Heaven Is Too Good To Be True

Sometimes when I think about my perfect future I am filled with doubt and disbelief.  The way I hope my life turns out in, say, twenty years, just seems too good to be true.  There is no way something that wonderful could actually happen. 

 It’s not me being pessimistic or doubting that God loves me enough to give it to me, it’s just simply too good to be true.

But why?

The more I think about it, the more it just seems that something about it isn’t right.  It just doesn’t feel right sometimes when I imagine myself in twenty years.

There isn’t anything objectively wrong with the vocation I have chosen or the way I am living it out in the future picture of myself, so that can’t be it.  Maybe God is calling me to a different vocation?  No, it isn’t that either.

The problem isn’t objective, it is subjective.  It is the way I think of the future.

Sometimes I (and likely we, if you’re being honest too,) take the thing that is desired, and idolize it.  The feeling that it is “too good to be true” should be reserved for unity with God and if we get it from anything else, it could be an indicator of misplaced worship.

I don’t mean that the Beatific Vision is “too good to be true” in the way that implies disbelief.  I mean it in the way that comes from awe and gratitude. 

The difference is that when I imagine me living my happy little life in ten years, the “too good to be true” is not awe, it is an empty disbelief.  It is my telos reminding me that I have set up a temporal good as an infinite fulfillment of desire. 

It doesn’t mean that my life plan matters too much to me, it means that it matters in the wrong way.  Ultimately we have one end, my life plan is a means to that end.  When my life plan is “too good to be true” it means that it has become an end, an ultimate end, rather than a temporal end.

Temporal ends are means to the ultimate end.  When we think of a temporal end as merely an end (without the at least implied temporal), we have replaced God with temporality.

So the feeling that it is too good to be true is our conscience assuring us that it is.  We will never find fulfillment in temporality.  If we could, there would not be a God. 

I think there are appropriate instances when we do in integrity regard a temporal end as “too good to be true”, but it is only when we glimpse a temporal reality as reflecting communion with God.  The way to tell if it is true or not lies in whether it stems from wonder and gratitude, or from disbelief and pessimism.

I believe a man, on the day of his marriage or in anticipation of the birth of his child, or a priest on the day of his ordination could look at the sky and exclaim; “This is too good to be true”, and it would not be wrong.  In these cases it stems from a gratitude and a wonder at the marvels of a Good and Gracious God.  It reflects a renewed and strengthened belief in the omnipotence of the Creator.

But be careful if when you think “it is too good to be true”, you are in disbelief.  If so, reevaluate your intentions. 

You might be on the road to where you need to go, but if you are afraid, then you might be in err of where the road is taking you.