Heavenly Bodies

I think that there's a good possibility that we are saying the same thing differently, when it comes to what you call corporate worship. You are talking, I'm sure, about sincere worship when you say that we'll engage in corporate worship in Heaven. But the way the word 'corporate' enters my ear is as a disjointed and disunited thing, a confusion of tongues. And I think that you would agree that there will be no confusion of tongues or spirits in Heaven.

What I think of when I think of everyone worshipping the Most High in Heaven is that there are no wolves among the sheep, that who we are on the inside is reflected on the outside. For example, whereas here on earth we have no choice really but to accept a person for who they claim to be - on faith, as it were, rightly or wrongly, in Heaven I think there will be no guessing game as to what a person's thoughts, feelings or motives are.

I sometimes have imagined our heavenly bodies to be as glass houses - things we can look straight through, with all the dross burned away, so that the multitudes upon multitudes while retaining their individuality, worship as one because they have the full knowledge of the one truth that isn't relative. I think that this oneness, this unity, is probably what you would describe as corporate worship.

I often imagine these glass bodies of ours to be shot through like a prism with different colors according to the personality of the person inhabiting this new body. I find myself, when I am somewhere where I have to wait - for example, a doctor's office, people-watching and trying to guess what colours they would be if they had such a prism-like body.

Here on earth, so often the most physically beautiful bodies are inhabited by the most self-centered or depraved spirits. The outside doesn't match the inside. And then there are people who have birth defects or who just have a face that only a mother could love, and I often feel that I catch a glimpse of the personality inside of them that would outshine the stars if their outside was their inside.

What you describe as heavenly corporate worship, in my mind what I see is private worship made public and with all the dross and misunderstandings burned away, each private bit of praise making a whole, like a symphony's various instruments. Each musician is playing his own private piece publicly, together, and that makes the whole. Do you see what I mean?

I think that when Paul said not to forsake assembling ourselves together, that he was speaking of this ideal. I am not saying that he was saying that if everyone isn't in perfect agreement that Christians should abandon gathering together. I am saying that even though we know that this world isn't perfect, perfection is still what we should strive for as individuals, shouldn't we?

To me each individual, private striving towards a better understanding of God is what makes worship, worship.

Anyway, I could be wrong but I think that you are probably saying the same thing but using words I wouldn't choose since I don't understand it that way. You are describing the trunk of the elephant and I am describing the legs.

As far as Bonhoeffer goes, I'd be interested if you could find a link on the internet to whichever one of his early essays that you have a quibble with. With regards to radical obedience though, in Revelations Jesus addresses that when he says to the churches, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. "

I think it is not that one can achieve necessarily a radical obedience but I think that salvation without striving actively for it might be questionable. There are too many examples of statements such as the above for me to believe in a one-saved-always-saved idea. That is the same notion the Jews had in the sense that many of them thought that they were better than the Samaritans or than the Romans just because they were the children of Abraham. They didn't have to try so hard - they didn't have to have that all-consuming love of God since God had already chosen them above the nations.

That's what once-saved-always-saved reminds me of. That there is a prize awarded to everyone who runs the race. 1 Cor. 9: Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?

Layla