You probably think Heaven will be boring. That is, supposing you get there, right? But, supposing you make the cut, I’m willing to wager that you’re less than enthused about your eternal outcome.
You’ve heard all about how we Christians will resurrect and gather in Heaven, only to sit around the throne of God and sing praise songs. (“Praise songs” is maybe the dumbest catch-phrase in a religion that endorses many half-baked sayings.)
And the throne of God, in your mind, may very well look like the set of a Christian television station. Gold with white trim. Angels that are doused with eyeliner and mascara. (Okay, so that last bit is probably just the television station.)
And the worship of God, depending on your theological persuasion connotes one of a couple possible images: First, the idea of a series of unison chants that miraculously cause each person’s voice to become monotone and robotic, and this sort of righteous high-church callisthenic that will someday lead to arthritic knees. If not that, then possibly worship to you connotes the placement of Bible-times lingo (Ancient of Days, Rock of Ages, etc.) to a compilation of late-80s denim vest-rock, and some dude who wants to be John Mayer playing a hell of a lot of barre chords.
Yeah, the church folks aren’t rocking in the free world.
So if your understanding of your own role as worshiper in Heaven has only been informed by bad lounge rock and Christian TV, then Heaven itself looks even worse.
Remember the supplies we carried around in elementary school – the folders, notebooks, and lunch boxes with very elaborate circa-1992 portrayals of pastel everything, moonbeams and unicorns? Most of them were made by a company called LisaFrank. Lavender and canary nightmares.
Whether or not you enjoyed those bawl-turning designs back then, you certainly loathe them now (congratulations: you’ve seen the light). But the Christian community is telling you that Heaven is much like a LisaFrank folder – mystical and frilly, and lots of wispy clouds.
And you will live on the gold-monopolized television set, inside the grotesque mango and aqua lunchbox. And you will live there forever.
I understand that you’re not excited.
Is this depiction the truth about Heaven? I’d like to think not. I’d like to think that God knows gaudy (Wouldn’t it be something if He had His own television show in the line of What Not to Wear?), and He avoids it.
Your God is not tacky. His is not some B-grade creativity.
He knows what lame is.
So who’s to blame for the Hellish portrayal of Heaven? Drum roll… the modernists. As usual, the modernists are to blame for constructing the sort of Christianity that leaves me scrambling to find a different religion. (Or just rediscovering the Judaism of Yeshua.)
See, before modernity, Heaven was still impressive. Medieval Christians were excited about Heaven; they knew it was something they couldn’t quite get their minds around. Their descriptive language for Heaven was fueled by excitement and a degree of mysticism. Heaven, to them, was anything but boring.
But then modernity came along and rained on the parade. Maybe it had something to do with the prominence of total depravity, limited atonement, and similar theologies – images of God as a wrathful Father who is somewhat of a liability. He’s damned some for Hell, and the rest of us got lucky… er, “elected”. So those of us who did make the cut had better sit around the gold and white throne of God and sing worship songs – and just be thankful we didn’t end up like our neighbors and co-workers and friends who weren’t afforded (literally: limited atonement) this opportunity, and now spend eternity fulfilling their destiny as Hell’s firewood.
While modernity isn’t altogether evil, parts of it were less than helpful to Christian history, and conceptions of Heaven would fall under that umbrella of things assaulted by modernist Christianity.
Because modernist theology (the language of lawyers; theological Jenga) has informed so much of the Evangelicalism that dominates today’s religious world, the modernist view of Heaven prevails in churches and sermons, in the minds of believers. What we’re left with is an image of fear-induced believers diving at the throne of God, singing John Mayer-ish things and thanking God for being so nice as to not make them firewood.
This is a severe problem. This is a wretched God, and a Heaven that is not only tacky, but perverted. But it’s what we’re taught, so Christians go on living their lives for immediate gratification, because deep down they believe that they still need to milk out this life for all its worth.
Because what comes next is a sham.
There is a new kind of Christianity within postmodernism that seeks to undo the corruption, to re-invite God’s goodness and shalom into the eternal scheme of things. This Christian realizes that it’s near-sighted to exploit the earth’s resources and persecute homosexuals. They realize it is poor practice to go around preaching fire and brimstone. And they are taking serious their responsibility to the widow and the orphan.
This Christianity is being used as a restorative agent in this world.
My exhortation to these Christians is to not stop there. Instead, they ought to allow their perspectives to be enlarged. You’re redeeming so much. Redeem our understanding of Heaven.
Postmodern Christians have been afraid to think about Heaven. Some of this is due to how tacky it sounds; the soccer mom aesthetic probably isn’t cutting it. There is additional reluctance that results from watching as the apocalyptic generations lost any relevant purpose in culture as they prepared for their Tim LaHaye-style fifteen minutes of fame (that’s the rapture, in case you weren’t following the terms).
All that said, it is time for the postmodern Christian to redeem the Church’s view of eternity – the theology of Forever.
What does Heaven actually look like? What do we do there, if not sing lounge rock to WrathGod?
I’m cynically amused that our conception of Heaven is less impressive than our current situation on this earth. And while that certainly says something about our thoughts on Heaven, I think it also says something about this physical world and our current existence.
We’re sitting on God’s Plan-A for humanity. Granted, humanity fell into disgusting adultery with sin and darkness, and so we’re experiencing separation from God. Brokenness and corruption hover over this earth; this isn’t all there is. But what I mean when I say that we’re sitting on Plan-A is that, in the beginning, this world – this exact same world on which we sit on front porches, drink our coffee, and watch countless episodes of The Office – is the world which God originally called “good”. The word in Hebrew is “tov”, and God said it of this world, of His Eden.
There is a reason why Yeshua is referred to as “Second Adam”. Through His work, God is bringing things back to the start; He is re-establishing Eden. Yeshua said that He came to make all things new, and we might do well to take Him seriously.
‘But the earth isn’t restored yet; there’s still a lot of junk going on’. The same could be said of you. You’re in the process of being restored, the process of being redeemed. The process is working; it’s legit. And eventually it will be entire, complete.
We go wrong when we separate humanity from the rest of Creation. It is that separateness that led to those modernist theologies mentioned earlier. Creation – humanity included – was “tov” in the beginning, estranged and damaged by the Fall (though still containing remnants of God and what He calls “tov”), and is now in the process of being restored by Yeshua and His Kingdom.
Are you hearing this? I hope it’s clicking. The Good News is, in fact, good.
We have a lot of basis to believe that this physical world will be restored for eternity. It was good enough for God in Adam’s day. God tends to be consistent; not a whole lot of fluctuation there. So we should brace ourselves for an eternity that looks a lot like this world, if not this physical world itself.
Ahh. (Sighs of relief.) This is so much better than Christian television sets and annoying barre chords.
God’s original creativity was and is good. It was always meant to be lasting. That is why, when Yeshua resurrected, He still looked like Himself. The Bible says that He had His resurrection body, yet it wasn’t some major overhaul from the flesh and bones He had before the cross.
Some people try to suppress this idea, citing passages in Scripture where people close to Yeshua did not recognize Him after resurrection. This argument is a laughable hack. If someone you knew was crucified, you probably wouldn’t be expecting to bump in to him or her in the grocery store or at the gas station sometime in the next few weeks. It must be someone who looks like your friend, right? And it is this same oh-so-sane rationale that caused the disciples to not believe the resurrected Yeshua was really Himself until hearing Him speak and witnessing His action.
I think it’s a safe bet so say that if Yeshua had come back 8’6”… or wearing wings… or magenta… that the biblical writers would have taken note of it. Not something you see everyday; they’d probably bother to jot it down.
The resurrected Yeshua looks a lot like… Yeshua.
The resurrected you will look a lot like… you.
And the rest of Creation, upon restoration, will look a lot like… Creation.
It was tov once, and it will be tov again. It won’t be weird or lame, because your God is not weird or lame. It will be everything this was always meant to be – everything God wanted to give us in the first place. Yet because of sin, we didn’t get around to more than a morsel of it. This existence has a potential we’ve never reached, but God is going to take us there. (That is why the Kingdom of Heaven is so important right now; God is already in the process of doing it.)
It might seem that this view of Heaven takes some of the suspense out of our expectance. But, with the exception of some first century folks, we’ve never known what it’s like to live in this world with God walking alongside us, talking to us, playing ball with us. The Medieval Christians were right to be so extravagant in their descriptions of Heaven. Even though we live here now, we have not yet fully grasped what it means to live forgiven and accepted, let alone to do so in the arms of the One who has forgiven.
We will reach our potential. We will know what it means to dwell with God, in New Jerusalem. We will have so much more than barre chords and Christian television, so much more than a WrathGod who demands the songs of the elect.
God is a gift-giver. And His gifts are not tacky.
We would do well to get excited about Him, and what His Heaven really is.
