Here we are.... human beings -- homo sapiens.

We're smart, talented, inventive, productive, and capable of spiritual awareness. Is there a reason for that? Or no reason? Are we, as Bertrand Russell said, just "accidental collocations of atoms"?

We think that the "yes, there is a reason" argument makes more sense. There seems to be a purpose -- a will -- that drives the development of life. And intelligence. This positive force apparently out-powers the entropy that you would expect in a nothing-but-physical universe.

The New Christian take is that this positive, creative force stems from the nature of God. Think of God as love itself -- this intense, inexhaustible well of love -- shaped and instantiated by infinite wisdom. That sort of love would long for conjunction -- for making others happy, and for creating this reciprocal circuit of love and response. That sort of wisdom would enable the creation of a multi-faceted universe where such a reciprocation could thrive.

Right now, we're living in one of the facets of this universe -- the physical one. It's a sort of substrate, a grounding-out place, where free, rational human beings can develop and live, and have a chance to achieve spiritual development. There's a spiritual facet to the universe, too - another plane just as real as the physical one - where free rational human beings can keep on living after their physical bodies die.

If that's the case, what are we supposed to be doing? Essentially, our quest here on earth is to make an overall choice whether to go for spiritual freedom, with God's help, or whether to reject his leading, and go our own way, which ends up with us becoming enslaved by our own evil loves. That big overall choice gets built up from thousands of everyday choices.

For reference, among many places where Bible supports the idea of heaven and eternal life, here are some examples:

Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you." (John 14:2)

In this way, therefore, you should pray: Our Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name; (Matthew 6:9)

"And he said unto them, 'Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or wife, or brethren, or parents, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life.' " (Luke 18:29-30).

2290. People who know nothing about the state of the life after death may think that young children acquire angelic intelligence and wisdom the moment they enter the next life. But I have learned through much experience that this is not so at all. Those who die not long after birth have the minds of young children, almost the same as on earth. Nor is the amount of what they know any greater, for they possess no more than the capacity to know, and from this to have intelligence and from this to be wise. Yet that capacity is more perfect because they are not living in the body but are spirits. That this is the mental condition of young children when they first enter heaven I have not merely been told but have also been shown, for on several occasions, in the Lord's Divine mercy, groups of young children have been sent to me, and I have been allowed to read the Lord's Prayer to them. As I did so I was given to perceive how the angels whose company they were in were instilling into their tender and newly-formed ideas the meaning of the things that are in the Lord's Prayer - filling their ideas with it in the measure that the young children were able to receive it - and after that how the young children were given the capacity to think about things such as these as if from themselves.