Modern materialists *cannot* believe in Heaven

Once someone has absorbed the assumptions of mainstream modern materialism, he cannot believe in Heaven - and, much worse, he does not even want it to be true!

That is a Big Difference between recent generations, and people of the past. In the past, people might not believe resurrected eternal life in Heaven was true... They might think it was wishful thinking, a made-up story to manipulate people... 

But, if they could be sure that Heaven was real and true, Of Course most people would want it for themselves; of course they would prefer eternal life is annihilation, reincarnation, or the dissolution of the self into deity.     

But our modern materialist assumptions spill forwards into our conceptualization of Heaven. People cannot escape the underlying conviction that eternal life is just more-of-the-same - it can only be a continuation.

The modern mind cannot, for instance, see any end-point difference between the imagined technological life-extension of transhumanism, and resurrected life everlasting... except that transhumanism is clearly superior, because it does not lie on the other side of death: you don't have to die to get it. 

What I'm getting at, is that our perspective is now so deeply rooted in this-mortal-life and the pervasive assumption that the material is all; that all our theories about the future carry these "realities" with them - our strong imaginations - what seems really-real - are always based on what seems really-real to us, here-and-now.     

My understanding is that we can only grasp the significance of what Jesus Christ did, and what he offers; if we can make a mental leap from this mortal life forward. 

We need to be able to imagine, and to assume, that "It Is All True" - that resurrected eternal life in Heaven is a possibility, and to experience that possibility imaginatively, and from that experience of Heaven to look back on this mortal life. 

That seems to be the only way that we can grasp the real significance of Christianity. 

Christianity has become something that cannot be explained! Well, we can of course say the words - but for modern materialistic people these descriptive and explanatory words will be distorted into this-worldly and material meanings: the words, the explanations, the meanings; will be seen from this-side (mortal life), and shall not therefore be understood. 

To understand Christianity is therefore a considerable challenge to the modern person. For a start, he must really want to understand it! - and that is very rare. 

It seems, instead, that a large majority of self-identified modern Christians want to "use" Christianity as an ideology to achieve this-worldly goals (strength, peace, prosperity, functionality, social justice etc). They are looking at Christianity, at Heaven, from this-side. 

For such people (and they are many!) Christianity is the basis of the kind of society, the kind of this-world, that they most desire - and such people are Very resistant to any other and "next-worldly" conceptualization.  

It is strange how something that used to be so simple, spontaneous and easily achieved as wanting everlasting eternal life in Heaven; has become something so qualitatively difficult that even the most devout and active "Christians" are utterly unable/ unwilling to comprehend it! 

Such "Christians" cannot comprehend Heaven in the sense that they cannot think Heaven; they cannot inhabit that perspective. Therefore their understanding of Heaven is necessarily false and/or unreal. 

Because they do not "get" Heaven; they cannot want it - and want something else instead. And therefore, of course, such "Christians" have not even begun actually to Do... whatever it actually takes to achieve Heaven.  

Our modern paradox is that we must first already know Heaven, in order to want and get Heaven. 

And our fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality (i.e. our materialist metaphysics; shared by nearly-all Christians, as well as nearly-everyone else) make Heaven unknowable. 

Such is the nature of our condition.