Talking Tuesday

"Medieval imagery (which is almost totally biblical imagery) of light, jewels, stars, candles, trumpets, and angels no longer fits our ranch-style, supermarket world.  Pathetic modern substitutes of fluffy clouds, sexless cherubs, harps and metal halos (not halos of light) presided over by a stuffy divine Chairman of the Board are a joke, not a glory.  Even more modern, more up-to-date substitutes--Heaven as a comfortable feeling of peace and kindness, sweetness and light, and God as a vague grandfatherly benevolence, a senile philanthropist--are even more insipid.  Our pictures of Heaven simply do not move us; they are not moving pictures.  It is this aesthetic failure rather than intellectual or moral failures in our pictures of Heaven and of God that threatens faith most potently today.  Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, our love of Heaven....It doesn't matter whether it's a dull lie or a dull truth.  Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of faith, just as indifference, not hate, is the strongest enemy of love." ~Peter Kreeft, Everything You Wanted to Know About Heaven (but were afraid to ask)