Remember it's all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in.
People often get upset when you teach them what is in the Bible rather than what they presume is in the Bible.
Jesus himself, as the gospel story goes on to its dramatic conclusion, lives out the same message of the Sermon on the Mount: he is the light of the world, he is the salt of the earth, he loves his enemies and gives his life for them, he is lifted up on a hill so that the world can see.
While some who downplay Christ's divinity have imagined Jesus as a great social worker 'being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children,' orthodox Christianity has not wanted Jesus to have a political message.
Whatever life after death is, being with Christ which is far better, being in Paradise like the thief, etc, the many rooms where we go immediately. . . that is the temporary place. The ultimate life after life after death is the resurrection in God's new world.
Learning to live as a Christian is learning to live as a renewed human being, anticipating the eventual new creation in and with a world which is still longing and groaning for that final redemption.
We can glimpse it in the book of Acts: the method of the kingdom will match the message of the kingdom. The kingdom…goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always – as Paul puts it in one of his letters – bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.
Uri Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so, he appears to be doing it the hard way.
The deeds we do, the words we say,Into still air they seem to fleet;We count them ever past;But they shall last -In the dread judgment theyAnd we shall meet.
Im's offspring stare at stars and make clocks that calculate useless happenings like the angle of a hawk's claws as it strikes its prey. They demonstrate their contraptions and everyone marvels. My children get drunk, confuse a herd of cows with an enemy regiment, and slaughter the lot, screaming like lunatics until the entire army panics.
It's all a game, with new rules every season.