Every one sitting under One’s own Fig tree and One’s own Vines

Perhaps this image of every one sitting under One’s own Fig tree and One’s own Vines, captivates my imagination of future free society more than any other images of eschatology in the Bible. There are, of course, more popular and beautiful images like turning the instruments of war into agricultural implements or a village where all animals, including humans living together in an ecologically well tuned harmonious ambiance or a city the gates of which are open always and where all the people of earth are welcome, through which living waters flow through the middle of the street and on the banks of which through out the year fruit giving trees stand and where healing is free for all. All these images are captivating and one can choose as many as one wants. Or we can make a combination of these images. These are all secular images, propagated by religious prophets. In one of the images in the book of Revelations, it is specifically stated that there is no temple in the city and God is the temple. And it has been the classical teaching of the Bible that we do see God in heaven not more than we see God on earth. Sadhu Sundar Singh emphasized this aspect in his vision of heaven. Paul says that our understanding of God will not be perfect even in eternity. No one has the ultimate answer to our questions of being and meaning. That means we will be continuing our search for God, meaning of everything even in eternity. Mark S. Hiem envisaged pluralistic salvations. One single image of salvation does not satisfy the multiple spiritual needs of human experience and imagination. Salvation pictured by one religion does not satisfy the spiritual need or aspirations of another religious community. Even one religious community cannot satisfy its members with a single image of salvation or even one image of God, though some dominant image may satisfy the majority, or forced to accept the dominant view, often by suppressing the differing teachings or heresies. In every religion, there are several images of God and salvations in dormancy. Different sects in religions are proofs of different God concepts and salvation images within religions. Trinity or Trimurthy express the human desire to bring different God concepts together. This multiple understanding of truth, or search of multiple truths are present even in religious scriptures like the Bible. Several stories of creation, sometimes conflicting, several Gospels of Jesus Christ, correcting the chronology and even theology, like John correcting the sacramental understanding of the synoptics, validate multiplicity of not only methodologies, but even of the ends. The image of living under my own fig tree and vines is more satisfying to my personal aspirations, though I enjoy other visions of the future. The point is that each one is endowed with such peculiar traits, DNA, that each one has to enter into a search for meaning that is unique to them. Forcing all our thought into one picture is not biblical, not scriptural (any religious scripture), or do justice to our secular visions of future. We need multiple images of the end of life, goal of life as it suit to our personal need and secular and religious freedom to pursue our own vision of the future without being forced to any dominant view. That freedom is important to my spirituality. My religious life is pursuing my spirituality. It is the withering away of state as well as religion, a religionless world, a stateless world, where the knowledge of God and world will guide our live-in-experience.