The big problem with most images or imaginations of heaven, or hell for that matter, is that they're merely perfections of an earthly life. Always wonderful; never tricky or foreboding, without the problems endemic to mortality; hunger, fear, corruption, and death. That's understandable in a sense; it's an extension of what we know, but presumes to know the unknowable and have control over something untouchable that is beyond our control. Truthfully, it's to exercise control over others in this life and beyond. To a large extent, in this life it's very doable; and is, but to extend it into the afterlife is trickier. Therefore it's important to play to the emotions that govern our behavior, that allow us to maintain some form of civility, and to control our baser instincts. Good behavior has it's rewards today and tomorrow, as does ill behavior demand retribution and or punishment.
The indeterminate other being hell, the void, nothingness; Annihilation-ism, the idea of giving up any afterlife at all rather than be subjugated to one that is not of our choice. It might also be none of the above. The idea that we know what's after is a dodge; we don't. We conjecture, we fulminate, we create what we wish to believe in, what we hope for, what we hope to avoid; what we believe others deserve. We anthropomorphize God in such a way as to have a means to control that which we don't know or understand. If God is in our image, as opposed to our being in his; which supposes that we understand the mind of God ( another assumption that God has a " mind " as we understand it ), then we can extrapolate our thoughts onto his, and by osmosis gleam his intentions and desires for us both on earth and after.
This impulse is described in Genesis through the story of Adam and Eve. Though warned not to consume the fruit from the tree of knowledge, Adam's hubris is manipulated by the serpent to contravene God's directive. Adam is sure he knows God's mind and is willing to disobey because he wishes to have God's knowledge which we are told is sublime and unending. God, naturally, is upset; this being the more demonstrative God of the early books of the Bible, and give Adam and Eve what they, and therefore the rest of humanity, so richly deserve; the desolation of only knowing a little; only enough to see how far they truly have to go to know God's " mind ". So we have treked since then ruminating our place, our beloved humanity, our gods and or God, longing to find our rightful place, and fearful that we're nothing more than bit player in a much larger and more consequential cosmic dance.
Next: this must be going somewhere? Right?
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