Faith & Spirit Quote by Jonathan Edwards

Edwards sells paradise the way a shrewd marketer sells scarcity: everything here, even at its most comfortable, is a cheap substitute for the real thing. The phrase "most pleasant accommodations" is doing surgical work. It drags lofty theology down into the language of lodging and amenities, as if earthly life were a well-appointed inn. That mundane metaphor isn’t accidental; it shames the listener for being impressed by comfort. A soft bed, a full pantry, social status, even moral self-satisfaction - all of it becomes mere furnishings in a temporary room.

The intent is pastoral and tactical. Edwards isn’t trying to paint heaven as a vague reward; he’s trying to break the spell of the present. "Infinitely better" is not poetic excess but an argument about scale. If the difference is infinite, then any rational calculus changes: delay, compromise, and attachment become not just mistakes but category errors. This is how revival preaching reorders desire - not by gentle inspiration but by making ordinary pleasures look embarrassingly small.

In Edwards’s eighteenth-century New England, this also lands as a critique of creeping comfort and distraction in a society starting to stabilize and prosper. Heaven is framed not primarily as reunion, relief, or even moral vindication, but as the full enjoyment of God: the center of gravity is worship, not self. Subtext: if your faith doesn’t make you impatient with comfort, you may be enjoying the wrong thing.