heaven
what's the point of these daydreams?
I think about heaven a lot lately, which is super weird. Especially for me.
Christianity’s fixation on heaven and hell has always been a point of annoyance1 for me. Do we really think all the beauty and pain and mystery of this life boils down to nothing more than what happens to us after it’s over?
Is the point of everything really making a decision, saying a prayer, believing so that when you die you end up in the good place instead of the bad one?
If so, why didn’t Jesus just say so? If so, why do we have to extrapolate that from the Bible instead of just finding the formula clearly spelled out somewhere, preferably in the red letters?2
Why, when I read the Bible, do I find almost no trace of the heaven and hell story so many churches spend so much of their time (and paid billboard space) telling?
Despite the best efforts of the altar calls of my adolescence, I’ve just never been convinced that what happens when we die is the point.
I mean, why would we base everything on something no one can prove? No one really knows what happens when we die. I’ve read Heaven is For Real, but I’ve got my doubts, you know?
And it just seems nonsensical to me to base all of life on what may or may not happen when it’s over. I don’t know if anything happens to “me” once I’m “gone.”
But I know I’m here now, and it seems like a gospel that is truly good news needs to apply now, not just in ethereal theory. Right?
I mean, I get that the idea of eternal damnation is terrifying and that fear is a powerful motivator.
But if perfect love casts out fear, then why the hell are we using fear to preach “the good news” instead of just letting love do its work? It seems like actual good news would just be good news. I shouldn’t have to be first convinced that my intangible eternity is in jeopardy without it. Good news should be enough on its own, love without fear.
And, to be clear, I do believe the gospel. I do believe that the good news of Jesus Christ is good news. Here and now and forever too.
I actually believe—believe it or not—that death isn’t the end. Because it wasn’t the end for Jesus. I believe He actually did rise from the dead, and I believe His resurrection is a sign and a preview of resurrection to come.
AND I find the story of Jesus Christ so compelling that I don’t care if I’m wrong. If all the eternity part is a wishful-thinking fiction, then so be it. Even if whatever I am ends with my last breath, that’s fine. If none of it matters anyway, I could do worse than living my life believing that the animating force of the universe is love.
And it’s Jesus that makes me believe that, so it’s Jesus I want to follow in this life—concerns of heaven and hell be damned.
And now that I’ve said all of that, none of it was the point of why I came here with my thoughts and these words.
But I just need you to know that the cultural imaginations of heaven and hell have minimal influence on why I love Jesus, the God He reveals, and the Spirit He gives.
For me, heaven isn’t the point.
Yet, I find myself thinking about heaven a lot.
Do you ever really think about it? Do you ever really try to imagine—if there really is an afterlife—what it might be like?3
How could it even make sense? What will we even live in? This house I live in would make absolutely no sense to Abraham or Elijah or Jesus of Nazareth. But I’m really not hoping to live for all of eternity in a tent, you know?
What language will we speak? (I’m pretty sure the answer to that one is Hebrew.)
What will we wear? Why do all our cartoons show us wearing white togas? Maybe we won’t wear anything since Genesis seems to indicate that clothes are only necessary in our “fallen” nature. But I’m having a lot of trouble picturing heaven as a nudist colony. That sounds like hell.
And I could go on and on with this. I don’t ever really hear people asking these questions, and I get why. They are absurd, after all, and how would we even know?
But that still begs the question of why we would base everything on a future existence we can’t even begin to imagine, much less know… but so many people do. Even though people think getting to heaven is the whole point of Christian faith, we can’t picture it. We don’t really even ask that many questions about it.
And lately, I can’t stop the questions. I think about heaven all the time.
The reason I’m thinking about it this morning is because last night I went to a Writers’ Round, and Writers’ Rounds always make me think of heaven because I hope eternity involves a lot of sitting around telling our stories and singing our songs. Why not? We’ll have plenty of time.
If heaven is all I hope it is, what I really need to do in this life is get busy learning how to speak Hebrew and how to play guitar.
And maybe that’s absurd or sacrilegious, but I just keep daydreaming about walking in the cool of the morning, speaking in my native tongue with Yahweh. I keep imagining spending the cool of the evening gathered around a campfire with other humans, each singing our unique songs and understanding each other perfectly, the curse of Babel long gone.
I keep imagining a planet populated by the gentle—the peaceful utopia of The Giver but somehow with love and choice wholly intact. Humanity’s never been able to imagine a perfect world that doesn’t require uniformity or isn’t merely a facade for the corruption underneath it. All our imagined utopias are dystopias.
But what if heaven is the utopia we’ve never even found a way to invent, much less implement? What if it is possible for each of us to be who we truly are and live in harmony? I know it sounds impossible, but isn’t that the point? Maybe believing in heaven is believing in humanity without our shame, without our striving, without our violence and vices, living in unity and with love.
The more I imagine a heavenly version of humanity, the more I want to be that kind of human now.
And that, to me, is the point.
At different points in my life, “annoyance” would not nearly be strong enough of a word. Maybe replace with contention, frustration, irritation, or abject terror.
Yes, I am aware of John 3:16. But like Nicodemus, I got questions.
Apologies if I’ve called Mercy Me and Y2K-era youth group trauma to mind.
Hey Friend, amazing observations, particularly that if the afterlife is not as heavenly as we’d hoped, that faith in Jesus is still the better way for this life. These 2 ideas—the rationales for living this life in a certain way AND anticipating the next life are things that cross my mind every day—later this year I will be 80 years old. Metaphorically I am gasping for air, and your reassurance that Jesus is the best way right now regardless of the future, is the mighty wind of the Spirit.