If God made earth to be perfect, what is the point of heaven?

I’m happy if it worked that way for you. For me it was a struggle that nearly killed me. I still think it was worth it.

What do you make of the scripture 'Blessed is he who believes and understands.' ?

It is the process of sanctification that is tough. I understand what people mean when they say "God is cruel". People want to run their own lives. They don't want to be responsible to a sovereign God
He demands obedience from His "children". The Christian who obeys God "halfway" is often unhappy. However, there is a lot of blessings to the Christian who trusts and obeys God 👵

The understanding comestibles from God (as well as the belief).

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God has forgiven you!!!
He loves you.

I cannot escape the feeling that I’ve been sidestepped.

In my opinion Earth is the perfect place for the material, where you have to understand that you don't need all this material things. Then you will go to heaven, where you will be in your non-material body and in peace with yourself.

There are differing degrees of material captivity on Earth. We have a mixture of material-enslavement and spiritual liberation. It's built into our architecture as flesh-and-blood bodies with the capacity for spiritual awareness within us.

Perhaps the people in the U.S. need to read the last two posts.

Are you implying that people in the US are generally more materialistic than people in other places?

If so, you're looking at materialism very superficially. There can be people who use and waste less material resources who are nevertheless as or more materialistic spiritually than others who use/waste more.

Europeans, I think, generally tend to be more dismissive of religion/spirituality and more oriented toward material solutions for problems. Marxism took root in Europe in a way it hasn't in the US, so that Marxist idea of jettisoning religion and solving problems by increasing and spreading more material means of consumption is actually more materialistic than US people who are rich or poor but yet find comfort from their suffering on either end of the bad bargain in spiritual practice rather than material resolutions.

Of course that has been changing lately due to the strengthening of Marxist/materialist ways of thinking about politics/economics and human happiness generally.

One of the best things about you is that you make people think.

I'm sorry to respond with what might sound like a rude answer to a compliment, but if I made you think, wouldn't you be discussing something you're thinking about instead of just talking about doing so?

When a person makes a point that is new to me, it takes some time for me to contemplate it.
In fact, I often need to have a discussion with the Holy Spirit when I read your posts.

Firstly, when God saw all he had made it was good. The bible does use both the words 'good' and 'perfect' illustrating that there is an obvious God known difference between the two. One thing that makes me so excited about the afterlife is that; the earth was made through the word of God. If the word of God can create such scene, beautiful sunsets, beaches, seas, fields and flowers - imagine what the garden of eden that was planted by Him would look life. Since He cultivated the garden of eden, he looked after it, planted the trees with his own hands, drew the skies himself and coloured it in did everything by hand and not by words, the beauty would be unmatched. Furthermore, Earth was a place of punishment for Adam and Eve and the sin they committed - it is completely different to the Garden of Eden which he made for them, so you can only imagine what heaven would be like that he designed for himself. Also you may believe that earth is perfect, but in heaven there will be no suffering, no pain, no tears, only joy and happiness.