Last fall, I heard James Paul, the director of L’Abri Fellowship in the UK, speak at an online conference. In his lecture, he mentioned a few points from his book, What On Earth Is Heaven?. I knew immediately I wanted to buy it. It was on back order most of the year, but I was finally able to read it this summer.
He talks about how he reached a point in his faith when, though he was a Christ follower, he did not want to go to heaven. This lack of desire mainly came from the fact that he didn’t know much about it and what he thought he knew sounded…pleasant but a little bland. He began to study what the Bible had to say about heaven and this book is a result of his study.
What Were We Made For?
Despite the clichés we throw around, people weren’t made for heaven. They were made for earth, a perfect earth. God made the earth to be good and He gave Adam and Eve work to do here. Their work was to multiply, fill the earth, have dominion, name the animals, tend the earth, etc. (Genesis 1:28-29, 2:15,20). When God made the garden of Eden, in which he placed Adam and Eve, it was an example of paradise, a lavish gift from God of beauty and enjoyment. James Paul suggests that perhaps this extreme beauty was concentrated in Eden only. Perhaps the rest of the earth was something of a blank canvas, though not fallen or broken (Genesis 2:5-10). Maybe Adam and Eve’s work was for them and their children to fill the earth with beauty (not just to populate it), using the garden God planted as their inspiration and example. They had a huge creative task ahead of them, cultivation, animal husbandry, architecture, development of civilization, etc.
This plan was interrupted when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were punished for their sin. They were separated from God, they faced death, and they were driven out of the perfect, beautiful garden God had planted (Genesis 3:17,23-24). Now the canvas of the earth was not neutral, it was hostile. It was no longer primed to be transformed and developed to God’s glory. Now it yielded thorns, resisting care.
The Dividing Line
Some people (and some religions) see what is physical or of the earth as bad or sinful while what is spiritual as good and heavenly. This is not a Christian belief. As James Paul shares, the real dividing line is not between physical and spiritual, religious and secular, good people and bad people, us and them. “It is a dualism that runs through every human activity, because it runs through the centre of every human heart.” The human will (and how it submits to or resists God’s will) is what determines what is good and bad.
Christianity is a very physical religion. Our whole faith hinges on a body dying and coming to life again, physically not just spiritually (1 Corinthians 15:12-14). Because God came physically, and His physical body died and was raised, we have hope that our physical bodies will also be raised with Him. As with our bodies, the physical earth will be destroyed but also resurrected, renewed. God’s plan has always been for redemption and restoration of the earth. The earth is our intended home. What about heaven then?
Heaven on Earth
Heaven seems to be where God is and where His will is done. When God wanted a relationship with His people, He brought heaven down to us instead of drawing people away from earth. When we obey God’s will, we have a hand in bringing heaven to earth because we are imitating God. This reminds us of the prayer Jesus taught to His disciples to pray. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Obedience to God now allows glimpses of heaven, but we will not fully know heaven until that day when all is made right. On that day, there will be heaven on earth in the truest sense.
So, what will heaven (or the new earth) be like? Is there still a fear of a blandness or merely spiritual existence? There shouldn’t be. It would be in keeping with the Bible to assume that all the good things of earth will be replicated and expanded in heaven/new earth. As James Paul says, “In the end we will find that we do not love heaven because it contains the things of this life, but that we loved this life because it has contained the things of heaven.”
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
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