When we think about Heaven, our thoughts are less than compelling:
“Heaven will be an eternal church service.”
“Heaven will be a place where there is no pain.”
“In Heaven we’ll bask in the glory of God for all eternity.”
“I have no idea what Heaven will be like, so I don’t think about it.”
Does it matter? Who cares? We’ve got so many other fish to fry in this life, why perseverate over the next one? So we spend 0 hours a day dreaming about what Heaven will be like.
But imagine how your life would be affected if you firmly believed that, sometime in the future, everything you ever dreamed of would come true.
Say, for example, Bill Gates announces that he’s building a house – for you. In 20 years, you can move in. You look at the blueprints in shock; 20 acres on the coast in California, a mansion, people to help look after it, and as a bonus, enough $$ to retire forever.
If you believed him, this future thing would affect every day of your life for the next 20 years. Every time life threw lemons at you, and you couldn’t find the sugar and the vodka, there would always be this thing on the horizon to bring you hope.
Scripture makes a similar promise, couching eternity with phrases like “huge mansion” and “streets of gold;” terms and concepts that the ancient audience would have found compelling. And it’s all unconditional. You can’t sin your way out of it.
But forget about the Bible for a minute. There’s something else that God authored that provides a much fuller picture of what Heaven will be like.
This thing, this blueprint, is commonly referred to as “humanity.” Sometimes we call it “you,” “me,” “us,” etc. Screwed up as humanity is, you can always count on it for one thing – it carries within it a very specific picture of where it will ultimately end up.
But to access this picture requires great courage, humility, and a willingness/ability to step far beyond the constraints of whatever religious system you’ve tied yourself to. My particular faith orientation never talks about this.
So let’s talk about this. Here’s how I think it works.
Spend some time ruminating over what it is you really want to see/experience in this life. You’ll have to dig deep here because some of our desires are corrupted versions of deeper, more true, honest desires.
For example, the guy that wants nothing else but to make money at any cost doesn’t actually want money. He wants the things money can give him; things like comfort, significance, pleasure, ease. The love of money is always viewed in scripture as a bad thing, an abomination. But nobody would say the desire for comfort, significance, and/or pleasure is bad.
Sure, those “good” desires can lead to bad things if we’re not careful, but they’re not bad in and of themselves.
If you look deep enough, and you’re a human, you’ll discover the following, non-exhaustive list of desires living inside, driving most of what you do, good or bad:
- Freedom
- Significance
- Meaning
- Comfort
- Emotional and Physical pleasure
- Deep friendships
- Beauty
- Adventure
- Discovery
We all have these desires in common. No matter what age you live in, where you live, what culture you’re a part of, what you believe, what you don’t believe, etc,. you and me and everyone else are living day to day with these exact same core desires.
Again, these can easily get corrupted into greed, selfishness, etc. They often do. They’re powerful.
And you’ll notice, if you’re old and you’ve spent enough time trying to make all these desires come true, that, save for one, they don’t. They can’t, not in this life.
Anthony Hopkins, talking about his search for fame (which I think is really the search for significance), put it best:
“I meet young people, and they want to act and they want to be famous, and I tell them, when you get to the top of the tree, there’s nothing up there. Most of this is nonsense, most of this is a lie.”
After awhile, because these desires are too powerful to live with, we give up, act like they don’t exist, ignore them (psychologists call this “repression”), say things like, “just be happy you’re alive,” and try to move on. For those of us who believe in a “next” life, we become convinced that it will be just as disappointing as this one, maybe more so.
Why would God do this to us? Why would he give us desires that are way to big for this place, then put us in this place? Make no mistake, our desires are his doing, not ours. Sure, we’re responsible to make sure that they don’t lead us to do horrible things, but He started it.
Cambridge don and famed theologian C.S. Lewis offered something helpful here,
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
In other words, “Heaven,” but not an entirely different world. In the same way a baby wasn’t made for permanent residence in the womb, destined to spat out into a richer, more full expression of reality, so it is with us. Our desires prove it.
But our desires also give evidence to what Heaven will be like. I’m convinced that we’ll be swimming in all the freedom, meaning, significance, comfort, pleasure, deep friendships, beauty, adventure, discovery (ever seen how big space is?), etc., that we can handle.
Every dream, every agenda, every uncorrupted desire – fulfilled.
And it won’t stop.
Ever seen something so amazing that it made you gasp, gave you feelings of awe, like you weren’t the only thing in the universe and that was a good thing, but within minutes the feelings faded? In Heaven it won’t fade. The gasp, the shout, the awe, the laughter – here to stay.
That’s worship, and it will last for eternity.
But specifically, what will Heaven be like? Here’s how I answer that question for myself. And hang with me here, because this will sound patently un-spiritual. But theologically/Biblically speaking, my view of Heaven blows the “eternal church service” view out of the water.
Everything changed for me some 20 years ago, shortly after finishing John Eldridge’s Journey of Desire, a book this post borrows heavily from.
I was in Hawaii with my wife, hiking down a trail to a beautiful, isolated beach. As we neared the water, we walked past a 100 foot cliff that had a home perched on top. From what I could tell, it had everything – patio, tons of windows, and mountains of ocean views.
At the time, we were living in a dumpy, 1200 sq foot, 1 bathroom house in Colorado. I felt jealous of this person’s home, and sad that I would never be able to live in a place like that.
I realized that it wasn’t the house I wanted, but the experience – the peace, the beauty, the joy that would, initially at least, come from living in such a home. Sure, it would all wear off in time, but I didn’t want to think about that.
I know enough about freedom, meaning, significance, comfort, pleasure, deep friendships, beauty, adventure, discovery, etc. to know what Heaven will feel like, and that those feelings will have no end.
But I need something specific, so I think of Heaven in terms of the “things” I desire in this life, a beautiful house atop a cliff in Hawaii overlooking a beach that people seldom visit. And parties. There will be lots of parties, thrown by people who know and love me, and aren’t afraid to celebrate me on occasion.
I can assure you that Heaven won’t specifically be like that – it will go far beyond the picture I’ve painted. But I have enough to get excited about, look forward to, even cling to it when things get rough.
But if you’re a Christian, you’ll be tempted to ask, “where is God in all of this?”
He’ll be right there, in the middle of it all. And every time I see Him I’ll be so thankful (“worshipful” to use the common Evangelical parlance) that I probably won’t be able to talk. Driving all of this will be the desires He’s placed in me, including my desire to be close to Him.
You might also be tempted to think, “This all sounds far too selfish. You’re just thinking about yourself.”
In Heaven we will “feel” things. God is the one who gave us the ability for that, and He’s the one who gave us all the exact same desires. I agree with Lewis – they belong in another world and there they will live, forever. It is pure, unadulterated anathema to believe that these desires will somehow die when we die, that Heaven won’t be fun, or feel good.
If your understanding of Heaven isn’t something you look forward to on a regular basis, especially when things get difficult in this life, I invite you to reconsider.
Your desires (again, the uncorrupted, “core” ones) are powerful, “God breathed,” and should be honored, respected, and trusted to help you paint a better picture of what’s coming next.
Photo Credit: Mohammad Ali Jafarian
