Blog Review: Formulalessness, 2019 - 2023

I have often written things in a sort of diaristic way, not knowing how they would appear to me until I finished and re-read them for the first time. This blog has been a diary of my thinking. I feel as though I've been approaching the end, or an end, of my blog (for instance, not writing too much since fall of 2022). So, I've been engaging in behaviors of summarizing and wrapping up, and included in that, I've been re-reading my blog.

I re-read the whole thing up to the present post, except I didn't finish reading the Feeling of Value notes (1, 2), because simply to read them was too philosophical for me, and as I've mentioned, I'm trying to abstain from philosophy until October 2024. (Reading notes requires trying to figure out what I was saying, and trying to evaluate what I was saying turns into philosophy, according to me.)

Certain things stood out as things to come back to someday. Maybe re-reading the Feeling of Value notes and the Lukas Gloor sequence on moral anti-realism, plus other sources, to do a better job of talking about moral realism / anti-realism. Also, maybe writing a clearer presentation of the arguments implicit in my review of X-Risk by Thomas Moynihan. Occasionally, people find my blog through the Feeling of Value and X-Risk reviews, and what I have to offer isn't too user-friendly.

Generally, I could go back and try to improve past posts, and maybe make a few books out of them. Perhaps one for effective altruists.

Another thought is to use my wiki [January 2024: which I took down] as a place to write clearer versions of many of these posts, or to break down their ideas and recombine them in different ways that suit the subject matter better than my sometimes arbitrary lumpings of them. Then I could make a book or books based on the wiki.

There were times my present self (reviewing the blog) wished my past self had been clearer, argued better, or wrote more fleshed-out posts. I suppose that if I were a professional writer, I might have evaluated myself sooner than after four years as I'm doing now. I got into writing this blog just to put my notes online (at least, that's mainly what I did), and once the habit got going, I guess I didn't question what the product would be.

What niche does the blog fill? I would say that if you are a Christian interested in futurism, it takes you a certain way into the topic of Christianity-and-futurism. If you are a futurist, it shows a vision of a particular kind of theistic/Christian input into how the future should go. I don't know what my actual readers get out of it -- maybe something else. Blogs often are really all about their themes, their vibe, and a few of their memorable ideas. I do think that this blog has a vibe to it, and that's an undercurrent of it, that there's a spiritual world that connects to our everyday experience, and a spirit that breathes through us, which is imaged by the writing. Some themes of this blog are openmindedness, trust, truth, reason, and ethical theism (not a complete list).

If I'm thinking hopefully, I think this blog communicates a unique vision of how to be a Christian, or a Christian-like theist, a new religion or set of religions that helps deal with the divisions (progressive/conservative, secular/religious, perhaps Christian/non-Christian) and lack of motivation that keep people from God, and keep society locked into conflict and ineffectiveness.

Writing the blog served me. I started the blog (in early 2019) because it felt like time to write a blog. The fact that I had been reading Slate Star Codex since fall of 2016 was in the background of that decision. In early 2019, I was experiencing a mental breakdown (which lasted about three years at full strength and then diminishing to now), which largely was caused by others' indifference and hostility, lack of support and poisonous support. Having something to focus on other than the memories of the people who caused the mental breakdown, and the thoughts of despair they put in me, was helpful and gave me a direction forward.

Reviewing the blog from start to finish eventually started resembling, to me, reading any number of my diaristic works from 2015 - 2018 (most of the books found here). Those books emerged from me as a flow of writing, expressing something subtextual through their wholes. I think the same could be said of this blog, although to me at least the subtextual note is fainter. Both those old books and this blog have an aesthetic of "formulalessness".

Moving Forward

In trying to think about my writing, I wrote a page called Categories of my Writing. I noticed different trends in my writing: "how can we love?", the "exilic/familial", "radically theistic / New Wine" (or, I should say now, "radically theistic / millennial holiness"), "aletheism". How would I now say all these things relate? And how do they relate to outside views?

Overall, I want to move forward. "Moving forward" characterizes "advancing kingdoms" -- the kingdom of God, or civilization, or justice, or something like that. One thing I have had to do is move beyond being more into advancing secular things (civilization, justice, etc.) and into doing good in a really theistic way (advance the kingdom of God, the God who really exists).

Is the project (or projects) of "moving forward" a good thing? I can think of some "dissents": postmodernism (in my mind "there are a diversity of viewpoints none of which can be said are invalid"), and elements of the "exilic/familial" (the sense that nobody wins, and we mourn the death of our enemies). If we mourn our enemies too much, then we risk being on their side, or sinking into inactivity. Being on their side might sound like a good thing if we think that we are on the side of them as persons. But we should not necessarily adopt everyone else's point of view. The truth is what it is -- that our enemies are wrong necessarily connects to the fact that there is something we need to do in the world.

Another dissent is the apocalyptic view (in the sense of, there is only a little bit of time left). I feel that this is working deep, under the surface of our culture, in a way we don't always explicitly state. But it can be an explicit view (climate, AI, the perennial religious end-times thinking). If there is no more time left, then we lost motivation to move forward.

Another dissent is the appeal to human nature, or other kinds of nature, or the body, or health. Human nature certainly isn't the best thing we can conceive of, but it's also not the worst. Health calls for moderation (for not moving forward too much, or not at all in a sense, since we already have the body and its desires).

Those engaged in the project of moving forward might become disillusioned with its failures (they might be on the side of moving forward still, in principle, but might have lost some faith in it because they see the damage it causes, or its inability to bring about what we think it promises). Prophets speak the unvarnished truth which "nobody" wants to hear, for the sake of the truth, even if it seems unhelpful for them to do so.

Part of moving forward involves the truth. How do we know the truth? Can we know the truth? For the postmodernist, the claim is that there is no one truth. For the Reformed (Calvinist) thinker, the claim is that humans can't naturally come to know the truth, and God has to give us that truth (this undermining natural reason). Buddhism and modern science also cast doubt on natural reason.

The Bible itself (I think, this is my reading) contains both moving forward and critique of moving forward. Abraham is called by God to found a new nation to bless the whole world ("moving forward") (Genesis 12:1-3). But he is also commanded by God to sacrifice his son, who is the child through whom that nation is supposed to descend (Genesis 22). David weeps for his son Absalom (who had been killed after trying to take the throne from David), but then David realizes (is told) that he has to live for the ongoing process, for the people who were on his (rightful) side (2 Samuel 19:1-7). Should you trust the voice of God? Overall you should. Should you fight for God's project (as I think the Bible would say David was doing more so than Absalom was)? Yes, but you have to acknowledge the danger in what you're doing and listen to the critique.

I use the term "moving forward" rather than "progress" because while progress is a form of moving forward, there is also the moving forward needed to preserve the things that already exist. Neither the church, civilization, nor justice will maintain their current sizes/fullness (in general) unless individual people move forward. The dissents to moving forward take away energy that can help people move forward -- whether to maintain what is good or to make things better.

"How can we love?" is about "moving forward". "Radical theism" contains both "moving forward" and concern for every person (because every person came from God -- every person has a history of being a child descended from God, even if they choose to reject God permanently) -- thus, mourning and losing (like in the "exilic/familial"). God loses in the end -- but he doesn't have to lose as much. Love mourns what is lost, but has to apply effort to prevent further loss.

I think that evangelicals (at least, the best of them) balance this forward-moving with a concern for every person, a concern which does not demoralize them but causes them to move forward (in a way that does not "outpace" the people they try to help), and I would consider my writing project overall to be evangelical in a certain basic sense.

I think it is wise to consider the dissents to moving forward, as each contain some element of wisdom and can be a check on moving forward in a misguided way.

Postmodernism in a strong-enough form is a way to close the mind against the possibility of there being answers, and this I find hard to like. But in a sufficiently weak form, it says "you have to listen to everyone's point of view in seeking the truth, and when you start the discussion, everyone's view is equally valid". Or it could say as well "You feel like X is true from your own experience and reason, but other people believe not-X. Why do you think you're right and they're wrong?"

Apocalypticism biases us to do good in the short term. Perhaps we have too many incentives to do good in the short term already. But maybe apocalypticism biases us to act intensely in the short term. I don't know if that always is a good thing, but it's worth considering. Apocalypticism may also bias us to rest, a similarly mixed thing to pursue.

Concern for health, the body, human nature, etc. is necessary to keep us from burning out and to do good in an unhealthy way tends to be doing something that has evil mixed in it somewhere. Health-pursuing, like postmodernism, can close the mind, but if it does not make itself a god, it is something worth listening to. Respect for human nature (in the sense of seeing it there, like you see a rattlesnake in your path) and typical human fallibility is wise.

Those who move forward but in the process of moving forward critique specific ways of moving forward, are doing something good to make sure that their efforts are really good instead of bad, as long as they avoid demoralizing themselves (or other people) about the overall process of moving forward.

Reformed, Buddhist, and scientific questioning of human's natural ability to reason each have their uses.

The Reformed perspective says "you are not God". I think people should move forward, try to have the values of God and then do the things that God wants, which are in line with those people's values now that they have adopted God's values. So you should see what you see and do what you want. You want to do what is good, so your appetite is trustworthy when you want that. When you do what you and God want, you are an agent of God. You are becoming like God, on the small scale that you can act in. Everyone who acts out God's will is in a sense God himself, his body. When you behave completely legitimately, you are part of Legitimacy.

However, there is a sense in which you are not God and never will be. God's work is much greater than yours. Your work has a boundary to it and many things happen outside your work. Your work is affected by things you don't understand, but which God does understand.

If you are trustworthy, people will trust you, and some will think you are most-trustworthy on a deeper level -- they will give you the glory and not God, and this is a dangerous mistake. If they make you an idol, you (with all of your trustworthiness) could keep them from loving God.

So it is good to consider the Reformed perspective (in which it can sometimes seem like God does everything). I don't think it's literally true that God does everything and we do nothing, but it's a good perspective.

The Buddhist perspective can be taken as a means to achieve mental health (see above). The scientific perspective can elucidate human nature (see above). Also it teaches us to think carefully and biases us to not trust our intuitions, which is a good thing up to a point.

All of these things are dangerous when they close the mind to the good that we really should be doing, the forward moving that we should really take seriously. Buddhist and Reformed critiques of reason need to see the danger that they are wrong and that reason is saying something valuable (as much as it is important for rationalists to consider that their reasoning is dangerous, as Buddhist or Reformed thinkers allege). I would propose that everyone move forward with their worldview (postmodern, Reformed, Buddhist, evangelical, etc.), but periodically consider that which questions their worldview, take it as a live possibility.

This would be an "aletheistic" thing to do.

So, perhaps I could integrate all of the above into a kind of formula:

Movement: Motivate yourself strongly ("how can we love?") to go into the secular world to some extent ("how can we love?"), but primarily to reach people to prevent them from hardening and dying the second death ("radically theistic / millennial holiness"), seeing them as kin, children of a God who risks losing them if they reject him ("exilic/familial"), not as people to defeat but rather people to mourn ("exilic/familial") but overall still moving forward with the work to make the world more the way God wants it to be ("how can we love?"), anti-tempting ourselves and those around us ("radical theism / millennial holiness").

Dissents: We need to question the movement from time to time ("aletheism"). We can consider "dissents", like Reformed, Buddhist, health-oriented, human nature-oriented, postmodern, and apocalyptic thinking (mentioned above). Or perhaps even the Bible could be considered as a dissent, or both a dissent and a support (call of Abraham and binding of Isaac / David mourning Absalom and moving on). Or there could be other dissents not mentioned. The movement is improved by the dissents, but overall the movement is where you are headed.

Semi-dissents: We need to improve the movement. We might accept it as it is on a "coarse-grained" level, but on a "fine-grained" level still want to improve it. This requires self-criticism. Perhaps this self-criticism can morph into full-on dissent.

A person could try to live this out (or an improved version of it) both somehow integrating all of the above into everything they do in each moment (or getting closer to doing that), or by going through phases.

MSL's Relationship to Christianity

Reading New Wine for the End Times makes me think again about the Bible in more depth. This makes think I should write about MSL's relationship to Christianity.

One way for me to look at this question is to look at myself, as someone with some kind of relationship to both MSL and Christianity.

I was raised in a moderate church, probably "theologically conservative" but moderate in tone. I think I'm reacting to that, and assuming that, a lot of the time. I think the flaws of progressive and conservative Christianity are the flaws of "Los Angeles" while the flaws of moderate Christianity are those of "San Diego". In other words, moderate Christianity seems nicer than the other two and thus is more likely to have a serious but unexamined problem with it. MSL and New Wine Christianity call for excellence, while I think both being basically moderate in other respects. Hopefully that call for excellence makes up for the danger of complacency within moderate belief systems.

I had a significant, highly negative experience with a progressive Christian (this blog comes out of that experience, to some extent). I don't want to assume the worst of all of progressive Christianity because of what I went through, but I can't assume that all progressive Christians are different than the person that caused my negative experience.

Progressive Christianity has an epistemic openness and a willingness to question. I find this aspect of it trustworthy (assuming it is really willing to consider things that are or could be coded "conservative"). What I don't find trustworthy is its emphasis on ethical humanism to the exclusion of ethical theism. Perhaps it sounds good for God to serve humanity, and for humans to serve humanity. Then who serves God? Or are humans the highest end of both God and humans? It sounds like we are making ourselves the center of the universe.

A progressive Christian might look at that last paragraph and think "so you're basically on the side of the conservative Christians". I think conservative Christians (at their best) do try to put God at the center of the universe and not put humans there. But conservative Christianity isn't always good. I think there are (at least) two kinds of conservatives: the kind who like to say "no" to other people, and the kind who value things so much that they try to protect them from other people. "Liberals" (the generous and free) have straightforward human desires. They think (often) that all conservatism is of the "say no to other people" kind, and they feel entitled to their straightforward human desires and think of conservatives as people who are unfair and want power over other people, this power which is proven by their ability to say "no" to them and restrict their straightforward human desires. They (seemingly) do not think that any conservatism is of the "there is something valuable, perhaps delicate, which must be protected from harm". I don't like saying "no" to people, so in that sense, I am a liberal (or, maybe I should say, I am not an "invalidating conservative"). But I also think there are things that are valuable, to be protected from harm, which are not part of what most (or most liberal) people think are "canonical, established straightforward human desires". In that sense I am a "protective" or "sensitive" conservative.

If a man has "straightforward human desires" for a woman, and she says "no", is she invalidating him? Or is she protecting something? He might think that her "sensitivities" (maybe her religion which she calls on to justify her desire to not have sex until marriage?) is a scam when all she really wants is to say "no" to him, to humiliate him and have power over him by keeping him from his natural desires. She has to invalidate him in order to protect herself, but her goal is to protect something, a good or a value which he does not respect. I think it likely that at least some of the time women do try to humiliate men and have power over them. (They really are the "invalidating conservatives".) But often (most of the time?) they are protecting something from the man. (They are really "protective" or "sensitive" conservatives.)

I think that conservatives reading this post would think that they were protective or sensitive conservatives, and generally I would agree with them. The "will-to-invalidate" is also in conservatives, some of the same who are at other times protective or sensitive, others who are only invalidating, with no concern for protecting.

Some progressive Christians might assume that I'm really a front for invalidating conservatism. That's not my intention. But I am not sure that I've made a case in my writing so far which forcefully establishes my actual intention. (Maybe I have, maybe not.) However, I think a truth-seeking progressive Christian should consider the possibility that maybe there is something to protect which they don't already recognize as being worth protecting, which conservative Christians (in this case correctly) think is worth protecting. Maybe my writing is a scam, maybe it's not. If it's not, what then?

A conservative Christian may then think "so you're a conservative Christian, like us". I think that there's something to that. However, I don't believe the Bible is necessarily inerrant. I am not committed to the Bible primarily as my foundation for my faith in God. Nor am I committed to the church (the existing body of people who identify as Christians, or the culture of those people) in the same capacity. This is a radical difference ("radical" as "at the roots") from conservative Christianity as I understand it. Basically, I think that the idea of proving the existence of God through reason (MSL) is the kind of thing that would be undertaken by a rationalistic person, and if successful, would take weight off of the Bible and the church, if they were less reliable than it. So here we see MSL making me "epistemically progressive" or "epistemically liberal", which seemingly disqualifies me from being a conservative Christian (I think it's pretty fair to say it does disqualify me from being what we normally call a conservative Christian).

So far my blog has not had any pushback from conservative Christians, but that may well change. I do not have the mental resources to try to deal with huge texts like the Bible, or with history, or with reams of peoples' arguments one way or the other. (At least not now.) But I will discuss a little bit why I think the way I do about the Bible and the church, and at least if there are objections try to put them on my wiki [January 2024: replaced by this.] so that I (or someone else, perhaps) can address them someday. (My mental exhaustion may be another thing I have more in common with progressive Christians than conservative Christians.)

I can think of one major reason to doubt that everything in the Bible necessarily comes from God, which is that it (even its Jesus (Matthew 24:34)) expected the end of the world to come soon. But it didn't. Maybe we can dig in and say "well, there's a sense in which the world did end" or "the words that make us think Jesus expected it soon can be interpreted differently" or even "God changed his mind because maybe things were going better/worse than he expected". If I were committed to the Bible, I would choose one of those, or some other similar thing, to believe. But if uncommitted, I would think about how the early Christians thought one thing was going to happen, and it didn't, and say "well, there might be some sense in which the words that gave them that expectation are trustworthy, but it might also be the case that they were misguided by expectations that didn't come from God, and maybe the rest of the Bible is a mixture of good guidance and misguidance. Or maybe there are things that Jesus said that are accurately conveyed by the Gospels, but the end-times beliefs weren't among them".

However, I have found the Bible to be very helpful in my own life, trusting it as though it is true, at least as I understood it (i.e., reflecting what parts of it said, as it "plainly" or "naively" appeared to me). I think that the basic project of the Bible is the same as that of MSL, and that MSL is a continuation of it (though some conservative Christians might disagree). This increases my credence that the parts of the Bible that I don't trust might be trustworthy anyway. Sometimes perhaps that causes me to re-evaluate what I don't trust, so that I do trust it, but it does not make me trust everything in the Bible, and I am not certain everything in the Bible is true.

I believe in the Jesus of the spiritual world. The Bible is an introduction to this Jesus, but there is a world in which the spirits live. Occult people "dial up" the spirit of Saturn (the god? the planet? both in one being?) and there is a whole world of spirits, one of whom is Jesus. (The Bible as it lives in our imaginations and memory is the Bible in the imaginal world, which is an access point to the world of spirits.) In my experience, this spirit is to be trusted. But is this spirit 100% the same as the man described in the Bible? I don't know. Does this spirit lend enough credence to the many things in the Bible to validate them all? I wouldn't assume so.

One argument for founding a person's faith on the church is that Christianity has to have a lot to do with the Bible (even progressive Christians seem to care about what the Bible says in some sense). Where did the Bible come from? The individual texts came (it is believed) from the Holy Spirit through human writers. But the church are the ones who canonized the Bible (selected the texts to go in it). We assume that the church was guided by the Holy Spirit when they did that. And the church are the ones who preserved and transmitted the Bible through time. So without the church, there would be no Bible.

Does that mean that we are beholden to the church? What exactly goes into the word "church"? If you don't go to "church", are you a bad Christian, or simply not a Christian? I think the church "wants" (it's a culture more than a conscious individual) you to go to church. Is that what God wants? Is church-centricness a cousin to progressive humanism? (Putting the focus on people rather than God.) Well, if the church is divinely inspired (a presupposition for the Bible to be divinely inspired, we think) then maybe the church is a source of authority in itself and individual Christians must submit to it. But if MSL is valid, then it takes the epistemic burden off of the church. The Bible gains credence because it resembles MSL (a publicly verifiable source of credence) and because its Jesus in some way is the same as the Jesus of the spirit world (a non-publicly verifiable source of credence, unless we all get in conscious contact with that world). The church gains credence to the extent that it is aligned with MSL's God.

Because of my experiences with the spirit world, and the confirmation from MSL, I think I trust in Jesus enough for me to be considered a Christian. But that spirit, and MSL, are the only points on which I'm significantly committed, and the Bible, and the culture that flows from it, I'm not so committed to. Not everything that is socially (or perhaps even Biblically) "church" is in tune with MSL and the Jesus of the spirit world (i.e., instead it takes Satan's side rather than Jesus' side, in Satan's war against God and God's creatures.)

(My example doesn't have to be normative for all people interested in MSL. But I mention it because it's something concrete that I know about, and maybe it provides some guidance.)

So at this point, maybe it seems like I have struck blows for the side of "uncertainty" (a "progressive Christian" thing), so does that leave me really being progressive? I think that uncertainty could lead to a practical liberalism (where we don't know anything, so we default to our natural appetites for guidance), but it could also lead to a practical protective conservatism (where we don't know anything, so we consider the things to protect in every different likely scenario and try to figure out how best to manage the task of protecting things).

So far I've mostly talked from a Christian perspective. But I think that MSL does lend credence (or may; I haven't studied this myself) to non-Christian religions (a progressive Christian thing to say?). I don't think that any religion other than a basically Biblical Christianity (a New Wine Christianity) could be the most compatible with MSL, so the Bible would be most-recommended by it for the purposes of seeking God's preferences (a conservative Christian thing to say?). (But I suppose there might be some obscure religion somewhere that does better. In many ways that obscure religion that I hypothesize would have to be a form of Christianity, but perhaps using different terminology.)

We want to obey God, and so we search for his preferences, for wherever they might be: in reason, nature, and in holy books. We focus first on obeying God in the ways that we are most certain: what MSL recommends. Then, when we have time, we implement the less-certain obediences which are found only in the Bible (or perhaps other holy books). (This motion toward obedience is a typically conservative thing.)

The process of seeking ways to obey God, in the uncertain space of holy books, suggests an intellectual project: To seek what to obey (to come to prefer, act, and trust) from sources that may indicate what God wants -- uncertain obedience. Since we are not sure whether these ideas are from God or not, we consider the possibility that they are not from God, possibly even from Satan. Can we implement these "obediences" to what God may want in such a way that we minimize the damage caused in case they are from Satan, and maximize the good resulting, whether they are from Satan or from God?

(Given this project, why not look everywhere there are old values and revive or preserve them (to undo cultural Moloch), using the same metric of "how do we implement this to maximally serve God and minimally serve Satan?". Perhaps some old values are not compatible with God, but even with them, how much can be salvaged?)

Millennial Holiness

11 February 2024: superseded by "voluntary millennial holiness".

For a little bit of time, I have been unsatisfied with the terminology available to describe my writing project. "MSL", or "MSLN", sounds weird, technical, "mathematical", artificial to me. For some people, those adjectives are not a problem. (For philosophers, especially analytic, maybe some STEM people, some intellectuals who are outsiders.) Also, while the term "New Wine" is a nice-sounding one, I feel like it belongs more to Philip Brown, who coined it, than to me. Neither "MSL" nor "New Wine" signal to a casual listener the content of those belief systems.

As I think about it, I think it's fine to call my philosophy "MSL", because it's intended for philosophically literate people. But it's good to have a general, broad label for the basic idea of both MSL and the New Wine System.

The two big points that I see in both MSL and New Wine Christianity are 1) becoming completely holy, and 2) having a millennium (or something like it) in which to become completely holy. So, "holiness" and "millennium". Or, we could say "millennial holiness". This does give some idea of its content, although for most people it is more a hint. It's a term that describes both MSL and New Wine Christianity, while allowing them to be different from each other in some respects (which seemed to make less sense if I called MSL a "New Wine" thing). (It may also describe Mormonism, and possibly Catholicism is related.)

So I plan to use "millennial holiness" sometimes where I would have used "New Wine" before. The past blog is what it is, and maybe if I can leave a note somewhere in it without too much effort, which makes the correction to help future blog readers (at least it should go in MSLN), that would be worth it. But I'm guessing that my blog will not be the introduction most people get to my writing at some point in the future, or perhaps this blog will be, but increasingly so the "era" in which I habitually use "millennial holiness".

Prosaic Afterlifes

One thing I remember from when I first read New Wine for the End Times was a sense of simplification in me about the question of the afterlife. I didn't realize this before reading the book, but I had some uncertainty about it, I suppose about whether I would go there. Heaven was something nebulous, uncertain, or poetic, a dream. But the Millennium is guaranteed to almost all (except extreme ethical anti-theists). And it is a more or less prosaic place / time, somewhat different from this life, but recognizably similar. Just like in this life, where we have to learn to be in tune with God, so it will be in that life. Both this life and the next are places of work, and there is a degree of risk in both places -- the risk of hardening.

I think Christians sometimes have trouble believing in heaven, because it's so dream-like or poetic. They know themselves to be made of prose, not poetry. How can a prose-being live in the world of poetry? Can a prose-being be turned into a poetry-being? At best, it is uncertain whether we can really exist in the world of poetry.

Perhaps some people can believe in poetry, that it is real. But I think by default, poetry seems like a dream. It is a beautiful, unreal thing for the imagination. So if heaven is poetic, it's a beautiful, unreal, imaginary place. Only where there is prose, there is real life.

Some Christians have a hard time thinking about the afterlife, and who goes there, because traditional Christian soteriology doesn't make sense to them ("Do children who die before they profess Christianity go to heaven?" "What about my very nice friend who isn't a Christian -- or the one who is sort of on the line between Christian and non-Christian?" "What about people in uncontacted tribes in the Amazon basin?") The New Wine System makes more sense (the answer to all four questions in the previous parenthetical are "they will be resurrected to the Millennium and hopefully, over the course of the Millennium, will mature to the point of going to heaven"). With the New Wine System, people can face the afterlife and see it as real.

Given this, believers are freed from the despair that accompanies the belief in the transitory life. They can shift their focus away from survival and enjoyment (get what you can in this life) and toward ethics and God (try to work toward becoming close to, and like, God in this life and the next). New Wine Christians might look at death as "falling asleep" the way Jesus and the early church did, something relatively mundane and lightweight, rather than a tragedy mixed with a celebration as Christian dying can be seen under modern Christianity.

In New Wine or MSL thinking, is heaven a prosaic place? If we take the Bible of New Wine Christianity literally, it sounds like heaven (the New Jerusalem) is a giant cubical spaceship made out of weird, beautiful materials, which actually floats in heaven (the sky). I don't think modern people would make up that heaven, it wouldn't speak to them as normal beauty, so it doesn't work the same as modern poetry or imagination. It's too weird to be a beautiful dream (at least to me). It seems sort of orthogonal to my tastes, which perhaps is appropriate. That it doesn't fit with my desires gives it the taste of reality. Heaven isn't about what we want, it's about what God wants. Still, while it doesn't sound like my fantasy of heaven, it doesn't sound 100% prosaic either.

Should we assume that Revelation (the source of the New Jerusalem image) is literally true? My first thought is, no, it's explicitly a vision, and visions don't have to be literal. I guess it could be, but we should consider whether it's not. In that case, maybe Jesus saying that in his Father's house, there are many rooms (or words to that effect) gives us some idea.

(I'm not sure all of where Jesus could be seen to be talking about heaven. Here's the passage I was thinking of in the previous paragraph (John 14:1-4):

14:1 "Don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. 14:2 In my Father's house are many homes. If it weren't so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. 14:3 If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will receive you to myself; that where I am, you may be there also. 14:4 Where I go, you know, and you know the way."

Jesus' description is very plain and is consistent with a prosaic heaven. It does not rule out a poetic heaven. Without Revelation, I would default to thinking either prosaic or a plain kind of poetic heaven.)

MSL (which is apart from the Bible) doesn't commit us to any particular view of heaven, but it does commit us to a view of humans as being mature when they go there. When we are mature, will we need a heaven of magic, wonder, and maximal pleasure? Or will our tastes have changed? MSL does indicate that, unless somehow nobody hardens / rejects God, there will be an undercurrent of sorrow for the people who are not there. And even for those who are there, some of the truth of their existence there will involve how they got there, from lives of hardship and (temporary) enmity with God. I don't think that heaven will be a place of pure happy feelings, but overall tempered with sorrow. That is what love of people and the truth call for. I suppose that heaven may involve qualitatively rich or new, otherworldly experiences, which speak to a sort of Sehnsucht (as C. S. Lewis uses it?) or Lewis's image of heaven as being like the world you know but five times bigger (I think he said something like that), but we won't need it to.