Does Heaven matter?

Take a moment and imagine life after death. How do you see the place and those around you?  I doubt you had to work very hard to conjure up a few images. Most of us have indulged in a fantasy or two about Heaven.

Hold on to those heavenly thoughts for a moment or two.

Virtually all the people that claim to believe in God also claim to believe in life in after life. At the heart of many religious traditions is that Heaven is the prize for believing in God. That makes Heaven the linchpin in making sense of these various religious traditions - a very big freaking deal.

There is a growing movement among biblical scholars to question popularly held views about Heaven and the afterlife. The latest book by theologian N. T. Wright (“How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels") debunks many pie-in-the-sky misconceptions about life after death. During in interview published in the Washington Post, Wright makes clear that many Christians have the wrong idea.

“An awful lot of ordinary church-going Christians are simply millions of miles away from understanding any of this.

Wright and fellow theologian Christopher Morse have independently written recent books about what the Jews of the first century and the first followers of Christ thought about Heaven.

“It’s the recovery of the Jewish basis of the Gospels that enables us to say this,” Wright said. “We are so fortunate in this generation that we understand more about first-century Judaism than Christian scholarship has for a very long time. And when you do that, you realize just how much was forgotten quite soon in the early church, certainly in the first three or four centuries.”

Heaven matters as the promise made in John 3:16. In Wright's words, Jesus was given to us “so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God’s new age.” Heaven is that new age.

I have no reason to doubt the scholarship of Wright and Morse. If their previous work is any gauge, then they paint a much clearer picture of Heaven though the eyes of the early followers of Jesus. I only wish they had taken the discussion one step further.

All conceptions about Heaven have one thing in common - they are all wrong. Even the most fertile imagination cannot picture life after our earthly existence. It is beyond anything we can comprehend. There is simply no basis in our experience to picture any of it. Every attempt to flesh out Heaven falls short, even that of the early followers of Jesus.

Jesus understood Heaven but never spent much time talking about it. My guess is that he knew that no matter how he tried to explain the afterlife, it was never going to get through our thick skulls.

Instead, Jesus focused on how we should live this life. Rather than dwell on heaven, you are just going to have trust God enough to believe that it will be worth your while to live as Jesus described. In a word, you are to love. Without exception. Love family, friends, strangers, even enemies. And love means more than just not hurting others, the traditional definition of sin in the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament). It means that it is also a sin to neglect the suffering of others even when that suffering was not your fault. It means mercy and forgiveness rather than rushing to judgment. It means revenge is left to the Lord. It means sincerity in worship matters more than stale rituals. Believe in Jesus enough to do these things and you will be welcomed into the paradise to come.

The real trouble with dwelling on heaven is that is nothing but navel gazing. It is counting the angels on the head of a pin. Jesus said you have work to do. You have to be an effective witness for God's love. Consult the Sermon on the Mount for pointers on how to do that.

And if you want hear God laugh, then fantasize about Heaven as a gated community with you in one of the biggest McMansions. Fantasize about God loving you more than others so you are even spared death and suffering. The whole Rapture Ready nonsense has God laughing out loud. If you want to be first in the Kingdom of Heaven, you better put yourself last in your earthly coil (Matthew 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30). My God, some people are clueless.

Thoughts of the afterlife are a source of comfort when you imagine your loved ones in paradise. It is perfectly understandable. Thoughts of the afterlife with you in paradise and your enemies roasting in the flames of Hell are a sure sign you still have spiritual work to do. You just flunked Forgiveness 101.

It is not what you understand about heaven that matters. The real spiritual gold is in what you understand about how to love others. That is the only real test.