Heaven of Heavens

I always think that every religion has its own afterlife.And their own hells and heavens differ from the Christian versions. Buddhist hell for instance differs from Viking hell from Christian hell, etc. So, if we assume that everyone gets to their own religion's version of hell, we will have Hindus finally freeing themselves from the dreaded karmic wheel and entering into blessed nothingness or if they believe in transmigration and have lived horrible lives becoming cockroaches in their nest lives. The Islamic heaven, much like for instance the mormon heaven is pretty patriarchal and made for men and marriage but there is that bonus of being a god and creating your own world. And most of the moslems i know would challenge you on the idea that God loves. For them to call God Father is an insult and to say He loves is to depict him as weak. So we have to not be imperialistic in our spiritual inclusiveness because we are going to insult folks we think we are including.

So....the typical christian heaven is for beings who want a God who loves, a God who so believes in free will that he allows you to leave him and to go to hell if you wish, and the heaven is sexless, a city, and consists of being like God because we can see Him as He is.Let us not be imperialistic and put people into our kind of heaven who don't want to be there. Perhaps the Christian heaven isn't the best of heavens, but it's the one i like. Others may want their own heavens.

I believe what Peter said that God shows no favorites and anyone who truly trusts him in any nation will be saved. I also believe that Jesus is -- as Mohammed calls him-- "the great mercy." It is possible that Mercy (Jesus unknown to some folks in another religion) is saving people whom we may not consider Christian. But the Christian in me believes that any kind of "work" or human self-righteousness cannot be allowed to taint heaven. Thus self-righteous people of any religions, Christianity included, will not enter heaven. There is no "self" there.