Why Heaven Matters

When I began writing this blog over a decade ago, I named it WHAMM for the cutesy sound of the name, but I also had something more serious in mind. In answering the title question, why heaven always matters most, I was playing off the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” As I have said many times, but especially in “Bringing the Kingdom,” it is the Christian’s responsibility to help make that prayer a reality. Earth is to be recreated in heaven’s image.

For most of my life I have believed the almost universal teaching that Heaven is where Christians go to spend eternity when they die. Two authors who have been added to my bookshelf recently have caused me to reexamine what the Bible actually says about Heaven. The first author who sparked my interest was Michael S. Heiser who wrote Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. One of Heiser’s main themes is that many of our modern ideas about the Bible are based on inferior translations of the Scripture and the theology that has grown from those translations. As a preeminent scholar of Hebrew and other ancient Mid-Eastern languages, Heiser offers the modern reader a more accurate impression of what the original authors were saying.

By providing a clearer reading of certain texts that have puzzled scholars for years, Heiser unveils a consistent theme that runs from Genesis to Revelation. For me, the most significant result of Heiser’s clarifications has been related to the overall plan of God, and how He intends to carry out the final chapter of the redemption story. Naturally, Heaven is a part of that story. Heiser helped me to see that it was never God’s plan to call a people to Himself so He could bring them to Heaven. God’s original plan was to have Adam and Eve fill the earth with their offspring and turn it everywhere into a beautiful garden. When they rebelled, God set in motion His redemption plan which would eventually finish what He started.

The second author who got me thinking about what the Bible says about Heaven is N.T. Wright. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Wright pointedly says that the majority of Christians have misunderstood what the Bible teaches about Heaven. He says, “It comes as something as a shock, in fact, when people are told… that there is very little in the Bible about ‘going to heaven when you die.’” Wright continues, “The medieval pictures of heaven… have exercised a huge influence on Western Christian imagination. Many Christians assume that whenever the New Testament speaks of heaven it refers to the place to which the saved will go after death.” Wright suggests that when Jesus talks about entering the kingdom of heaven people assume He was talking about where you go when you die, “which is certainly not what either Jesus or Matthew had in mind.”

After making a sound argument that the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke of is something the Savior initiated with his resurrection, Wright proceeds to suggest that the surprising hope his title refers to is the hope of a resurrection for all believers – a bodily resurrection which fits the faithful for an eternity on the recreated earth. Among many passages that expose this reality, Wright points to Romans 8:19-22 which plainly states that all of God’s creation is looking forward to the time when Eden is restored. The author makes a strong argument for the need to look forward to a bodily resurrection.

The question then becomes what heaven is if not the eternal destination of Christians. Wright believes it is a “place,” if it can be called place, where Christians wait for the recreation of Earth at the end of time. The idea of a paradise where the dead may go is supported by Jesus’ word to the thief on the next cross: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Paul also believed that upon his death he would be in Christ’s presence: “absent from the body is present with the Lord.” So, while Wright doesn’t deny the existence of heaven, he dismisses the false idea that it is the place where believers go to join the angels sitting on puffy clouds playing harps for eternity.

I suspect that Wright may be picturing heaven as it is portrayed in the Scripture, but I wonder if there may be a degree of condescension by God to a level of human understanding. I believe that because we have limited ability to understand the details of God’s program, He uses imagery that suits the intellectual capabilities of His creatures but does not necessarily reveal the whole picture. This was certainly the case with the Old Testament sacrificial system. The symbolic attire of the priests, the specific layout of the temple, and the blood sacrifices themselves all spoke of a deeper reality. The writer of Hebrews says that the old system was patterned after the true tabernacle which is in “heaven.” The exact nature of that heavenly reality is still something of a mystery.

In the matter of what happens when we die, I wonder if our problems stem partly from a mindset that is in bondage to time. We suppose that there must be a passage of time between when we die and when the new earth is presented. Ever since Einstein, we have known that time and space are inseparably linked – the so-called time-space continuum. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that our corruptible, time-bound bodies will be exchanged for something entirely different when we die. Perhaps part of the difference is that we are no longer bound by time. If that is the case, there may not be any need for a passage of earthly time while we wait for the new creation.

What I am suggesting may sound too mystical or metaphysical for some. But I would argue that heaven is in fact mystical or properly put, supernatural. Heiser prompts us to see the supernatural aspects of all the Scripture. Wright makes us realize that our hope in resurrection is for a “physical” body, yet we know it will be different – supernatural – in some elemental way. My purpose is not to disregard heaven but to highlight why our concept of heaven matters (most). The last section of Wright’s book offers suggestions for how the ministry of the church should be impacted by the correct understanding of the hope of resurrection. If earth is our forever home as he suggests, then he is right to say that the believers’ primary task is to make earth ready for the coming new age in any way we can. So, my title still stands: heaven does matter most.

Related posts: The Heiser Effect; E=MC² in Genesis; Einstein Predicts the Existence of God; Lies We Have Been Told;  Why Wait