The Grim Prospect of Eternal Life

Over the weekend, an Anglican priestess, Tish Harrison Warren, wrote a pretty piece in the NYSlime entitled "Why it matters that Jesus really did rise from the Dead" in which she proclaims that the Resurrection was an actual, full bodied, physical fact and decidedly not a metaphor.

Dear Rev. Warren,

You say that the Resurrection was a palpable physical reality and that God should not be mocked with a metaphor.

But then you yourself end with a string of metaphors; from "eastering" in our hearts; to repaired relationships; to every ascent from despair, every joy after grief, every discovery of beauty, every found hope... all of which (I would point out) are merely like the resurrection of a body.

If the Resurrection was a palpable physical reaction to death then what all that means is that we, the faithful, shall ourselves resurrect, "amino acids and all" as you put it.

However, there is no guarantee that we will resurrect happier, hopier, improved or finally alive to the beauty of Wagner... We will simply resurrect with all our (remaining) amino acids. In fact, Jesus himself rose with his wounds still intact. So if we are blind in an eye, we will bounce back to life still blind in an eye; if without a bladder, still without a bladder. If wracked by cancer then still wracked by cancer.

And worst of all, seeing as most of us die wrinkled, thin skinned, bald or grey haired, suffering from innumerable creaks and groans, that is what we will "bounce" back as. The New Testament provides no hint of any assurance that we will resurrect as Apollo or Persephone. And for those who died young, since they mostly die in wars or follies, they will resurrect without a leg, with a missing jaw, with skin charred 90% and with a brain churned to liquid by a bullet or still pickled in alcohol inside a crushed skull.

I suppose that, compared to us resurrected humans, the angels will look pretty good; but they will be the only ones at all that will. Otherwise, the appearance of Heaven will be that of a vast human warehouse of wretched refuse from our teeming cities and vicious wars.

Worse yet where will all these resurrected bodies be put? There can hardly be room for them on Earth. And in fact, Jesus himself is certainly not here in the resurrected flesh, although I concede he could be hiding out somewhere in the Amazon jungle... We shall soon find out when all the cover is burned away.

But, until then, we have to ask: where did the physically resurrected Jesus go? Which is also to ask: where shall we go? Why, to Heaven, where he sitteth at the right hand of the Father!

But where is Heaven? "Above the starry sphere!" answers Beethoven. But how can that be? Everything that is physical is within (not above) the physical universe. It can't be beyond the physical universe because then it can no longer be physical; and (as per our starting point) the resurrection of the body is a physical bodily fact. So Heaven, Jesus and the Father must be somewhere in physical time and place, physically.

Perhaps, "at the right hand of the Father" is somewhere inside a black hole.

Yours in Christ... etc, etc.