The Myth That Our Hope Lies in Heaven

The question stares me in the face like a flashing neon light:

“Do you know, if you were to die today, you’d go to Heaven?”

It’s a question designed to have shock value, because it carries with it a negative, contrasting implication. If you aren’t confident in your answer, then you might be bound for Hell.

As a young Christian some 40 years ago, I was taught to ask people that question.

My intentions then were—as were the intentions of those who trained me—noble and, frankly, oriented toward God’s Kingdom purposes. The task at hand was to “share the Gospel with people who don’t know Jesus.”

I was trained early on in my Christian life to believe that “sharing the Gospel” is the number one role of one who follows Jesus. I imagine this primarily comes from the last words Jesus spoke before he ascended into heaven following his Resurrection:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”—Matthew 28:19–20

Today, I would argue that—as a Christian—the main thing is what Jesus said was the main thing: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

But that isn't the main point I want to make in this essay. Instead, I’m challenging the benefit of even asking the question I posed:

Do you know, if you were to die today, that you would go to Heaven?

If we believe this is the most important question to ask someone—and that by asking it I am carrying out my most important role as a believer in Jesus Christ—I had better know that it is a good question to ask.

That it’s the right question to ask.

But what if this question relies on assumptions that are questionable at best and, at worst, may actually distort the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Before you decide I’ve become a heretic, let me explain.

I’m not suggesting that Heaven isn’t real. I’m suggesting that we may have mistaken Heaven for the destination of the Christian story when the Bible tells a considerably bigger story.

What Is the Gospel?

Before I go any further with an argument that has probably already gotten me in trouble with some of you, it might be helpful to catch up any readers who are unfamiliar with the term “Gospel.”

Gospel literally means “Good News.” The English word comes from the Old English godspel—“good news” or “good story/message”—used to translate the Greek euangelion, meaning good news or glad tidings.

But what exactly is this Good News?

I grew up understanding the answer as something like this: God has secured for us the forgiveness of our sins and, with it, eternal life. It is God’s undeserved gift to us by grace. As Paul writes in Ephesians, salvation is “by grace…through faith,” and is not something we earn for ourselves.

And that is, indeed, good news. But I’ve come to believe that it is part of a considerably larger Good News.

Mark begins his account of Jesus’ ministry this way:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”—Mark 1:15

The Good News isn't merely that someday we can leave this world and go somewhere else. The good news is that the Kingdom of God has come near.

Something is happening here. Something is happening now.

And that raises a question for me: If Jesus announced the arrival of God's Kingdom, how did so much of Christianity come to understand the Gospel primarily as the answer to the question, Where will I go when I die?

Heaven Over There, Someday

This is where I think the myth begins. We have a tendency to create a false dualism that places our hope and our focus in another place and another time.

To say it more plainly:

Heaven is there.

Heaven is later.

And we are stuck here, waiting.

Christianity has encountered this kind of dualistic thinking before. Various forms of Gnosticism in the early centuries treated the material world as inferior to the spiritual. It was believed that the human soul needed to escape the material world.

But the Bible teaches something very different. God creates a physical world—and calls it good. God creates human beings with bodies—and calls them very good.

And when God enters creation in the person of Jesus, he comes in human flesh, not as some disembodied spirit.

The Christian hope ultimately is not the abandonment of creation. It is its renewal.

The theologian N. T. Wright has written extensively about this distinction. He argues that popular Christianity has often confused the biblical hope of resurrection and new creation with the idea of simply “going to heaven when you die.” The New Testament's ultimate vision, Wright argues, is not human beings escaping the earth, but God renewing creation—what Scripture calls “a new heaven and a new earth.”

That distinction matters.

Because if this world is simply a waiting room for eternity, then what happens in the waiting room can begin to seem secondary. But if God intends to redeem creation rather than abandon it, then what happens here matters enormously.

What Time Is It?

One of my favorite concepts in all of Christendom is the perspective on time that the Bible provides. In biblical Greek—the New Testament was written almost entirely in the common Greek of its day—we encounter different ways of speaking about time.

One is chronos, from which we get the word chronology. It describes time in sequence: yesterday, today, tomorrow; 8:00, 9:00, 10:00; this year, next year.

Chronos asks: What time is it?

But another important Greek word is kairos. It refers to an appropriate, appointed or decisive time—a moment in which something significant is happening. Kairos asks a different question: What is happening in this moment—and what does this moment ask of me?

It’s the word Mark uses when he records Jesus saying:

“The time (kairos) is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.”

Jesus isn't saying that chronological time has stopped. He's saying: An important moment has arrived. Something God has promised is happening now. Pay attention! Respond!

Somewhere along the way I learned to call certain experiences in my own life “kairos moments.” Have you ever had what you might call a mountaintop experience—a moment when your ordinary awareness of time seemed to fade and something profoundly touched you?

In those moments, the distance between Heaven and Earth can seem razor thin. But perhaps I've even been thinking about that backward. Maybe Heaven doesn't suddenly move closer in those moments. Maybe we simply become more aware of how close Heaven has been—all along.

After all, Jesus taught us to pray:

“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

Not take us from Earth so that we can finally experience Heaven. On Earth as it is in Heaven.

Which Direction Is Everything Moving?

Perhaps nowhere is our understanding of Heaven more dramatically turned upside down—literally—than at the end of the Bible. We may instinctively picture the Christian story ending with us going up—that Earth is below; Heaven is above. We die, or Jesus returns, and God's people finally leave this broken world behind.

But look carefully at the picture John gives us near the end of Revelation.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”—Revelation 21:1–2

Coming down.

The movement isn't ultimately humanity escaping creation for Heaven. Heaven and Earth are being brought together.

And then comes one of the most beautiful declarations in Scripture:

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them.”

God does not give up on creation. God comes to dwell within it. And the one seated on the throne declares:

“See, I am making all things new.”

Not: I am making all new things, but I am making all things new.

That is a very different picture of Christian hope than the one I grew up with.

Why This Matters Here and Now

And this is where a theological argument about Heaven begins to have very earthly consequences. If God's answer to a broken world is renewal rather than escape, then faithful Christians cannot make escape our answer either.

Last week I wrote about another myth: “It’s always been that way.” That myth whispers that the problems around us are too large, too old and too entrenched to change. Why bother?

This myth whispers something slightly different: “This world isn't our real home anyway.” Again, Why bother?

Different myths. Same temptation. Same result: Resignation.

If this world is merely the waiting room for eternity, repairing it will always seem optional. But if Jesus really taught us to pray for God's Kingdom to come here—for God's will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven—then the broken places around us aren't distractions from the Gospel; they may precisely be the places where followers of Jesus are invited in to participate in his kingdom living.

Feeding someone who is hungry.

Welcoming someone who is lonely.

Getting to know—and showing care—to someone who has been pushed aside.

Fighting to repair an unjust system.

Reconciling people who have become enemies.

Working hard to build strong communities in which people flourish.

We aren't building Heaven ourselves. We are invited to partner with God as he does it. By his grace we can participate and experience what he is doing—little bits and pieces of Heaven and Earth touching one another.

Which brings me back to that question I was taught to ask 40 years ago:

“Do you know, if you were to die today, you’d go to Heaven?”

I understand why we asked it, but today I'm increasingly interested in another question:

If God's Kingdom really has come near, what does that ask of me while I'm still here?

Maybe the danger in placing all our hope in Heaven isn't that we believe too much in Heaven. Maybe it's that we believe too little in what God intends to do with Earth.

And perhaps Christian hope isn't primarily about waiting to go somewhere else. Perhaps it is learning to recognize—and participate in—what God is already doing here.

QUESTIONS FOR THE PILGRIM

What changes about the way we live today if our Christian hope isn't escape from the world, but its renewal?

And what might change about the way we treat our neighbor?

THIS WEEK

Look for one broken place close to you. Not a problem you can complain about.

One you can touch.

Then do one small thing to make that little corner of the world look a little more like Heaven.

---

If these conversations help you think more deeply about faith and citizenship, I’d love to have you join me each Friday. Click here to subscribe.