Heaven

I’ve been thinking about heaven a lot the past few months. I’ve been thinking about what it is we want from heaven, what we hope it will be like, what exactly will make it so wonderful for us.

The Bible (and our culture) suggests many different answers to this question: we look forward to heaven because there will be no more suffering, “no more mourning, crying, or pain,” as Revelation 21:4 so beautifully puts it. And of course, many of us look forward to being reunited with our loved ones (books like 90 Minutes in Heaven seem especially keen on this idea, from what I’m told). Or perhaps we simply look forward to heaven because we trust that will experience life as it was intended to be: a restored earth free of crime and pollution and all the brokenness, perhaps(depending on who we are and where we’re getting our information) an eternal golf game* or the everlasting weekend in the mountains.

Those things may all be well and good. But I wonder, are they enough? Or ought we to be hoping for something more? Or as John Piper puts the question:

The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”

The “right” answer to that question, of course, (at least from a Christian perspective)ought to be “no.” But my fear is that, too often, we talk about heaven (and about Christianity in general) in a way that suggests otherwise. Think, for example, of the way we may “pitch” Christianity evangelistically: we tell others that Jesus will relieve them of their guilt, give them the chance to see dear old aunt Sally again, or will get them some othe perk. Sure, these things may be true–but they miss the deeper point. The deeper point, as Piper puts it in the title of his book, is that GOD is the Gospel. The point is that true happiness comes from fellowship with HIM–which is exactly what he gives us in Christ and promises us for eternity!**

So why do I make such a big deal out of this? Well, for one thing, it’s a simple matter of right thinking. Suggesting that heaven is more about forgiveness or lack of pain or some other perk than it is about life with God confuses the ends with the means.*** But more to the point–it comes back to T.S. Elliot’s famous line: “In my end is my begninning.” If our eternal goal is merely to be reunited with our loved ones, to live a pain free life, to ski for eternity–then that’s how I’ll live now. Those will be the things that we live for now. (And if that’s how we live, I suspect we might be too earthly minded to be of much heavenly good.) But if my eternal goal is to dwell with God (and the rest is just details), than will have termendous implications for what–or WHO–I seeek and serve now!

*For some, this might only happen in that other, warmer , place!

**Since I’ve started thinking about this, I’ve realized that a much more central concern of Rev 21 (more central than the absence of sickness, crying or pain etc mentioned in verse 4) comes in verse 3: Now the dwelling of God is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God… It’s more about the relationship than the “perks.”

***I find Lewis helpful on this point. In A Grief Observed, he writes: Am I just sidling back to God because I know that if there’s any road to H. [Lewis' deceased wife], it runs through him? But then of course I know perfectly well that He can’t be used as a road. If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching Him at all. That’s what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions ‘on the further shore’; not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End.

A Grief Observed

A month or two ago, I finished C.S. Lewis’ classic, The Problem of Pain. It was a fine book that looked at pain from an “objective”, outsiders perspective. As usual, Lewis was thorough, logical, and compelling. If you want some good, rational discourse on how a good God can allow suffering and pain in the world, this is a book you may consider reading.

However, if you want to get a glimpse into the heart of a person who is suffering, if you want to walk along side of someone through the process of their grief, if you want to see pain from the inside, you may want to read A Grief Observed instead. In this book, which consists of excerpts from Lewis’ diary, we get a raw look at Lewis’ pain after the death of his wife. Although Lewis’ experience is likely different than yours or mine (it’s A Grief Observed, after all, not All Grief observed), we may find common ground with him as we seek to understand our own grief.

One of the things I found interesting about Lewis‘ little book is the progression that can be seen in the way he understands God’s presence. Consider these few excerpts from the beginning, middle and end of the book:

• “Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?….Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him.” (6)
• “I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help my be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.” (46)
• “When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent , certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’” (69)

I also was intrigued by the way Lewis tried to describe what grief feels like. Here are a few examples:

• “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” (3)
• “I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense. It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. [his wife] for their object. Now their target is gone. I kept on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there’s an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.” (47)
• “There is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs—nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast-time—but the atmosphere, the taste, of the whole thing is deadly.” (35)

And of course, Lewis being Lewis, there are also plenty of intriguing little snippets that can stand on their own. Here are few to think about:

• “Bereavement is not the truncation of married love but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon. What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase, too.” (xvii)
• “It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters.” (15)
• “Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect you don’t understand.” (25)
• “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history…there is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape…not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley isn’t a circular trench. But it isn’t. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn’t repeat.” (59-60)
• “God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t.” (52)
• “What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?” (43)

There you have it. There are, of course, other bits in this book that make it a worthwhile read. Or, if you’re sure that I already took all the good parts but still want something of this sort, you may want to consider Nicholas Wolterstorffs wonderful little book (also a daily journal) Lament for a Son.