options and talk about price points.  Since I am not much of a marketing or customer service oriented person, this is a less-than-ideal change.

Luckily I only have two more hours to work in the morning, before I take off on yet another leg of my trip, this one purely for recreation, to visit some good friends.  After a bit of examination, it seems like this is my first recreational trip in many years, which is probably something I should work on.

Desiring What God Desires

It is commonly said, in various circles, that as you draw nearer to God, he conforms our heart to his, and his desires become our desires.  That sounds nice and spiritually motivating, but what does that look like at a practical level?  How can we identify whether the desires we feel at any given moment are from God or just our own selfish flesh?

I have been reading a number of different books that address the subject of giving.  I don't feel any desire to do the majority of my giving through finances.  I hear the idea of giving 50% of your income thrown around as an ideal to aim for, based on the fact that in Matt 19:21, Jesus tells someone "sell your possessions and give to the poor."  But you if you are giving 50% of your income that means that you are still spending twice as much time in pursuit of acquiring physical wealth, than you really need to support yourself or your family.  This could be seen as conflicting with the second half of Jesus' statement in the above verse: "then come, follow me."

As far as desires go, I feel a desire to give my time to God instead of my money.  This has primarily manifested itself in spending time volunteering at camp for many years.  I have a desire to do that, and it seems to be furthering God's glory, so all is good.  I still work about one week a month, so I haven't totally abandoned my former life, which Jesus frequently called people to do.  But if we look at Paul's ministry, he supported himself as a tent maker, making a point not to rely on other people's support.  I feel a strong desire to support myself, and not be dependent on others, and that doesn't seem to be hindering my ministry.  Because of God's abundant blessing on that aspect of my life, I am also still able to help support other people's ministries, who are not as well positioned to support themselves.

From a different perspective on desire, for the longest time, I have had the desire to get married and have kids.  I have recognized since high school that this would be a much more challenging aspect to my life than my education or my career.  The Bible usually references marriage in a positive light, so I have always taken it for granted that God approved of that plan.  I have been reflecting over the last week or so whether or not that desire is actually from God, or is just my own selfish pursuit of my plan for my life.

1 Timothy 3:4-5 talks about the importance of managing one’s own family well, before being trusted to help manage God’s family.  And it makes a connection between what it takes to be successful raising a family, and what it takes to raise up new disciples within the church.  I have little doubt that getting married and raising children will give me a better fundamental understanding of other people.  And when compared to other aspects like wisdom, knowledge, and temperance, I can see how I need to grow in that area.  So my desire to have my own family seems quite plausible to line up with God’s desires to grow me into a better leader in his kingdom.

I can’t prove that my desires line up with God’s, but from a Biblical perspective, they don’t seem to be in conflict, at least the major ones examined here.  But it is good to step back and re-evaluate them every once in a while.

Dreams: Our Subconscious Mind at Work

I have a fairly vivid imagination, so my dreams can be pretty intense.  That can also make nightmares a force to be reckoned with.  Luckily that has rarely been an issue since elementary school.  When we are awake, our conscious mind is processing inputs from our senses, but when we are dreaming our conscious mind is processing inputs that are being synthetically generated by our subconscious.  So what is our subconscious doing when we are wake? (Besides breathing, blinking, monitoring our circulation, and thing like that, which it is still doing while we sleep.)  If we could access the power of our subconscious mind when we were awake, that would be amazing.

When I was younger, I used to remember most of my dreams quite well after I woke up, and can still recall some of them twenty years later.  One time in 8th grade, I dreamt an entire day in great detail.  I went to bed on Monday night, lived an entire Tuesday in my dream, and then woke up assuming it was Wednesday.  It took me until about noon to realize what happened, trying to reconcile my memories of the last 24 hours with the events in my dream.  Our subconscious is very powerful, but can be deceptive.

Then there was a period for many years when I never remembered any of my dreams.  This feels like not having dreams at all, but I hear that people almost always have dreams, whether they remember them or not.  In the last few years, I frequently am aware of what I was dreaming when I first wake up, but most of the details fade within a few minutes.  That is a crazy phenomenon, since even now I can recall remembering them, but even if I focus on consciously replaying them after I wake up, they evaporate quickly.  In most other ways I have an excellent and detailed memory, but dreams just slip away.

I have been having many long intensely detailed dreams over the last few weeks.  I don't remember what they were about, but I recall being very impressed when I wake up, with the scope of what I dreamed.  One aspect I do remember, that has been different than in the past, is that I have occasionally been conscious of the fact that I am dreaming, while it is happening.  I had heard other people describe that experience in the past, but couldn't really relate to it.  In at least one instance where I realized I was dreaming, I put my subconscious mind to the test.  I focused on the details, and sought out complexity, to push things to the limit.  In the one specific dream I can recall this happening, I was shopping in a store, so I went to the toy section, to see what my subconscious mind would populate the shelves with.  I found Lego sets of full scale power tools made out of Technic pieces, which is actually a pretty good idea.  It is said that our conscious thoughts only occupy 10% of our brain, so I guess I figured out one of the things that my other 90% is up to.  In the past, I have come up with solutions to highly technical problems I faced at work in dreams.

There are a lot of ideas out there about interpreting dreams, but they all hinge on being able to remember the details.  I have no doubt that God has spoken to me through dreams on certain occasions, but those are rare.  If he has been trying to tell me anything recently, I haven't remembered enough to get the message.  But that is okay, he can communicate with us in other ways.

Saving Money

I was raised under the idea that it was wise to save money.  There are a variety of practical reasons to do this, to prepare for large purchases, like a car or house, in anticipation of retirement, and because you just never know what is going to happen next.  I was always taught that it was irresponsible not to save for the unexpected future, motivated by an underlying philosophy of independence.  Both of my parents are very fiscally conservative people, and I was rarely presented with any other view on money.  That runs pretty far up the tree on both sides of the family.  No relative that I am aware of owns a BMW or a nice boat, but they nearly all own their own homes.  It would probably be fair to say that I come from a fairly risk adverse background.

I of course observed other people's approaches to money, but dismissed them as irresponsible.  And people who took big risks with their money were perceived as impulsive and careless.  Debt was not portrayed as evil, but it was to be avoided unless used in a controlled way, like a mortgage for example.

So based on those principles, I set about life avoiding unnecessary expenses, and saving for the future.  Being a hard worker, talented at what I do, in a fairly lucrative field, I have no shortage of income.  My only extravagant "expenses" were my three month breaks during the summer to work at camp.  Camp has always been more of an opportunity sacrifice than a direct financial sacrifice, but I have no doubt that it was well worth it.  Even taking a quarter of the year off, I had no trouble covering my expenses, with quite a bit to spare.  So without really thinking about it, I amassed a reasonable amount of money at my disposal.

It wasn't until relatively recently that I began to understand that the concepts of fiscal responsibility and good stewardship were not interchangeable, but actually very different ideas.  Fiscal responsibility is about never depending on someone else to cover your expenses (being "responsible" for your own debts) while stewardship centers around the idea that the resources you are "responsible" for, don't actually belong to you.  In a secular context, this usually applies to someone who is a trustee, responsible for managing the resources belonging to someone without the capacity to manage them by them self.  In a Christian context, stewardship is used with the presupposition that God owns everything, and just gives us authority over parts of his creation.

So having a savings account big enough to cover any possible contingency may be fiscally responsible, but it may not be good stewardship, if those resources could be better used to accomplish God's purposes.  I have discussed tithing on here before, and I have been doing that, but that principle is based in income as opposed to assets.  Beyond that, in my current position, I leverage the resources God has blessed me with to make my time available for his use.  There is a balance to be had between giving money and time, but in my experience, giving of time is much more conducive to growth.  I don't feel guilty about "getting something" back from my giving, if it is something I know God wants me to seek out. (Spiritual maturity and wisdom)

I have been reading a book about Christian stewardship, and while I don't necessarily agree with many of the ideas presented, (for example not tithing should probably not be construed as "robbing" God) it offers some interesting insights into financial perspectives that differ from my own.  I am still not convinced of the terrible consequences of saving money, but it is something to think about.

Soul Mates - Like a Matched Pair of Shoes

The term soul mates is usually used to discuss the idea that each person has a single unique potential match out in the world that would be an ideal fit for them.  I don't know if that is true, but it is a possibility, that wouldn't conflict with my experience or beliefs.  I believe in an all-powerful God, so if there was a single ideal potential mate for me, I trust that God would bring us together.  I also believe in free will, so the possibility would still exist to botch that relationship once we had met.

Regardless of the larger philosophical question, I saw an interesting simple image on Facebook the other day that makes a great illustration of a number of ideals in a relationship.  It is simply a picture of two shoes, with the caption "soul mates."

I am a big believer in the idea that having a lot in common is an important aspect to a successful serious relationship.  But having things in common doesn't necessarily make you the same.  Males and females have a host of fundamental differences from one another, which are common to their gender.  In a similar way, shoes have a left and a right.  If you took 100 pairs of shoes, and combined all of the lefts in one bin, and the rights in another, all of the shoes in one bin would be very different from each other, but still have the same basic shape.  Each shoe would have a potential match in the other bin.  That match would not be identical, but they would have a lot in common.  If you took them apart, there might not be a single piece of source material that was identical, but many of them the foundational ones would be congruent.  And in their finished form, it would be fairly obvious that they were meant to go together.

There is nothing to prevent you from wearing two different types of shoes at the same time, but it will probably look strange, and it may be uncomfortable.  Shoes have many different potential characteristics, and are suitable for different tasks and roles.  While it could be claimed that having a waterproof boot on one foot and sandal on the other would prepare the wearer for success in two types of situations, in reality it is preparing them for neither.  In a situation well suited to one, the other would be completely out of place.  When using a matched set, the strengths of both shoes can be utilized at once, if worn in their appropriate role.

Shoes can also be of similar styles, but of different sizes.  While they look very similar, when paired together, one would be much tighter and constricting than the other.  While they might look normal and matched at first glance, they will soon become uncomfortable if worn together.  It will be harder to walk straight, and the shoes will wear down differently, one not lasting as long as the other.  In the long term, those differences could stunt the growth of one leg or the other.

In the same way, there are many different types of people out there, and it would be ideal to be matched with one whom is similar, and if possible, congruent in their personality and beliefs.  That doesn't mean that they will be absolutely identical, since like left and right shoes, there are fundamental differences between males and females, and they are not interchangeable.  But it is possible for them to have many features and characteristics in common, which will lead them to be a more functional match.