Book Group: The God Who Weeps Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is a beautiful exploration of what heaven is.  Heaven is a process.  (Love that!)  Heaven happens as we work towards achieving the kind of love and relationships that God has.  

The authors refer frequently to Enoch and his vision and the city of Zion.  One of my favorite scriptures about Zion is Moses 7:18.  

And the Lord called his people Zion, beacause they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.  

Heaven, Zion, love, and relationships need to be about the here and the now, not about a reward that we will get if we check off a list of things to do a certain way.  If we don't get the love part right, none of the rest of it matters.  

Nietzsche was right when he said Christians had a tendency to turn away from this life in contempt, to dream of other-worldly delights rather than resolve this-wordly problems.  We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing the reasons behind human suffering, that working to alleviate human suffering, and in imagining a heaven above, than creating a heaven in our own homes and communities.  (pages 111-112)

The authors don't bring up 1 Corinthians 13 in this chapter, but I need to.  

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.  2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.  3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.  

I love verse three, because most people think that charity is feeding the poor, but it's not. Feeding the poor, while a good thing, doesn't make you a better person unless it comes from love.   

Achieving heaven or Zion requires that we live according to celestial laws, and at the core of all celestial laws is love.  We become like God as we learn to love like God loves.  

Holiness is found in how we treat others not in how we contemplate the cosmos. (page 113)

We can create heaven, here and now.  There need not be any separation between the ordinary, everyday and holiness, or the physical and spiritual, or science and God.  

What if in our anxious hope of heaven, we find we have blindly passed it by, like Wordsworth blazing past the alpine summit?  What if the possibilities of Zion were already here, and its scattered elements all about us?  (pages 120-121)  

Questions for discussion or personal reflection:  

1.  Do you view heaven as something to attain at some future point, or as a journey we are on right now?  

2.  How are you building Zion or heaven in the here and now?

3.  If heaven is about relationships, what are you doing to build those relationships?  

4.  What are you doing to relieve suffering?  In what ways can talking about suffering be part of relieving it, and when to we need to quit talking and start doing?  

5.  How do you find holiness in everyday things?

6.  What ideas spoke to you in this chapter?  

7.  Were there things that bothered you or that you didn't agree with?