The assumption is that I am asking directions from Napa, CA to Stockton. But what if I am traveling from Monterey Bay? Or Lake Tahoe? Or Yosemite? Even then, you would want to know exactly where the journey begins before you can even think of giving a helpful answer.
Where we begin makes all the difference. Even (or especially) when it comes to our faith.
To think that we have just come up with an idea of heaven all by ourselves is about as arrogant and uninformed as possible. The truth is that even if we claim to have a biblical foundation for our concept of heaven, that still doesn’t do much for us, because the understanding of afterlife shifted through the centuries, based on some direct revelation from God, great dialogue around the campfire, views from the surrounding cultures, and new discoveries. So, even as we may claim to have a biblical view of the world, we need to be aware that different phases of the Bible’s history reveal differing views of the world! In this series, I intend to uncover what various biblical writers thought about death and what comes next, and what influenced their belief. But before I share some of the insights from my digging, I need you to dig a bit…
What do you think heaven is like? Who is there? Who isn’t there? What is there? What isn’t there?
Why does death exist? Why do people die? Why do people die “before their time”? Jewish thought on death was that as mortal beings, we humans die. When we die, the animating breath of God returns to God, and that’s it. The goal for living is to live as long and successfully as possible, to leave behind a legacy of children, and to die with dignity (which included a proper burial. So, for most, death is normal and natural – it just is. But what about people whose lives have been cut sort? Or who leave no offspring (especially male) to carry forth the family line? Or upon death, no proper burial? How does a person reconcile that? In antiquity, it was believed that such things were signs of God’s judgment. For the most part, our ancient Jewish ancestors in faith didn’t think of literal physical death as much as they did a more metaphorical death. Being estranged from God, or from the land God has given them, or from cultic practices constituted an experiential death while remaining physically alive.
Other cultures, however, believed differently. Recall that Judaism set themselves in part by their monotheism –they believed there to be only one God – while nearly every other culture around them were polytheistic. Other cultures believed that the gods were responsible for the death of human beings, sometimes with little or no regard for whether or not a person’s life should end based on any action (or inaction) on the part of the human. Humans were unimportant pawns to be tolerated and toyed with – nothing like the view from Israel which believed human beings to be God’s crowing achievement in creation because we are made in God’s likeness.
Ancient Jews believed that when a person died, they went to Sheol – the place of the dead, underneath the ground. This dark and dusty place is where all dead people reside, with no semblance of their former lives, and no communication with God. The inhabitants are mere shadows or shades of their former selves, and stay that way. It was not viewed as a place of torment or judgment. It was, as we might think, the grave. Furthermore, there were two stories of persons who avoided death – Enoch and Elijah – both due to their righteousness. They ascended to heaven, escaping Sheol. Three resurrection stories also appear in the Old Testament, but they are more about healing and the power of God over death than a statement about things to come.
Other cultures had a different view, however. Hades – the Greek counterpart to Sheol – was an expansive underworld space where the dead were not fully dead yet, and needed to be sustained by their family lest they die completely. When the dead were buried or entombed, provisions were made to enable family members to deliver food and drink through a shaft to keep them going. Sometimes Jewish folks picked up on the rituals and integrated them into their way of believing. It was common enough that it received condemnation from a prophet or two, and rules were set in place to separate men and women during times of honoring the dead as drunkenness was common, which had a way of leading to some inappropriate and unfortunate behavior…
All of this is interesting – to me, at least. But there may be more important questions about heaven than simply what did the ancients think.
Why do we want heaven to exist? Have you ever asked yourself that question?
My guess is your answer be be along the following lines:
- We want to know that it’s not over when this life is over.
- We want to be rewarded for being faithful.
- We want other to receive their punishment: the Hitlers of the world, pedophiles, Dodger fans, etc.
- We want peace.
- We want to reunite with loved ones who have gone before us.
- We want to know God fully.
- We want to be able to express gratitude to God for everything.
The reason I wonder why we want heaven is because our ancestors in the faith didn’t really formalize their thoughts on heaven until they had really been given a major kick in the gut. Judaism was being Hellenized – giving the Greek treatment – which was anathema to the Jews. They tried to revolt, and enjoyed a brief season of victory. But then they were squashed once more. They realized that they weren’t going to see God resurrect the nation of Israel in their lifetime, so they began hoping that God would save the faithful in the afterlife, and mete out justice toward the enemies of the Jews then and there as well. The reality is that we don’t see much thought about heaven until approximately 150 years before Jesus was born. Desperation gave way to heavenly hope.
So, I wonder, do we hope for heaven because of our sense of struggle, anguish and failure here and now?
And, on the darker side of things, could our hopes – especially when it comes to our version of justice – give us motive to nurture hatred now toward perceived enemies of God?
Here’s what I mean. If we are just sure that gay people and the people who stand up for gay rights in our nation are enemies of God, and we are waiting for them to get theirs when death comes, could it be that we might then justify ungraceful behavior toward them in the meantime? Pick your own group here. Maybe for you its drug dealers, or adulterers, or greedy corporate CEO’s, or politicians, or Muslims, or Dodger fans. Some day, they’ll get theirs. Until then, we’ll keep the fires burning. We will justify our hatred with heaven itself, and draw strength from our future hope as well. Coming to grips with our motive for wanting heaven is critical for our life experience now, and our hope to come. Like knowing where you are starting from en route to Stockton is important, so is knowing your motive for wanting heaven after death.
Me and adulterers. Time for telling an ugly story on myself. I used to think that adulterous men should be castrated. I know – pretty graceful. But then I read a book on marriage that opened my eyes. There are some men (and women) who are predators, looking to hook up to address whatever pain is going on beneath their surface. For the most part, though, people cheat not because they are villains, but because they are hurting. Once I realized this, my eyes changed. Adultery is still awful stuff, causing pain that is long lasting and often devastating to a marriage. But how do I condemn someone who is acting out of their pain? I wonder, if we could see the pain of people that caused their weirdness, would it change everything? Would we be immediately more understanding and graceful? I think so.
The reality, however, is that we will have as much to be forgiven as those we love to hate. We just can’t see it. We will all be shocked about how wrong we are, and how immense God really is. So, until we find ourselves face to face with God, I say we are better off living justly, loving mercy, and waling humbly with God (Micah 6:8). Looks a lot like Jesus to me, which is who I want to be.
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