Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace.....or is it?

Before going on with my speculation on matters of accountability and life eternal, I want to stop for a moment and think about what heaven is like. Growing up, all my wife could imagine was a scene of Corinthian columns and great bowls of grapes. For others, it's wings and harps. Some people imagine a prolonged church service with much antiphonal singing and the throwing of crowns toward the Great White Throne like a game of lawn darts. Streets of gold, considerable jewelery, and large mansions characterized Sunday School songs.

No wonder we get these sorts of reactions to life in heavenly realms:

"I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there." Charles de Secondat

"It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste." Evelyn Waugh

"The joys of heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, an acquired taste." CS Lewis

"In Heaven, all the interesting people are missing." Friedrich Nietzsche

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." Mark Twain

"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." Isaac Asimov

Heaven--not a place for those craving stimulation, civilized living, or conviviality. Why do the depictions of heaven make people come to such conclusions?

The difficulty is that there is no factual description of heaven anywhere in the Bible. St. Paul had his chance, because he once died or otherwise had an out of body experience, and came back from heaven saying he wasn't permitted to discuss it (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). What descriptions there are, are couched in apocalyptic language that is never to be taken literally.

That leaves us to speculate. Which is what I'll do next.