A Biblical View of Heaven

Many people believe that heaven will be a place of eternal singing or that they will get wings and live on a cloud, but many traditional beliefs about heaven are not exactly what is revealed in the Bible. So what does the Bible actually teach us about this eternal place?

Our study begins in the book of Genesis. In Chapters 1 and 2 we find God creating heaven and earth and all that is in them. After God has created all of the plants, animals, and people, we find that he claims all he has made is good. Adam lives in the garden with Eve, they rule over the animals and care for the land and the work they do is without toil or strife. We also know that in this perfect world, Adam and Eve eat of the fruit in the garden. The text even tells us that God walks with Adam in the garden and that they have a unhindered relationship that allows them to communicate on a personal level.

In Genesis chapter 3, sin enters the world and corrupts everything. It corrupts plant life, animal life, and human life. This corruption separates humanity from having an unhindered relationship with God. The corruption causes death. It causes work to be rifled with toil and it causes the relationships between humans and animals to be one of enmity. It also causes relationships between humans to be full of conflict.

Christians believe that Jesus came and died on the cross and rose from the dead in order to mend this brokenness. His job was to fix what was corrupt so that it could be restored to its former state.

Revelation 21 teaches that this restoration will come at the end of time; it also describes heaven as follows:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. ² I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

⁵ He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

⁶ He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. ⁷ Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. ⁸ But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

⁹ One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” ¹⁰ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. ¹¹ It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. ¹² It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. ¹³ There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. ¹⁴ The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

¹⁵ The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. ¹⁶ The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. ¹⁷ The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was 144 cubits thick. ¹⁸ The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. ¹⁹ The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, ²⁰ the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. ²¹ The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

²² I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. ²³ The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. ²⁴ The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. ²⁵ On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. ²⁶ The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. ²⁷ Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. (NIV)

From this passage we learn several very important things about heaven:

1. In the new state God will not visit humanity as he did in the original garden, he will dwell among humanity forever. (V 1-3)
2. In the Gospels Jesus states that he is going to prepare a place for our eternal home, in this passage, that home comes and descends onto the new earth. Heaven and earth will be a unified place. (V 1-3)
3. In this place there will be no death. (V 4)
4. Not everyone will make it to this eternal home (VV 6-8)
5. The eternal home will not be a garden but a city. It will be beautiful. (VV 9-22) The idea here is not that there will be no trees or plants, but that the people will be in a community. Humans will live among other humans and not secluded. This was God’s original intent. While he created humans in the garden, he told them to fill the earth. God created humans as communal beings, this will be fully realized in Heaven.
6. The eternal state will be a place of purity. It will need no temple, because God himself will be there. It also mentions the kings of the earth bringing their splendor to God; this idea is in reference to the fact that all belongs to God. (VV 23-27)

In this picture we do not see humans becoming angels or getting wings. In fact, we see the exact opposite in the Gospels. After Jesus rises from the dead, he remains human and has his own human body. He still bears his scars from the cross, but there is no reason to think that we will all bear all of our scars from this life. We also see that in his resurrected body, Jesus gets hungry and eats fish. From this we can conclude that our eternal bodies will be physical bodies much like the ones we have now in form. Our bodies may retain some marks from our life now. We will still get hungry and still eat.

Heaven in many respects is a return to the garden, but we were commissioned to fill that garden as cultivators of a city. In heaven, the garden will become the city. 

The heavenly city is a gift from God and it will be full of cultural goods. We read in Isaiah 60 that the heavenly city will be full of gold and silver and precious stones. It will have trees and governors. It will be a cultural place. The culture will be good, because God will fill the new creation with his presence and love. It is this filling that gives us hope now for that time.

Since the heavenly city will be full of culture we can conclude that in it we will still have work to do. We will have jobs, and the best part is…the toil that we face in our work now will once again be removed.

This eternal state begins when all passes away here; from this we can also conclude that the eternal state will not be timeless. It has a beginning, it simply has no end.

I would like to conclude this post with two quotes from Andy Crouch that sum up nicely the Christian beliefs about heaven.

“Human beings, in God’s original intention and in their redemptive destination, cannot be separated from the cultural goods they create and cultivate at their best.” (Crouch, 170)

“Our eternal life in God’s recreated world will be the fulfillment of what God originally asked us to do: cultivating and creating in full and lasting relationship with our Creator.” (Crouch, 173)

Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus?

In a recent post, I presented three questions I've heard young people ask--people who think highly of Jesus and even seem to want to become Christians and follow Him, but worry they can't without sacrificing their rationality, their decency, or both.

I addressed the first question in my last two posts. Here is the second question:

Question 2: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus?

(I've also heard some related questions, such as Why would God send anyone to hell? and Why would a loving God send me to hell just because I'm not convinced Christianity is true?)

A proper look at this issue requires a lot more than a blog post. But I can explain, rather briefly, one reason people who worry about this issue don't need to worry. That reason is that Christian theology doesn't necessarily say that the people they're concerned about–the ones who live and die without hearing the Gospel properly explained–are all going to hell.

There are different views on this sort of thing within the area of soteriology (the study of salvation). Here are two of the generic views:

Exclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, and that only those who follow Christ in this life will be saved.

Inclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, but that some who do not follow Christ in this life will nonetheless be saved through Him.

Obviously according to Inclusivism it is not the case that everyone who hasn't heard about Jesus goes to hell. This is the view of C. S. Lewis as well as the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. So you can be a Christian and not even bother asking the question!

Of course, the really important question is: Will Cinnamon be there when I get to Heaven?
 

Different versions of Exclusivism are outlined in a very good little book by Robert Wittmer. One of these versions is Soft Exclusivism, the view that, to anyone who responds properly to general revelation (the sort of revelation Paul talks about in Romans 1), God will give sufficient special revelation (the sort of revelation God gives through Jesus, an aposle, or a prophet) to be saved. Now a Soft Exclusivist can be an optimist or a pessimist. An Optimistic Soft Exclusivist thinks this actually happens sometimes; a Pessimistic Soft Exclusivist thinks it never happens. Wittmer himself is a Pessimistic Soft Exclusivist. My old theology teacher William E. Bell, is an Optimistic Soft Exclusivist, and even thinks there is some, admittedly ambiguous, biblical evidence for this view.

Obviously, if Optimistic Soft Exclusivism is correct, then Question 2 is not a big deal: People don't go to hell just for not hearing about Jesus. People who respond to God's general revelation properly will hear enough about Jesus to be saved, and there are some such people.

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To sum up: There are orthodox views in Christianity that implicitly deny there is even any need to ask Question 2!

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To sum up my last three posts:

There are three big questions that keep people away from Christianity.

Question 1 is: Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution? And the answer is: Yes. (But you don't have to.)

Question 2 is: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus? Maybe the best answer to this is another question: Who says God does?

Toward a World Without Gender Centrism

I recently found my new favorite blog, Sociological Images. It's a group of sociology professors and students who use images to prove their point. I don't love all the posts but some, with one picture, will make you completely shift your view on something you most likely thought was fundamental. For instance this post, "...The History of Pink and Blue."

The idea for this article comes from a post on that blog titled, "Stick Figures and Stick Figures Who Parent." It shows how stick figures on signs are almost always by default male. The point is clearly made when a woman figure is pictured with a child. Several other posts on this site go on to look into the issue of the idea of androcentrism (focusing on maleness as the default viewpoint.)

To compensate for androcentrism we often promote the opposite, gynocentrism. I contend that in most situations point of view shouldn't focus on that of men or women but on a combined humanity. We do this in many areas of society including the church. Specific subcultures often have more of a tendency to segregate into androcentrism and gynocentrism.

The world of sport clearly does this. Men participating against men and women against women is very different than andro- or gyno-centrism and is not what I'm discussing. Defining categories of sports against a male default causes the problem. For instance, we have the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), or Major League Soccer (MLS) and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL).

The women's league is defined against the men's thus promoting androcentrism. To fully switch to gynocentrism, the NBA would be the league in which women play and the MNBA would be the league for men.  But, that isn't the answer either.  The answer is switching to a non-gender centric view where both leagues are defined appropriately, so the MNBA and the WNBA with "NBA" as the non-gender default.

In the name of gender equality, we sense the issue and try to fix it by giving women their own "things." Thus, instead of promoting a non-gender specific outlook, we switch to promoting androcentrism for men and gynocentrism for women.  For instance, instead of promoting t-shirts with team logos and colors to women through creating smaller sizes and a cut that fits a woman's body better, we create pink apparel having nothing to do with the team's logo or colors. We also create magazines and websites for women by women in the name of promoting women. (Thus implying the original is for men and by men.)

The actual non-gender way to deal with this is letting women participate in currently androcentric platforms on equal footing. If a woman isn't good enough to write or report on ESPN, don't let her.  Creating something like  espnW goes a long way to promote gynocentrism but not a neutral gender outlook for sport. On their "About EspnW" page they say their mission is to, "...serve women as fans and athletes. espnW.com provides an engaging environment that offers total access to female athletes and the sports they play, takes fans inside the biggest events, and shares a unique point of view on the sports stories that matter most to women."  I looked but couldn't find an "About Us" page listing a mission statement on ESPN.com.

This happens in Christian culture, especially as it relates to what would be defined as "serious" or theological issues. For instance, ChristianityToday.com has a blog titled, "Her.Meneutics," which in their lengthy explanation under "Who We Are" states that, "Her.meneutics is devoted to what evangelical women think." This popular blog has many writers and much promotion behind it. If you look for a men's section on ChristianityToday.com you can find a men's section letting you subscribe to a magazine devotional for men. To their credit, Her.Meneutics isn't featured prominently on their homepage and nothing male specific is promoted either.

Ministry to men specifically and women specifically is great and needed, but when "thinking" in general moves into andro- or gyno-centrism, issues occur. I used to work for a Christian organization and they were looking into discussing views regarding the role of women in church on their website. The goal was to have different people write articles on their different views. We had a committee to decide how this should work.

I thought we should have mainly men, and a few women, write the articles because men hold more standing in most people's minds as far as theological debates go. (Name me any widely respected household female theologian? Male?) Another woman on the committee, much my elder and someone I respect a great deal, was appalled by my idea and stated that since it was a women's issue, all the writers should be women. It would help give them a voice. I felt uneasy about this discussion, and never realized why until recently. She promoted a gynocentrism for women, and hoped men would catch on.  She thought that women think for women and men think for men.

If all the leading experts on the issue were male, having them be the ones to write on the topic would not androcentrism. That's just getting experts to write on a topic. Yes, we can throw in a women's viewpoint to help get that perspective and build a career for said woman.  But,  if we want to fix this issue, we need to admit that it happens, and we need to encourage women to get the same education and training as men.

I often see in the church today an increasing number of studies, books and lectures written by women for women.  This worries me as promoting a gynocentrism toward women and an androcentrism toward men.  Men realize women have "their studies" and start thinking that books, lectures, studies and so on by men are for men.  We both need to have interaction with the opposite sex and focus on a neutral default in areas that are clearly neutral.

I'd love to hear from all of you on ways that you've seen this issue occur.

Politics Makes Earth Day Annoying

Earth Day is a problem, for me. I love the planet - who doesn't - and I hardly go a day without picking up some trash that someone else left on the ground. I love the beauty of the outdoors, and the calmness of nature. Again, who doesn't?

But I have no idea how to take care of the planet. Environmental issues are frustratingly wrapped up in politics, and asking deep questions about environmentalism always brings out the haters.

For example, is nuclear energy safe? I want to know, but I can't have that conversation with anyone - people always get upset. Rather than having a thoughtful investigation of the effects of nuclear power plants, everyone I know just wants to raise their voice as soon as the word "nuclear" is spoken. I'm certain that no one on either side of that debate is interested in hearing any facts from their opponents - they just want to defend the position of their political party.

And that's a problem. Not just for politics, but for the planet. Every environmental issue I've heard of in the last ten years has been picked up by a politician and used as a thinly-veiled attack on their opponents. We cannot preserve our planet this way.

Obviously, Christians believe that we should be taking good care of the earth, but no one can agree on how to do it. Until we remove environmentalism from the arena of "Democrats vs. Republicans" we will not be able to save anything - we'll just argue. Of course, I've noticed that most Americans would rather argue politics than fix any problems, so our planet's problems will continue to be ignored while we fight for power in our capitols.