Which "you" goes to heaven?

[Kura Ookami]

I've been thinking and i came up with a question about heaven. Which "you" goes to heaven when you die? I mean, there's the "you" when you were 2 years old, there's the "you" that was 10 years old, there's the "you" that exists now, there's also the "you" that you'll be when you die and leave this earth. The person you were when you were two years old is different from the person you were at ten years of age and the "you" that exists now is different from the "you" that exists now. The person you are when you're 30 will be different from the "you" that exists now and you'll be different again when you're 70. Which one of these "you's" will be the you that goes to heaven when you die?

[Mave]

I've always assumed that it's the "you" the moment you die based on the understanding of being judged on your whole life.

But that "you" is also slightly different in the sense that sin is no longer part of "you."

[Sheol777]

Well, this is not a specific thing spelled out in the bible. However Christ was the first to be resurrected and his body is the example of what we will have after the resurrection of the dead.

Before that what will we have? Well I imagine a more spiritual body...not yet complete with the "resurrection" of our dead bodies joined to it.

Samuel was allowed by God to contact Saul in a spiritual form when Saul needed advice. This does not spell it out for us, but there really isn't much to go on. (forgive me if the passage excapes me now)

[AsianBlossom]

I think that throughout all of our lives, we're the same person; it's just that we learn more as we grow older, and retain that information. So it seems like we're a different person, when, in actuality, we're the same person, with the exception that we've matured. Kind of like how a bud blooms into a flower I guess. It's the same flower from start to finish, yet it starts as a bud and keeps getting bigger until it blooms big and beautiful.

Does this help? Just wondering.

[JasonPratt]

I tend to go with Asian Blossom. {s}

If you mean what our bodies will look like, I expect they will mature (where not yet mature) but may be capable of shifting appearance based on what is most appropriate to the context. Which may explain why Christ wasn't always entirely recognizeable to His own disciples after the Res.

Interestingly, there may be a garbled remembrance of this in several of the later apocryphal Gnostic accounts: some of them talk of Christ seeming to be a baby or an old man or an angel, to His disciples, but they tend to present this as being true before the Res (where they bother to distinguish or even have a 'Res' per se at all) and it's meant to highlight how utterly different Christ is than the disciples. That being said, the notion itself doesn't seem to be particularly connected to key Gnostic concerns, per se (other than accentuating the sheer otherness of Christ); which is what leads me to wonder whether they got ahold of an actual bit of legitimate tradition and then amped it up.

The canonical accounts are far more restrained and don't go into detail about _how_ Christ looked different; and while it is presented as being perplexing and a bit unnerving, the canonical accounts are careful to emphasize the continuing humanity of Christ. (Whereas the Gnostic texts, though not all of them, tend to flush the humanity at the first opportunity or even never introduce it at all. This makes the modern secular-revisionist trend toward trying to promote the Gnostic accounts, rather amusingly ironic; and not just for _that_ reason. {g})

Still--the most I can opine is this: that nothing good will be lost in the transition, but there will be a reconciliation and cleaning and integration of all the aspects of our personality. They won't be transitory or broken or (in our case, as sinners) corrupted any longer.

That's what I believe, and gather, from what I have studied. But remember Lewis' Consolation: if this isn't true, something _better_ is. {s!}

God's hope to you,

Jason

[termyt]

I am not a different person from who I was when I was, say 15. I am the same person then and I will forever be that same person. Hopefully, I will continue to grow in wisdom and faith until the day I die, but these changes do not a different person make. I will still be me.

After the resurrection, I will have a new body and hopefully a perfect understanding of the world around me. In this life, we struggle to grasp the simplest forms of true wisdom – like we can’t see the stars in the night sky because all those little dots of light get in the way. In the next, the blinders will be lifted and we will be able to see the world around us. But even though that greater understanding will likely make me less temperamental and more open and honest, I will still be me.

[Kaligraphic]

Each person is separated into 'slices' taken at Planck time intervals, and in Heaven you are placed in a huge world with weapons and your time-clones. You must then defeat your time-clones, growing stronger for each one you kill, until you become "the One" - that is, the only surviving "you".

So, really, it's the you that survives that makes it in.

(note: This post is not serious.)

[mitsuki lover]

There is only one you.That is the soul you are from the moment of conception until
you die.There is no other you.

[Dunedan]

That's a question based on a lot of complicated philosophy. Your question assumes that we are somewhat separate beings throughout life, like we see in "Back to the Future" and other time travel movies... but I personally think that the way our universe works doesn't allow for time travel because people are the same.

Anyways, the philosophy. Back in Ancient Greece there was much discussion over what constituted reality- whether there are objects in space or whether everything was different at every single time. The example of this is the arrow. Some people said that at every distant second in flight the arrow became a different structure because it was moving... others said that the arrow was the same, it just moved through space.

This may seem dumb now, but it really is something we don't have many solid answers about. The latter opinion is more accepted now, mostly because it's less complicated than the other idea.

Anyways, that's an interesting question. I'd say that you're you, you were always you, you can't go back in time, and once you're dead you're dead, so you'll probably still be the you that is present and perceiving.

[Mithrandir]

How about this:

1. The you at 2 and the you at 40 are the same you.
2. "Time" is how humans deal with their inability to percieve things in more than 3 deminsions.

There is only one you, but there is no spoon.

[CrimsonRyu17]

How about this:

1. The you at 2 and the you at 40 are the same you.
2. "Time" is how humans deal with their inability to percieve things in more than 3 deminsions.

There is only one you, but there is no spoon.

Now how am I supposed to drink my soup...?

Mith has it. You're the same person you are whenever you are you. And that's pretty much always.

[Kura Ookami]

[Quote=Kaligraphic]Each person is separated into 'slices' taken at Planck time intervals, and in Heaven you are placed in a huge world with weapons and your time-clones. You must then defeat your time-clones, growing stronger for each one you kill, until you become "the One" - that is, the only surviving "you".

So, really, it's the you that survives that makes it in.

(note: This post is not serious.)[/Quote]



[Quote=Dunedan]That's a question based on a lot of complicated philosophy. Your question assumes that we are somewhat separate beings throughout life, like we see in "Back to the Future" and other time travel movies... but I personally think that the way our universe works doesn't allow for time travel because people are the same.

Anyways, the philosophy. Back in Ancient Greece there was much discussion over what constituted reality- whether there are objects in space or whether everything was different at every single time. The example of this is the arrow. Some people said that at every distant second in flight the arrow became a different structure because it was moving... others said that the arrow was the same, it just moved through space.

This may seem dumb now, but it really is something we don't have many solid answers about. The latter opinion is more accepted now, mostly because it's less complicated than the other idea.

Anyways, that's an interesting question. I'd say that you're you, you were always you, you can't go back in time, and once you're dead you're dead, so you'll probably still be the you that is present and perceiving.[/Quote]

When an arrow moves through space, time slows down for it, so something certainly changes. Maybe the first theory that the greeks came up with has some truth to it?

How about this:

1. The you at 2 and the you at 40 are the same you.
2. "Time" is how humans deal with their inability to percieve things in more than 3 deminsions.

There is only one you, but there is no spoon.

That's the simplest way of putting what everyone has said so far, but i feel it needs a little more explanation. Let me start with another question. Why do we have age ratings on movies and anime? Surely age ratings are neccessary because forty year olds and two year olds are different and the experiences in our lives help form who we are?

[AsianBlossom]

I'd say it has to do with how ready a person is to see whatever it is. You can't show a kindergartener a movie that has a discussion on the "birds and the bees", because they haven't reached that point in their life when they would understand it. Also, children are more easily frightened than other people because they haven't seen too much...well, most children, anyways. Showing them some PG-13 action movie where most everyone gets blown away on-screen is really stupid, as you're putting images into their head that could give them nightmares, if not psychologically scar them.

So basically, the ratings protect the innocent from something that might harm their innocence. That's pretty much why when you're an adult, they don't have specific ratings like "NA-25" or "SC-30" ("No Adults under 25" and "Senior citizen guidance for those under 30", respectively.)

[Slater]

I don't think that there's a cookie-cutter age for what we'll be looking like in Heaven. God isn't limited to that... I think He'll shape us the way we should be, the best way possible, individually :3

[Kura Ookami]

And in an ideal world we might want to keep peoples innocence for their whole life, but we don't live in an ideal world.

Okay i understand that and my original question has been answered, but I do have a related question. What makes you, you?

[mitsuki lover]

I'd like to go back on the original question and point out that since Eternity is
literally timelessness it also means that such time related things as age do not
exist in Eternity.Therefore this question from the start should have been considered
moot as people in heaven will not have ages.

As far as what makes me me,that goes down to the heart of what personality really is.
Obvious whatever makes up our personalities as little or anything to do with our outward physical appearance but goes down much deeper.
For example if our personalities were just based on our outward appearances then there would be no ethical problem when a person has a sex change since that would create an entirely new person that never existed before.
However the even a transsexual retains the personality that they were before the operation.

So we see that personality is not just physical but also deeper.It goes to what we believe,how we act,how we think,etc.

[Slater]

And in an ideal world we might want to keep peoples innocence for their whole life, but we don't live in an ideal world.

Okay i understand that and my original question has been answered, but I do have a related question. What makes you, you?

._. The new Heaven and the new Earth will be ideal worlds. Hey, even this was an ideal world... God didn't create a flawed universe... it was very good. It's just that we screwed it up.

And what makes you you? God breathed the breath of life into every human being... From Him does every part of ourselves stem.