We slipped. We've all done it - just said the wrong thing at the wrong time. The other night while we were putting Nate to bed he asked a TOUGH question, to which we replied, "you'll have to ask God when you get to heaven"... A reasonable enough response.
"I DON'T WANT TO GO TO HEAVEN!!!"
"I WANT TO BE HERE WITH YOU!!!"
I wonder if we ever really get over that response to our own death.
Nate knew that "heaven" was the place people went after they "died" - a concept about which he knew very little except for the fact that when someone "died" and went to "heaven" he NEVER got to see, touch, talk to, cuddle, wrestle, or laugh with them again. This "heaven" was becoming the place where our loved-ones went so that we couldn't be near them again. To a 4 year old, "you'll see them one day" doesn't hold a lot of meaning...
But WE grown-ups know better, right?
What is heaven? What happens to us after we die? We know as Christians that we have the same hope that saved Jesus from a sealed tomb, but I think our models and metaphors for what that might look like are really quite inadequate, unimaginative, and often-times unbiblical.
The only time most of us ever think about "heaven" is after a friend or family member has died and we're at the funeral. Trying to cope, various people will stand at the microphone and either claim that their friend is looking down on us, or has become an angel, or is in a better place. Where do we get these ideas? Are they biblical?
The short answer is yes. And no.
The Bible does promise us that for those of us who are "in Christ" there is a hope. Those who have departed are not, as we fear so deeply, just simply gone.
For followers of Jesus, we know that we will share in His resurrection at the end of the age. But the end of the age isn't here yet, so what happens to us if we die between now and then?
The NT concept is that we are "asleep" in the Lord.
The British Priest and Physicist John Polkinghorne says that in this sleep we are conscious and cared for, but we are not yet fully and bodily resurrected. One way to look at it is that our software (our thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories - everything that makes us, us!) is downloaded onto God's harddrive until our hardware (the physical body) is renewed. After our bodies have been transformed, our "software" is then downloaded and we are - for the first time - whole.
So what we REALLY are looking forward to is not "life after death" - the state of sleep described above, but instead "life after life after death" - in which our bodies will be resurrected and transformed without the effects of sin and decay. We will be as Jesus was after his body passed through the grave clothes - remember, the wrappings were empty - it wasn't his soul that was resurrected, it was ALL of him.
We will be, like Jesus, the same, yet different.
And when we become like Jesus, God will bring heaven and Earth together in the act of new creation. War will end. Poverty will end. I won't be able to manipulate you to get what I want any more. God will save and transform everything, and we get to be a part of that "new creation" NOW, as we follow Jesus. Wow.
Unfortunately, I can't explain all this to Nate yet. I'll just tell him that heaven is a happy place where we will be together and where we'll be even closer to God. But I can't wait to one day tell him the whole story...
I owe almost all of these ideas to Polkinghorne, NT Wright, and Dr. Nancey Murphy.
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2 comments:
There's another way to look at the time thing as well (the main idea comes mostly from Tony Campolo from a Youth Specialties lecture)...
Remember our discussion on Easter Sunday about time? God's time is outside the linear human time. To God, past-present-future are all one thing... the "eternal now." Creation, fall, crucifixion, resurrection, return... all "now" to God.
In the Magician's Nephew (C.S. Lewis) the Lion Aslan (Jesus metaphor) tells Lucy he will be with her again soon, and she responds, "But Aslan, what do you call soon?" "My child, I call ALL TIME soon."
Campolo's argument was that both views of life after death can be correct. If we are pulled out of linear time, and into God's time, the Resurrection of Christ, the death of a person, and the resurrection of that person's body, are all the same time.
From my earthly perspective, the death of a friend means he "sleeps" until we are reunited in either my death or Christ's return and the resurrection of both our bodies.
But from the perspective of the friend who died, there is immediate resurrection because he is outside linear time; instantly in the resurrection and witnessing our reunion.
30 years may pass for me (before I die), but those two moments in time (my friend's death and mine) are instantaneous.
Of course, I presume that, in God's time, my friend experiences (or can experience) all other points in linear time, and thus may be aware of what will/is/has transpire(ing/ed) for me in my remaining 30 years of life. Hence the "looking down on me" concept.
Thus, with a view of both T1 and T3 (or some Tx, I forget which is which; maybe the topic for the next blog???), in other words, with a view from both God's time and our time, each notion of life-after-death can be somewhat correct. We do sleep, we do instantly meet God, we do "look down" upon our loved ones still alive.
Of course, we could be over analyzing it, and it could all be bunk and we could just sit around in the "green room" for thousands of years waiting for the commercial break to end and for Jesus to begin the second half of the show (second comming). I hope the finger snacks are good.
"My child, I call ALL TIME soon."
Exactly.
C.S. Lewis put it really well. Thanks for bringing this up Scotty. To God, EVERYDAY is today. We are still being created, we are eating forbidden fruit, we are crucifying Jesus, we are witnessing his resurrection, we are putting our fingers in his wounds, we are dying, and we are being resurrected. So for us, once we are "dead" and our bodies are in the ground, we will not be waiting for anything. We will be in God's time, not our own. The timeline that Polkinghorne put together is helpful for us to address our current questions, but God is outside of our space and time, and when we are with Him in the age to come, we will be also...
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