You just get what you believe in.

This is an attitude that I seem to be hearing quite a bit. So what precisely does this belief state?

Essentially, it's a palliative statement designed to offend no-one. The whole premise of this statement is that when we die we will all go to the afterlife that we have in our belief system. Those who believe in reincarnation get reincarnated. Those who believe that we go to Heaven go to Heaven, and those who believe in nothing, well, cease to be.

Essentially then we are saved by faith alone! - but faith in what we choose to believe.

Of course from a Christian point of view there are several problems. If God created the Universe, then quite clearly it is His idea of Heaven that counts and not ours. If we reject Him then we reject His Heaven which he prepares for us. If we Christians go to the Heaven we believe in then the God we worship is a created god, nothing more than an idol.

There are other problems with this idea besides Christian doctrine. If we are all in charge of our own afterlife, then this points to another solipsist universe. We become the creators of our own ends. What we say goes. If our final end is our decision, then it is limited by our imagination. There is no Eternity in the Human mind. It is clear from our humanity on Earth that no matter what we enjoy, we can have too much of it. A Heaven of chocolate pudding would soon become a Hell as our taste for chocolate pudding evaporates within the first four hours of our attainment of our personal Nirvana.

Well perhaps our taste for chocolate pudding will never fade. Perhaps we will remain in love with our favourite dessert for all Eternity. Well, then surely we would cease to be the human being that we are. We wouldn't be we! Perhaps that's what we're truly frightened of - being the people we are. Perhaps our Heaven is the place where we find solace from the tyranny of existence. In ceasing to be the people we are, we are faced with only one alternative - Oblivion.

But can we really reconcile an afterlife of Oblivion with a life which sees people suffer pain and misery. Could we really turn to the starving child in Africa as that poor little life ebbs out and say "don't worry, there's nothing after this!" Well perhaps that might be a blessed relief, but where's the justice? A life of suffering followed by nothing? Whose imagination is that? What is the point?

Certainly if the Universe is indeed a the product of a Calabi-Yau 3-fold with a 4D spacetime, then there is plenty of room for us to exist without meeting another person - all 6000 million of us and the ones who have ever lived. But an existence where we go where we believe is inconsistent with our life on Earth. We do live with others. Even the most colossal introvert like myself has experiences of others and it is through those experiences that we grow. If our destiny is to go our own separate ways then what is the point of that interaction? If our end is solipsist, then so surely is our beginning. If not, then why is there an existence over which we have no control which evolves into an "Eternity" of our own imagining?

If our existence is not dependent on an uncreated God, then there seems much inconsistency. Sure, it's possible that I believe in God because He satisfies a desire in me for a consistency of my existence. But the fact that I exist and that others exist with me, apart from me, different from me in a diversity of ways, and there still exists some order as we all try to live together point to the necessity for that consistency. The Natural Law shows us consistency of our experience, and that consistency points to a God who made order from chaos.

I am not a solipsist. There's no way that an introvert like me has the capacity to imagine the different people of the world. I believe in a Creator God and I am pleased to rely on His Eternity a truly Transcendent Eternity rather than my paltry understandings of Infinity. I would rather explore the Heaven of an infinite being rather than the vapid and facile imaginings of my own mind. No. I've no idea what heaven will be like. I don't want to know now because I can't know now. All I can do is trust the One who made me.