What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul

by Richard La Rue Swain

Have we, then, no facts on which to build a rational conception of the future state?

I believe that a satisfying view is a possible achievement, because we have some very important and fundamental facts from which to construct a picture. The minor details, of course, are unknown to us, but the main outline, which principally matters, may be very clearly conceived. As we have previously shown, the future does not have to do with a new God and a new universe and a new soul; but with the present God, the present universe, and the present soul to-morrow. The future is not some new thing; it is the old realities a little later, and a little more fully developed. That God will remain a stable factor in the equation, we may rest assured. And we can read nature well enough in this scientific age to understand that it is no sudden and fickle movement void of law and order. Neither are we entirely ignorant of our own rational souls that organize themselves into civilized communities by combining and giving shape to the forces of nature in which we live. We have plainly seen that neither God, nature, nor man has any worth or significance when separated from each other. In the future life, therefore, there is but one factor that is different from those found in the present constitution of things, and that is the loss of the present human body. And even this difference between the present and the future will be largely rectified, according to the Scriptures, by our receiving new bodies. For too long we have foolishly tried to show that the soul could live without a body; and this in the face of the Scriptural teaching, that God will give us new bodies. In our effort to show that the soul is able to live independent of a body, we have likewise run counter to experimental psychology and philosophy. Scriptures say we shall have new bodies. Psychology shows that the souls with which we are acquainted are dependent upon the body for consciousness and every intellectual achievement. Philosophy likewise teaches that man can not exist outside of God. Therefore when these bodies with which God now enfolds us die, He must again enfold us or we shall perish. There is no reason for thinking that a soul can live if disconnected from God, and the universe of God, in which it lives. If God again enfolds a soul, that new enfoldment will be its new body. And it will not be a spirit body because that is a contradiction of terms. As the Scriptures teach, it will be a spiritual body; that is, it will be a highly refined and delicate instrument of the spirit—yet a real body. This new body, as was the case with the old, must be our first point of contact with the universe of God. And in the future life, as here, the whole universe will be our augmented body as we progressively become articulated with it.

So all the old conditions of the present life will be restored on a higher plane. Whether the new and refined body will closely resemble the old, is a matter of speculation. However, it must be the instrument of the spirit; and therefore it will have functions similar to the higher intellectual and spiritual uses of our present body. We shall be conscious in it and think with it, and through it we shall manipulate the forces of the universe. If we can keep well, and work without friction, and all pull together I see no reason why we should not accomplish marvelous things in this universe, and at the same time derive a very dignified satisfaction from it all.

However much advanced the new life may be, we shall still be the same persons living in the same God and in the same universe as now. We shall still be living for the same social and righteous ideals as now, and our motive will be the same old motive of love and good will. God is not a naked spirit hiding behind nature. He is a Loving Intelligent Will revealing Himself by His outgoing energies which we call nature. In the future life, the same as here, God will be trying to come to the surface through the bodies which he provides for Himself and His children. And He will be striving, likewise, for a full expression of Himself through all the institutions that His children will be organizing out of His beautiful and boundless energies.

Nature is not the gross, crude thing that ignorant people take it to be. Neither is it something apart from God. With the little intelligence that a few have acquired on this kindergarten earth, we begin to see what a divine thing nature is. When it is better known and more wisely and lovingly used by God's children, all nature will be vocal with God's wisdom and love.

2. Where is heaven?

Heaven is some place, or many places, in our present universe. God will never leave His beautiful universe that is so infinite in its complexness, so vast in its dimensions, and so rich in its millenniums of development, and go off into nothingness to build some sort of mystical and ethereal heaven. Heaven will be as much a part of the universe as is this earth. And this earth is infinitely closer in its relation to the whole than we are now able to comprehend. Almost daily, scientists are discovering new bonds between the earth and the rest of the universe. The inhabitants of heaven will not be less closely connected, but much more vitally and intelligently related to nature than are we.

There are doubtless many spheres in this universe that would make good sites for a heaven. And it would be interesting to know how many of them are already so utilized. "In my Father's house are many mansions." When we speak of mansions in the skies it would be well to remember that the earth is a pretty good mansion in the skies. The trouble is, being such poor Christians, we have not built upon it a very good heaven. While we have not been wholly recreant in building a heaven on earth, yet we have often cursed this mansion by constructing many hells of smaller or larger proportions.

Another reason for believing that God does not plan for a heaven outside the objective universe, is the deep desire of man to make his richest ideals tangible and objective in a book, a piece of art, a musical composition, a noble building, or some splendid institution. Life without expression and achievement, as we know it, is both unsatisfactory and dangerous. The same must be true in relation to God, as evidenced by His vast and beautiful works that have come forth unfolding out of the infinite past and now promise to expand and differentiate into the infinite future. Even in the sphere of human lives He has impelled men to express His wisdom, beauty, and purpose according to human modes of expression.

It evidently is not God's design to abandon His works of nature and draw back into His own thoughts and spend eternity in self-contemplation. He rather intends to utilize the unlimited capacity of nature, and the unbounded ability of His children, to give the fullest possible expression both of His children and of Himself in a kingdom which has form as well as soul.