Ancient Egyptians and Chinese buried royalty with preparations to eat in the afterlife. Christians teach that Jesus ate fish after his resurrection. Will we be able to eat our favorite food in the hereafter? Is there pizza in paradise?
My health isn't the best, and right now I am limited to a precious few foods that are "legal." No more pecan pie, ice cream, shrimp, steak, or pizza for me. Wouldn't it be cool if we could have all those wonderful concoctions in the next life!
If there is pizza in the hereafter, how will they slaughter the pigs and cattle to make the pepperoni? Who will milk the cows, and process the cheese? Who will drive the tractor to pull the thresher through the wheat fields in preparation for grinding wheat for flour? Sounds like a lot of nasty and sweaty work for a place like heaven.
Let's say your favorite food is more simple - like pecan pie. That still means a great deal of effort to water and prune the pecan trees, never mind the harvest and shelling of the nuts. Then we still have that problem with the wheat in order to make the pie shell out of flour.
Many long years ago, I toyed with the idea of writing a thesis on what the world would be like if we didn't have to eat. I came to the conclusion that there would have never been a World War II, nor semi-trucks. If agriculture wasn't necessary, then land wouldn't be such a precious commodity. No food, then far fewer trucks to get it to market. No gasoline shortages. No markets, then far fewer roads - what would we do with our time? (We'd probably find some other reason to kill each other.)
Extend the same idea to heaven. Without food, there must be a lot of free time to lay around and. . . . and what? Play a harp?
Of course, hell is having NO ice cream or no gooey cinnamon rolls. I don't know about you, but I get a lot of bliss eating shrimp and steak. Mmmmm, heavenly! The smells of a bakery are also quite dreamy. Gosh, can it be heaven if there are no bakeries? More than likely, we won't even slaughter cows for steak in hell. After all, hell is to torment people, not animals.
It has been suggested there will be 70 billion people from Adam to the end of the world. Whatever number you agree on, it seems illogical to split that group into only two parts - some go to heaven, some go to hell. What if there are "many mansions" in the hereafter? Like-minded people in this life hang out together, so doesn't it make sense that will continue in the next life? Will the people from these different mansions visit each other? If someone from one of those lower mansions with a little less flash doesn't come up and do the woodworking, where are those fancy thrones going to come from for the people in the fancier mansions? Who paves the roads of gold in heaven?
For that matter, what on earth will we do in ANY of those mansions two million years from now?
Some years ago, I knew about a man who had passed away and then came back to life. He told us everyone was studying and learning in the next life. The man who returned saw people studying. Well, if that is your idea of heaven, more power to you. But where did the books come from? Reunions were brief because there was a lot to be done - work, work, work. It sounded more like a waiting room to me than it sounded like our final destination. I try to imagine what the NEXT step is like - after the waiting room - after "Paradise." No one has come back from heaven - or any of those other mansions - because those mansions haven't been built yet!
Maybe - just maybe - at least some of the mansions will be an extension of this life, only better? Not exactly heaven, but not hell either?
There are just going to have to be things in the next life. What confuses me greatly, is just how those things are going to get there, and who is going to do the making of those things. If your next life is as glorious as can be, with all the wonders you can imagine.......what are you imagining? Nothing? Of course not. Your mind is picturing something in your hand, or something surrounding you. So how do those somethings get into your hereafter? No "replicators" from Star Trek, please. Even replicators need raw materials AND someone to build the replicator!
My world won't be quite as glorious as yours, so in my imagination I see myself playing football and basketball, and hiking into the back country. But where do my hiking shoes come from? How about the pigskin football? Won't we need factories to make things? Factories mean pollution. Factories mean workers - workers who surely won't think they are in heaven constructing my tennis shoes? In sports, there is most always a winner, and.......a loser. What kind of heaven will it be that allows a person to loose?
Someone once told me, "Heaven is where you can fish upstream, and golf down hill." Keep all the good stuff now on the earth like mountain streams, deep caverns, beautiful sunsets, and changing leaves, then TAKE AWAY death, taxes, pain, and illness! Take away hatred, and children crying in the malls as their mothers pull out their hair wondering what to do next. Eliminate those horrible mistakes we make that haunt us for the rest of our lives - especially when we inflict physical or emotional pain on others. For some of us on earth right now, THAT sounds heavenly!
For me, it will still be horrible if I do not have a family with me. As Three Dog Night said, "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do."
Speaking of music, I just have to have music in my hereafter. Take away music, and you have described hell to me. Some of my favorite music involves electric guitars and drums and such. Perhaps my musical tastes will "graduate" from the Beatles, Queen, and Elvis, but even great anthems by Bach deserve a top-notch organ. The crescendos of Beethoven need a full-fledged orchestra. Once again, we need someone working in a factory to wind those steel piano strings!
Hmmm, we still get back to how can you kill a fish in heaven.
Maybe some of the higher mansions have more beautiful things beyond our imagination? That's the gimmick I was given as a child. I didn't swallow it then, and I don't swallow it now.
Perhaps we will move forward in a way similar to this earth - new inventions, better ways to do things. I was told once that if we could see some of the lowest mansions available in the next life, we would kill ourselves to get there. Now there is a Catch-22 if I ever heard one, because we all now that if you kill yourself you are damned to hell!