Perhaps a vehicle’s Engine Control Module (ECM/ECU) display of warning lights or error codes can be useful, but in my experience, so far, I just encounter false messages that scare me š.
I was getting such a message a couple of years ago, and it turned out to be a faulty sensor inĀ an awkward location that cost 400 euro to replace, even though the sensor itself was worth around 40 euro.
Since then, I’ve had a few scary messages but sometimes they just stop appearing after a couple of days. I just wonder if such messages are advantageous to car dealers, who charge you an arm and a leg for an investigation š.
At a spiritual level, I’d like to uninvent sin. Without sin, the earth would be like paradise.
It’s true that some parts of the earth feel like paradise, but we’d have perfect people, perfect health, perfect happiness, perfect everything.
Not everyone takes paradise literally, but even if it isn’t literal, it does teach us that without sin, our lives and the world would be in a much happier state. And it will be for many in the next life.
A key passage on this is the dying thief. Unlike so many others who surrounded Jesus, he repented and put his trust in Jesus. Why would you trust in someone who is in the process of being executed? Well, he obviously had heard something about the return of Jesus, and possibly the resurrection. Here’s what Jesus said to him:
Luke 23:43
43Ā Jesus answered him,Ā āTruly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.ā
Funnily enough, the word “paradise” only appears three times in the Bible, and nowhere in the Old Testament. You do have the garden of Eden. And Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint) used parĆ”deisos to translate the Garden of Eden, linking the Persian idea of a lush, enclosed royal garden with the biblical story.
Anyway, here are the other two references to paradise:
2 Corinthians 12:4 (Where the Apostle Paul is actually speaking of his own experience – he’s the man)
3Ā And I know that this manāwhether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knowsāĀ 4Ā was caught upĀ to paradiseĀ and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.
And finally, paradise appears at the end of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation:
Revelation 2:7
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in theĀ paradiseĀ of God.
You don’t get many hymns that mention paradise. Hymns focus more on broader terms such as heaven or the new heaven and new earth. But here are a few that I came across:
You do get more secular songs that speak of paradise. Here’s a list, and the one that I’m most familiar with:
- Fly to Paradise – Sarah Brightman
- Paradise – Coldplay
- Paradise City ā Guns Nā Roses
- Gangstaās Paradise ā Coolio
- Paradise by the Dashboard Light
- Dark Paradise ā Lana Del Rey
- Paradise – George Ezra
There’s actually at least 66 secular songs with paradise in the title. And I’m told that Lyrics.com lists 63,132 lyric entries containing the word āparadiseā. In the secular world, it’s all fantasy, but for me, because the word came from the lips of Jesus, it’s real. And perhaps, it’s built into humans to “long for greater joys than to this world belong” – to quote one of my favourite hymns:
2. Great is the mystery of godliness,
great is the work of Godās own holiness;
it moves my soul and causes me to long
for greater joys than to the earth belong:
Hibernia Gospel 