AIM HEAVEN
(Matthew 11:11)
"Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
In this civilizational era, not long, just a couple of years ago, people began to talk about the cyborgization or partial cyborgization of humanity. It may mean the mechanical or digital enhancement of the human body and the brain, whether they are looking to serve military purposes, medical applications, or social engineering.
In all aspects, the consequences of the cyborgization of humanity, just like the consequences of recently emerging bio-engineering, are unpredictable, unforeseeable, and unplannable.
It may sound excitingly nice and forward-pointing toward an unimaginably better future—that putting a chip in the human brain may have an almost biblical level, instant-ish, benevolent effect on people, just as it is written in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 35, that:
"Tell those who are of a fearful heart, Be strong, don't be afraid: behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the mute shall sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert."
It happened, a few years ago, during a Tesla presentation that the CEO was talking about the so-called Neuralink technology, and he was quite confident that the implanted chip, with the help of technology, may help people who never had vision gain vision.
He also expressed his confidence that the same technology can help people who have a damaged spinal cord or muscle disease walk again. He underscored that it may sound miraculous, but it is possible.
It was definitely miraculous two millennia ago, as it is written in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 15, that:
"There came to Jesus great multitudes, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others, and they put them down at his feet. He healed them, so that the multitude wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the injured whole, lame walking, and the blind seeing -- and they glorified the God of Israel."
Today, medical science is able to act seemingly with the same results, though through scientific methods. Great achievements indeed, but no miracles.
It should be clear to everyone that despite all the civilizational convulsions we have globally, including natural cataclysms, artificially created economic cramps, lab-enhanced viruses, and demonic wars, we are on the verge of a technological big leap—they call it the fourth industrial revolution.
What people dreamed of the future back in 1985 is ready today to flood our reality, like video telephones, global internet, worldwide GPS, robots and full-scale robotics, flying cars, the resurrection of electric cars, nuclear fusion power, artificial intelligence, full-scale bio-engineering, new propulsion systems for spaceships, interplanetary travel, colonization of Mars, interstellar travel, and meeting other civilizations in the galaxy.
The limits are the starry sky literally, as the new frontier, pending that we will be able to avoid somehow the madness of a devastating global war.
However, the major questions cannot be squeezed into technological brochures, because the major questions have still been with us since the Stone Age elapsed. And these are the purpose and the meaning we should serve and find.
Just imagine a ship on the ocean sailing aimlessly, changing course every day, never reaching port; or recall the biblical people wandering 40 years in the desert and never entering the promised land, including Moses.
Traveling to Toronto in the opposite direction would practically mean that we will never arrive in the city. Some claim that Christopher Columbus had the inglorious idea that sailing in the opposite direction would let him imperial-knock on the gates of India.
Not to mention that he never made it to India, he did not actually sail in the opposite direction, but just took another route like a boomerang, using curved space to try to return to the same spot on a sphere.
However, whatever we do, we need to be aiming not just at any destination, but at the right one only. Having the right goal, we still need directions on how to reach our destination.
Whatever our goals on Earth might be, they can only be temporary ones, as they all become dust in the wind at the end; thus, we have to aim for Heaven as Jesus advised his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, saying:
"Therefore, I tell you, don't be anxious for your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will put on. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" Adding to it from the Gospel of John: "It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing."
We have to aim for Heaven, and the directions were readily given by the liberating God Almighty, who revealed the true directions—as we call them, the Ten Commandments—to a whole nation on Mount Sinai, and through them to the world.
Jesus said that “among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
And it is completely true.
Nonetheless, Jesus also told the disciples in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, in logion 15 :
'When you see one who was not born of woman, fall on your faces and worship him. That one is your Father.”
Although John was a God-sent holy prophet, a front-line spiritual leader of the people, whose sainthood was evident not only to the Pharisees and Scribes but even to the murderer Herod Antipas himself, still even his status on Earth was close to nothing compared to the right to enter Heaven in the World to Come.
Jesus acknowledged that within that generation none was greater among people on Earth than John the Baptist. At the same time, John declared that “But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.”
This is exactly explained in the Gospel of John when Jesus told Nicodemus that “No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.”
It was also repeated by John, saying that “He who comes from above is above all. He who is from the earth belongs to the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.”
Thus, we have to aim for Heaven, but the surprise of reality might be that Heaven is not a far, far away country or a galaxy somewhere out there in the unknown; rather, Heaven surrounds us, it pervades everything, it dwells in our hearts, and occasionally it is also granted that Heaven is right here to shape our relationships in advance. As God is everywhere, so Heaven is everywhere.
If God dwells among us, then Heaven is among us, as it was written by Leo Tolstoy that: “Where there is faith, there is love; where there is love, there is peace; where there is peace, there is God; And where there is God, there is no need.”
May the Holy Spirit give us the enlightenment that our earthly sojourn is just a short transitional time in the waiting room of the World to Come, and to the worthy ones, immortality and eternal happiness are offered after this life for the always greater glory of the Lord,
AMEN.
