What if heaven was just like Earth, only better? Paul Prather on the unknown realm.
The other day my wife Liz and I had an animated discussion about heaven.
Not as in, “Another slice of pumpkin pie would taste heavenly right now” or “West Virginia is almost heaven,” but as in the actual place — heaven. The world beyond. Life after death. That heaven. Where is it? What is it like?
Of course nobody can prove heaven even is an actual place, that it exists at all, since none of us has been there or presently can even see it. Affirming its existence remains a statement of faith.
Yet its reality as a destination of never-ending reward and glory for the faithful (and maybe for faithless, too, depending on whose theory you buy) is a given in various religions, and especially in my own, Christianity.
Saying what form heaven takes involves speculation even within the Christian community, since, as I said, none of us has been there. Ideas lie all over the universal map, literally. I heard a TV minister declare confidently that heaven is a planet in a distant solar system.
The upside of this lack of knowledge is that your guesses, or mine, are about as valid as the next person’s. A theologian with a Ph.D. may possess a bigger vocabulary than you do, and may be able to marshal more proof-text Bible verses, but when it comes to this subject she’s ultimately just speculating, too.
I have many theories about heaven, which I’ve gleaned through the years from the scriptures, from reading the theories of others and from the mysterious recesses of my own brain. Allow me to pass along a handful.
Take them with a grain of salt. Or take them to your preacher as fodder for a lively pastor-parishioner discussion—the two of you can shoot down my ideas together and bond over the experience. Anyway, here goes:
▪ Human beings don’t become angels in heaven. Sometimes when a loved one passes away, you’ll hear a mourner say, “Heaven gained another angel.” It’s a nice sentiment, and I don’t mean to criticize the speaker or his intent.
However, the Bible and Christian thought generally seem unified on this matter (and on little else): Human beings are a separate order of creation from angels. They’re not interchangeable. One thing doesn’t transform into the other. People are people, even after they die. Angels are angels, period.
▪ Heaven is much like Earth, only better. The writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews, for example, suggests that some of what we see now—in his day, for instance, he pointed specifically to the Jewish place of worship—resembles things that exist in some far more splendorous form in heaven.
If memory serves me, it was Methodist founder and theologian John Wesley who said we’ll have pets in heaven, and they may have the ability to talk with us. Others believe we’ll also hold down jobs, that work will continue much as it does here, except without the current exhaustion, low pay and bad bosses.
I doubt we’ll spend 20 billion years sitting on clouds and playing harps. There will be lots of cooler stuff to do.
▪ Heaven might be located—at least partly, or temporarily—on a refurbished Earth. Some scholars, including N. T. Wright, believe a primary aim of Jesus’ ministry here wasn’t to teach us how to get to some faraway heaven beyond the clouds, but instead to establish the kingdom of heaven on Earth. Eventually Jesus will consummate that heaven-on-Earth in its fullness.
Christians of many stripes differ with Wright on the details, but agree Jesus will return to set up a world-wide government which he will rule, probably from Jerusalem, remaking our troubled planet into a dominion of peace, love and justice.
It’s also conceivable that if heaven exists in a spiritual dimension of time and space that’s invisible to us, it could already be fully here among us, and that eventually our eyes will be opened. Then we’ll fully enter it.
▪ I like to think of heaven as a place of continual, never-ending revelations. In my own life, hardly anything has brought me such joy as when after some long, parching spiritual desert I suddenly am shown a new truth about God or his creation. I behold the Lord in a fresh way that makes clear some issue previously opaque.
But I also feel limited in my ability to receive these moments of illumination.
What if heaven is where there are no limits to our ability to apprehend God’s mysteries and wonders?
What if electrifying revelations just continue, one after the other—forever? How joyful would that be? As St. Paul wrote, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” I can’t imagine anything more heavenly than that.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.
This story was originally published December 4, 2020 at 8:53 AM with the headline "What if heaven was just like Earth, only better? Paul Prather on the unknown realm.."