In the popular imagination the realisation of salvation and redemption are commonly identified with reaching ones heavenly reward in a life after death of the flesh. A more accurate appreciation of Jesus' teaching on the kingdom leads us to believe that redemption is much more about how we live our life.
JP11 wrote that heaven and hell are not places as such but situations revealing the results of our choices. I am not so inclined to think on matters that pertain to life beyond death of our flesh preferring to live in the here, and now leaving whatever occurs (if anything) following my death to be determined by the choices that I am currently making.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_28071999.html
I quote:
3. The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’” (n. 1033). end quote
I remain sceptical of notions that suggest a dichotomy between spiritual and material dimensions, or between the sacred and the profane worlds. For me our only contact with the divine is through our whole body and mind (conscious and unconscious) experience in the material world.
This is not to say that God or numinous experiences are unreal. On the contrary, I would hold to the evidence supplied by the wide distribution of such experiences, suggesting that at the base of all these spiritual experiences there is a genuine encounter with the divine presence. My point is that the divine mystery communicates in and through each, and every human person that each of us may understand that there is more to our life than the material reality that faces us every day of our life.
Thus I do not deny the spiritual dimension, but I would not locate it in some numinal world distinguished from the phenomenal. I believe that the concept of the soul is derived from our experience of a spiritual or numinal dimension, and that these numinal encounters which we experience are encounters mediated through the collective unconscious best illustrated by Carl Jung when inviting his readers to consider that the authentic life of every human person lies within.
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
― Carl Gustav Jung
I suspect that this is precisely what the author of Luke's Gospel had in mind when he placed in Jesus' mouth the claim that "the kingdom is within" (Luke 17:21). "The Kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!'" (Luke 17:21)
It is interesting to note how the language of all the great spiritual classics support this interpretation. Thus we can speak of going within, making the journey inwards, and centering to list a mere three. I think we seriously misinterpret numinal experiences of the divine presence when we consider that they are external events. Indeed to so do borders on the psychotic. Even the mystic Teresa of Avila was conscious that the castle of The Lord was an interior experience.
The central claim of our shared faith is that God reveals the utterly transcendent divine being to us, not through doctrinal statements nor in theoretical studies, but in real-world circumstances — that is, in the outworking of historical relationships. Our faith is not mere conjecture and speculation; our scriptures are not simply stories that teach moral wisdom; our community of faith is not founded upon fiction and fabrication. Our faith practice is not a matter of mystical experiences or flights of fancy. It is grounded in the real world and focused on human relationships. Once we come to understand this fact, we come very close to comprehending something of Jesus' notion of the "kingdom of God."
Jesus spoke of a realised eschatology in the sense that metanoia (a transformation in our choices) brought one under the sway of God's guidance here and now. The Kingdom was both a present, yet, unfulfilled reality. It is not something that can be perceived by searching out there; for it is neither a nebulous spiritual reality nor merely a heavenly life after death. It can only be experienced by living in our here-and-now reality that we call the human condition.
“God withholds Himself from no one who perseveres.” ― St. Teresa of Ávila
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