Heaven

Yes. Heaven.

The gospel is less about how to get into the Kingdom of Heaven after you die, and more about how to live in the Kingdom of Heaven before you die. - Dallas Willard

Beloved Friend,

I wonder if it’s time we talk about heaven. 

The other morning, or maybe it was in the afternoon, you asked me if I believed in heaven. It didn’t go all that well. I hope it’s okay that I’m circling back.

This is one of those questions that I struggle with. It seems to highlight the gaps in my religious lexicon. Heaven is one of those words that people seem to assume that the people to whom they are speaking, especially when they come from the same faith community, understand what (or where?) they are referring to.  Unfortunately, I rarely do understand, and I wonder if there even is a definition of heaven on which most people agree, even when they think they do. I wonder sometimes if even those who attend the same church each week and read the same translation of The Bible, and even read it together and agree on the orthodoxy of the same religious authors, and even seem to agree on things like dispensationalism or covenant theology and pre- and post- millennialism have different views of heaven. I’m not suggesting that we ought to get together, roll up our sleeves, open a couple of bottles of Zinfandel, define Heaven, write a creed and put the matter to rest.  In fact, I don’t think that at all. But it’s hard for me to give a yes or no answer to a question as slippery as, “Do you believe in heaven?” That’s on me.

“Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘believe’ and what you mean by ‘heaven’” or “What are you really asking me?” are both terrible responses to your question. I recognize that. They may sound more than a little condescending and pretentious, whether or not they’re intended that way.  (I can’t remember, but I suspect my response to you was something like those, and I did not intend to condescend. I’m sorry if I did. Thank you for understanding.)

It’s not that your question is the wrong one or bad or anything of the sort. It’s simply one that I don’t know how to answer well. Again. That’s on me. I suppose I could just say, “yes,” and move on, but that feels dishonest to me, and I think you are asking me to tell the truth. 

So maybe I answer these instead: 

Do you think heaven is real? Oh, yes.

Do you think we will recognize each other in heaven? I do

Are you afraid of dying? Sometimes, but not usually.

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I suppose this ought to go without saying, but I can’t help but say it. These are thinking questions. Not believing questions. Well…not the last one, but the first two for sure. I don’t want to get too wonky, but I guess I will. Belief, to me, is no longer about knowing. Belief moved from my head to my heart a few months ago. We’ve talked about this. But belief is no longer about proof or even the preponderance of the evidence. It’s not even about hope. Believing is more foundational than any of those things. Belief is the most precious and fragile place in my heart and it’s reserved for the (very few) things, without which, I simply cannot live. 

I think heaven is real, but my living does not depend on it being so. I think Brother Lawrence wrote about this. As I recall, his conversion occurred before he was even aware of the doctrine of heaven. I think my actual conversion occurred, not when I rejected heaven (I have not), but when God offered the grace by which, a good, sovereign, and present God, displaced everything else - even the stuff like heaven and kindness and charity -  from the precious and fragile part of my heart. 

I hold onto the good things. I cherish them.  But I have not given my heart to them. These are the only things on which my life depends, literally, metaphorically, physically, poetically:   

God is good.

God is sovereign.

God is with us.

These are the things that stir from bed those mornings I am not sure I am happy to have awakened. These are the things, that without which, the pain and suffering of life far outweigh the joy, and are simply too much to bear alone. (I think you know these mornings.)

Sometimes, maybe even often, it’s hard to find any evidence to support these three fundamental truths, and that is when belief is most important. Belief doesn’t depend on proof. It doesn’t depend on my ability to find God in my dark moments. No, it is precisely then that belief carries me through the darkness when despite my best efforts, I cannot find God. When belief in a good, sovereign, and present God, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, is the only thing left.  

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So no. I do not believe in heaven. Not in that way. But I do think heaven is real. And I appreciate your question because it invited me to think, and to think honestly, about heaven. 

Not Heaven (But wow.)

Sometimes it helps me to consider what a thing is not in order to understand what I think it is. I think heaven is not:

• A village built on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean below which you can find powder-sand beaches and, just past the break, a blazing pink coral reef crowded with extroverted octopi and endless schools of tangs with colors that have no names.

• A street with tastefully themed bars with craft cocktails and unlimited supplies of Pappy Van Winkle and Bordeaux wine aged perfectly in French oak barrels. 

• A town with trendy restaurants opened by talented chefs just waiting to be discovered. 

• A collection of beautiful golf courses with wide fairways and meticulously manicured greens outside of a lovely cobblestoned town where it only rains at night. 

• A great day on the water. 

• The town out west where John Prine went to open The Tree of Forgiveness, got back into show business, and invited all the cool indie bands to come and play music that hints at Jesus if you listen very closely. 

• Ted Danson’s latest city plan.

• Where all the dogs are waiting to greet their owners with wet, sloppy kisses (although you might convince me otherwise on this one because my imagining millions of dogs waiting for a door to open, waiting for their person to arrive is pretty great.) 

I think heaven is definitely not:

• A hidden planet tucked away behind some black hole beyond the reach of telescopes and space ships to which the righteous are transported the moment their corporeal bodies die where they go to live out eternity in indescribable bliss. 

• A reward for good, clean living, for following the rules, and for having said no to all the fun stuff we always wanted to try, just once, please, and that the unrighteous said yes to all the time and got to have all the fun on earth so now it’s our turn (and I’m sure glad they didn’t get in.)

• A city on the other side of a pearly gate for which you get a key only after you pass an extensive theology test -  a test that is definitely not graded on a curve, and for which you only get one shot - . (I am pretty convinced there is no theology test involved in heaven at all, which is pretty great because, well, because brain cancer, and most days I can’t find my keys and I don’t even drive.)

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That’s a lot of not. And it wouldn’t be hard for me to keep going. But if I think heaven is not that, and not a lot of other things, then what do I think it is? 

What if it’s just this simple? What if heaven is life in perfect step with a loving, sovereign, and fully-present God? Life in complete and perpetual harmony with the maker and keeper of the universe, and in harmony with the universe God made.  A life in which nothing, and I mean nothing, can separate us from the love of God and nothing can come in the way of our being with God? 

Nothing. 

(Did you catch the part about nothing?)

I’m open to your other views. I truly am. But it’s hard, if not impossible for me to  imagine anything better than being with God. I mean, how could you improve on that? I love a good restaurant, and powdery beaches, and don’t you love those greens that seem to funnel the ball toward the cup?  But c'mon. We’re talking about God. 

It’s not the full meal deal, but I think there are times when we if we are still enough, when we stop trying to stare directly at the sun that we catch glimpses of heaven, right here on earth. Thin places where the veil between here and there is all but invisible, and the distance between God and us fades to near-irrelevance. Times when we get a peek at another person through God’s eyes. Times when the birds and spiders forget we’re there and do what birds and spiders do when they think nobody is watching. Times when the glory of a sunrise nearly drives us straight off the cliffs of the overwhelm. Times when we hear a song through the ears of our hearts and everything changes in an instant. Times when we hold our lover so near that oneness is the only word that matters.  Times when we know beyond knowing that there is nothing  to fear because we have surrendered ourselves to God.  These times cannot last while we’re here, I think, as there is always, always something near-by to distract us from God’s love, but these moments are available here, and sometimes they find us. 

Merton said it this way:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives… This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our son-ship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given.

But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

So while I think heaven is real, I’m not spending all my energy these days planning for my arrival. I’m happy to walk with God as closely as possible while staying open to those moments right here and right now when the gate cracks open just a bit, and I get a little glimpse into what is to come. 

Heaven, the whole-meal-deal happens, I think when we pass all the way through that gate, when none of the things that come between us and God are there to distract. It’s fun to imagine heaven looks like.  Fun to imagine the colors we have never seen. The music that is beyond our hearing now. The sounds and smells and tastes.  The imagining is fun, but I have no real idea, and I’m pretty certain I will be surprised. Surprised by the depth and the breadth of the joy of it all.  

But the picture that John paints of a wedding feast resonates. Not in a literal sense, (although it might be…), but in the way that when you are at a wedding feast, nothing else matters. Not tomorrow’s schedule. Not the name of the president or the latest executive order. Not whether or not you have time to go to the gym in the morning or whether you remembered to lock the door before you left. Not whether or not the pastor remembered your name. All that matters is that you are there with the one you love and you are celebrating your with-ness - fearlessly loving them and every single person they introduce you to.

Kathleen Norris’s favorite definition of heaven, she says, came “from a Benedictine sister who told her that as her mother lay dying in a hospital bed she had ventured to reassure her by saying, ‘In heaven, everyone we love is there.’ The older woman had replied, ‘No, in heaven I will love everyone who is there.’”

I probably could have begun and ended right there. 

Oremus,

Chris