A Critique of the Images of Heaven in the Scriptures of The Abrahamic Religions: An Existentialist Perspective

Abstract

In this paper, we critically examine the scriptural images of heaven as captured in the Abrahamic religions from the existentialist perspective. The three dominant Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam opine that there is life beyond this earthly existence for all human beings and that God (their object of worship) has prepared a special place of eternal happiness for
those who obey His commands on earth. This place is frequently referred to as the Kingdom of God, Heaven or Paradise. We argue that the above construct of heaven throws up a lot of problems, especially from the existentialist perspective. Some of these problems include the fact that these constructs of heaven eliminate all the challenges that stimulate human existentiality, throw into oblivion the scourging evils of boredom arising from the eternal passivity of existence in heaven and fail to lay down exactly the political structure and the legal status of the earthlings in heaven since a Kingdom presupposes a feudalist structure where there are kings, lords and serfs. We conclude by showing that the scriptures‘ constructs of heaven appear self-contradictory and fail to strike a chord with the contemporary image of the ideal society when perused from the existentialist perspective and should, therefore, be discarded.