Addendum: Heaven is Not the End

One of the things that I’ve realized recently while studying through the Scriptures is that it appears Heaven is not the end.

There has been a mindset, for millennia perhaps, within the Christian Church that we must simply endure this physical world until we finally get to heaven where we really belong, and we will have peace and rest.  All things physical in this world, so the thinking goes, is corrupt and needs to be ignored, minimized, and eventually shed.  Our bodies apparently do not matter, and it is solely the spiritual that matters.

To begin with, it’s important to remember that God made all things, both spiritual and physical.  He stood back on the 6th day and declared all of creation as not just “good” but “very good”.  Certainly man brought sin into the world and the world was corrupted by sin.  This can make us believe that the physical is unimportant.  But we were also corrupted by the sin we committed.  Using the previous line of thinking we would have to conclude that we are therefore unimportant and not worthy of consideration.

At every point I believe God clearly says. “NO!”.  

We were made intentionally as both physical and spiritual beings.  A spirit in a physical shell was the original perfect design.  It seems to be that humans were intended to never die.  Death only enters the picture as a warning to Adam and Eve.  As the Westminster catechism states, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”  For this purpose man was created as both physical being and spiritual.  

Thomas Aquinas tell us in his “Summa Theologica” that to emphasize the physical over the spiritual is a perversion of God’s original and continuing desire for humanity.  It is an equal perversion to emphasize the spiritual over the physical.  I agree that it is far more comforting, far simpler, far easier to live in only one or the other camps, but we must continually ask ourselves, “What was God’s original design and intention?” And then live that out.  

If we truly believe that it is only the spiritual that matters we will neglect the physical needs of others.  Remarkably we would rarely deny ourselves a coffee at <insert regional coffee and/or donut giant> while we espouse the vulgarity of physical things. We would only ever live in an apartment/house with air condition and adequate plumbing while we preach that the physical things don’t matter.  We absolutely lack the courage of our convictions on this point at least insofar as we are pampered Americans.  But I think it is because we really don’t believe it.  Somewhere deep inside we know it isn’t true.  

The trendy and trite thinking of my early twenties was, “We are not physical beings on a spiritual journey.  We are Spiritual beings on a physical journey.”  I contend, given Genesis, that we are not one or the other.  The Maker made us both and to live in both.  

When I think back to my post on humans as God’s “idols” I find that we are the bridge between both realms.  What is a miracle except the spiritual reaching down into the physical to bring order and blessing?  We are in an “in-between” space by design.  We fill a gap that was intentionally left by the Creator.  

So, what does this have to do with my declaration that Heaven is not the end?  In a word, everything.

In ancient Jewish culture there was an understanding that there was a place of punishment and a place of reward after death.  There was Gehenna and Paradise, or alternatively called Abraham’s Bosom.  There were debates before even Jesus’ time about whether or not that was the end.  Was there a resurrection or not?  Scriptures seemed to suggest that there was, but depending on whether you accepted the whole of Jewish scripture or simply the Five Books of Moses you either believed or you didn’t.  Moses never mentions any resurrection of the body.  Only the prophets and some of the wisdom literature do, and so we find that “denominationalism” wasn’t a rare thing even before Jesus established the church.  

For Christians, we find the scriptures far to replete with the idea that if Christ was raised then we shall be raised.  “The dead in Christ shall rise first” according to I Thessalonians. Not all will sleep but all will be changed, or so we find in I Corinthians 15.  The perishable putting on imperishable.  When Jesus returns we will once again be body and spirit united.  This is unquestionably so if one believes the scriptures to be truth.  

Where things become murky and “through a glass darkly” is exactly what happens when we die.  Do we, as Paul declares, have it appointed to us once to die and then the judgement?  Well, the judgement comes later than our death.  So, are we asleep until the day of judgement?  But to “be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”  These are the things I am in process on at the moment and will continue to be for many years to come.  But I’m dancing in the fact that, though it makes no sense to me now, the LORD is such a good God that one day it will make sense, and what a day of celebration and joy that will be.

Regardless, the scene before the Great White Throne of Judgement will be us standing not in spirit alone, but in body and spirit reunited.  The description of the rapture proves this to be so.  Afterwards, God will metaphorically crack His divine knuckles, wink and tell us, “You ain’t seen nothing yet, kids.  Let me show you what your Father can really do.” In a moment the Heaven and Earth will be destroyed and a new Heaven and Earth created.  “Behold, I make all things new.”  The New Jerusalem comes down to the New Earth and God’s Kingdom is established on a perfect Earth.  Eden happens again.  Creation springs anew.  The old has passed away and the new has come.  Man, a physical and spiritual being by design, returns to the divine relationship as originally intended.

And what happens in the city?  Certainly there is worship.  Certainly there is joy.  Certainly there will be no darkness, no pain, no evil, no night, no disease.  But is that the extent of it?  

I’ve always believed that it is almost an insult to think that such a creative God would only have cloud sitting and harp playing for us, or lounging around on clouds and sight seeing.  Have you even met humans?  We are born explorers, cultivators, creators, adventurers, artists, lovers, and storytellers.  To think that heaven will be satisfactory but kinda  one-note or bland is to pretend like we aren’t those things.  As if God didn’t build these things into our very DNA.

The one thing I keep coming back to is that work was not a part of the curse after the fall.  Even in the Edenic ideal, man had a job to do.  

Naked gardening.  

Some might balk at the idea of any work in what we think will be paradise.  But imagine that you are doing the very work you were literally created to do for all eternity; what you were actually divinely appointed to do from before the foundation of the earth with no doubt or equivocation or wondering if you were in His will for you.  Would that be “work”?  Drudgery?  Even now, do we best worship God with words or actions?  Why else the perfecting on this side through difficulty and trial if we are not going to “flex” our newly gained muscles in the life to come?  

Paul might hint at this reality of work to do when he tells a church, “Do you not know that we will judge angels?”.  At least that will be asked of us beyond simply casting crowns, singing praises and engaging in adoration.  

Ultimately, do I know that this is true?  I only have hints and a gut feeling.  That gut feeling says that everything we endure here will have a purpose in the world to come, that all our experiences and purification will come to bear on our experience in the future world beyond the grave and beyond the judgement.  If it is, in fact, all hymns and glorifying God then I’m certain I’ll be fine.  I’ve long theorized that the reason man cannot see God and live is because our souls are so in love with Him that we would happily abandon our bodies to follow after Him.  There is completeness in simply the beauty and wonder of Him.  

However, when I see a husband with his wife, he doesn’t just want to be praised.  He wants to see things and do things with her.  When I see a father with his children, he doesn’t just want their respect.  He wants to play, to toss around the baseball, to build forts, to teach them how to do basic car maintenance.  

As a result, I imagine that a God who wants to know us and be known by us, who wanted desperately to give the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel directly, who called Abraham to a journey of adventure, who couldn’t seem to help showing up throughout all history to kindle the hearts of men and women into action…. I just have a feeling that it is in keeping with God’s character to do more than sit there and be praised for all eternity.  He gave Adam work to do, and visited them in the cool of the evening.  And I don’t doubt He wants Eden all over again but on a scale of millions.

(If you’ve made it this far, I want to thank you for reading at all.  You are officially awesome in my book.  If this piece has pleased you, made you think, or even made you angry and you vehemently disagree, please consider commenting, liking, sharing, subscribing.  I love above all else the interaction that can happen in blogs where “iron sharpens iron”.  Shalom.)