My wife already commented on this, but I think I need to as well, because it’s disturbing me more and more the longer my backbrain has to chew on it: “Heaven Is An Amusement Park That Never Closes.” It’s the latest thing up on Strange Maps (which is a great blog, if you’re a map geek like Sara and I are), and it’s both brilliant and sick. The brainchild of a California comic artist named Malachi Ward, it certainly does a brilliant job of capturing the vague cultural idea of what “heaven” is like, to the extent that it gets beyond clouds and harps and pearly gates; in the process, it also shows just how sick that idea really is.Of course, I could be taken to be biased on this point, since, as I’ve posted before, I firmly disbelieve in the whole popular idea of “heaven”—but I don’t think so. Rather, I think any notion of what God has for those who believe in him that a) makes any sense in earthly terms and/or b) makes any sense apart from the overflowing light and presence of the Triune God, God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is theologically appalling. I think any such idea of heaven both distorts and impoverishes our faith—even the best-intentioned versions. As for cultural ideas like the one Malachi Ward so powerfully captures (and satirizes? I hope): may the God of all truth deliver us from such poisonous rubbish.
I laugh, whenever God says (paraphrased), “You cannot possibly imagine what it’s gonna be like!” And then someone writes a book on it.
Or my pesonal favorite, “No one knows the hour” of Christ’s return but people think that they can predict it anyway???
When people want to engage me in such conversations, I just shrug and say, “I dunno, such things are too great for me!”
My seven year old daughter has been asking me questions about heaven and such. I realized that I was at a loss for words.
Rob – what would you tell a seven year old about where we go when we die and after Jesus returns.
Tyler – I like your big pink truck!
Basically when our seven-year-old has asked, I’ve told her that when Jesus comes again, he’s going to destroy everything that’s evil once and for all, and the whole world will be remade new, the way it ought to be–the best we could possibly imagine, only much, much better. I’ve told her that when Jesus comes again, he’s going to raise all his people from the dead–in bodies which will also be remade new, the way they ought to be–and we’ll all be together with him then, those of us who have died and those of us who haven’t. I believe when we die, the next thing we see is the face of Jesus, raising us back to life; from there, it’s “further up and further in.”
Does that help? I may need to post more on this.
Please do post more on it. I am almost done reading through the bible in a year and am on Revelation. I realize that I am more in the dark now about heaven than ever because the bible doesn’t really say that much about it. So where did we get all those ideas from?
So are you saying that you think dead people are dormant until Jesus returns and that we don’t actually go to heaven until then? Wow!! That’s eye opening. Please expand on that.
Also, what happens to unbelievers after they die?
On a side note here’s a funny story. A couple of years ago my daughter, then 5, told my husband, who’s not a believer – “Daddy if you ask Jesus in your heart he will get a nice room for you in heaven”.
Dormant? Not exactly, although that was essentially Luther’s language–he called it “soul sleep.” The thing is, I don’t believe our souls are separate from our bodies, or immortal in and of themselves; I believe we exist as whole beings, body and spirit together, indivisible. I believe we die in this world, and in that moment Jesus raises us to life again in the world to come. Call it time travel, perhaps, or tessering; think of it maybe as stepping out of the pages of a book into the life of the Author of the story, because I believe God stands outside our timestream in the same way as human authors stand outside the timestream of the stories they write; but I do believe that in some sense, the moment of death and the moment of resurrection are the same moment (and not merely as a matter of the perception of those who die). But yes, I do believe we all arrive in the kingdom of God together.
As for unbelievers after they die: I believe that God allows them finally to reject him, death ratifying the choice made in life. I would like to believe that in the end, Hell will be empty of people–that for human souls, it will prove in the end to be nothing more than Purgatory–but I don’t see the evidence for that, either in Scripture or in human experience. I wish I could . . . but in the last analysis, I think C. S. Lewis got it right: a lot of folks just don’t want God for eternity.
Where did all those ideas come from? Lots of places, driven by the natural human desire to imagine the unimaginable. I see the irony Tyler Dawn’s talking about, but I see the reason why we keep doing it, too.
In the end, I guess I come down the same place as Abraham: I trust that the judge of all the earth will do right, and that whatever is best is what will be.
And your daughter sounds like a delightful little girl. 🙂