Imagining Heaven

 

And now the good news. 

After several chapters of what we can only call apocalyptic horror, the writer of Revelation promises all will be well.

See, the home of God is among mortals.
God will dwell with them;
They will be God’s peoples,
And God will be with them;

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more.
Mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
For the first things have passed away. 

(Revelation 21:3-4)

John of Patmos describes visions of a new heaven and a new earth. He sees heaven as a stunningly transformed Jerusalem, radiating like crystal, gates of pearl measured by a rod of gold and adorned with precious jewels. He sees a river of life’s pure waters flowing from the center of the city, with a tree of life on either side of the river’s banks.

The reference to the tree of life is an obvious reference to Eden’s tree of the knowledge of good and evil which led to the fall of humankind. The gold walls and pearly gates are the inspiration for every clichéd movie, television show, or cartoon of heaven you’ve ever seen.

Some time ago I tried my hand at cartooning heaven and it occurred to me that a place made entirely of gold and pearls, as dazzling as it might be, would be fiscally improbable. I drew our two little dogs into the panel and visualized them saying, “When everything is made of gold, gold is worth dog poop.” 

My concept of heaven, then and now, is that it will be the place where all our earthly dreams are fulfilled. There, as we bask in God’s glory and walk with Jesus, we will be reunited with loved ones. We will be young and good looking. And we will interact with our heavenly heroes.

This latter notion was inspired by the late, great historian Catherine Drinker Bowen, the author of Miracle at Philadelphia, a record of the first constitutional convention.

I interviewed Bowen in 1971 and asked her about Miracle, which is one of my favorite books.

She said she became obsessed with George Washington, who presided over the constitutional convention. Did he speak with an English accent? Did he speak with the aristocratic cadences of a Virginia planter? Did he ever raise his voice? Was he a baritone or tenor? 

“I was crazy to know how that man talked,” Bowen said.

When she died two years later, the first thought I had was, now she knows how that man talked.

I have clung to this rather improbable concept of heaven. I like to think that, on the other side, I will join a press conference with my idol John F. Kennedy and ask him penetrating questions: Did you feel misled by the CIA when you authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion? Do you commiserate with Lee Harvey Oswald in heaven or was your assassination a CIA plot? Do you still hang with Marilyn? How did your father get so rich? And how come we never see him up here?

What is your concept of heaven?

Jesus talked of heaven as “many mansions,” a concrete enough image. And he promised to prepare a place for us.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great promoters of Christian faith, spent most of his life imagining heaven. He wrote a seven-volume series of children’s books called The Chronicles of Narnia, about a magical fantasy realm that includes a Lion named Aslan, a maned Jesus metaphor who sacrifices himself for others.

In Paradiso, written in the early 14th century, Dante imagines heaven as nine spheres corresponding to the nine known planets. The first sphere is earthly paradise and the ninth is the Primum Mobile, the sphere of the angels.

But long before writers and poets put ideas of heaven on paper, humans faced their mortality by imagining the life to come.

If you Google “life after death,” the Internet reveals a wide range of primeval ideas.

Ancient Egyptians believed they would keep living in an underworld that would look very much like their life above. 

In Native American cultures, ideas about life after death vary from tribe to tribe.

Pueblo Indians saw the afterlife as traveling to a new village where they would join friends and relatives who died before them.

In commenting about Pueblo Indian resistance to Christianity, anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons, in her book Pueblo Indian Religion, writes: “The Pueblo idea of life after death as merely a continuation of this life is incompatible with dogmas of hell and heaven. In this life the Spirits do not reward or punish; why should they after death?” 

Buddhists believe in reincarnation, a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. Through karma and eventual enlightenment, they hope to escape samsara and achieve nirvana, an end to suffering. 

You may well remember Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the author of On Death and Dying, who described the five stages of reaction when we realize we are going to die: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

Wikipedia reports that In the late 1970s, Kübler-Ross, after interviewing thousands of patients who had died and been resuscitated, she became interested in out-of-body experiences, mediumship, spiritualism, and other ways of attempting to contact the dead. 

Kübler-Ross also dealt with the phenomenon of near-death experiences. She was also an advocate for spiritual guides and afterlife, serving on the Advisory Board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) Kübler-Ross reported her interviews with the dying for the first time in her book, On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families (1969.

In the 1980s a conservative seminary professor and I were invited to speak at a Baptist meeting in Pittsburgh. I volunteered to drive the six hours from Philadelphia to our destination. We drove the first hundred miles in relative silence but soon the boredom became so great we began chatting freely.

The professor said he had missed his late wife so much that he sought to contact her through seances with the medium Arthur A. Ford.

I didn’t see that coming. 

“Did you contact her?”

The professor shrugged. “I think so. She cited intimate details of our life together that Arthur could not have known. But she got the middle name of one of our children wrong and I realized she was trying to warn me away.”

He added, wistfully, “And I still wonder how that fits in with the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence. Months later I learned that the professor’s wife had taken her own life and I began to realize his pain was so great that he had to know why. But Arthur Ford was notorious for exploiting bereaved people, and he was probably a fraud. He was convincing when he appeared to know intimate secrets of a couple’s life together. But is any couple’s intimate behavior unique?

I remain a skeptic about the possibility of contacting the dead, and I would not attempt it. More than 60 years ago I was sitting in a Baptist Youth group when someone asked if it was possible to use a OuiJa board to communicate with the dead. Our pastor, Jack Irwin, advised against it. 

“A lot of people try it, and a lot of people think they can contact the beyond,” Jack said. “But don’t do it. What you find may turn your hair gray.”

Gray hair was pretty scary because we were only 16.

Be that as it may, we are still driven to imagine what heaven is like.

Peter Panagore, who I know through gatherings of church communicators, has written two books about his near-death experiences, that is, times he has died, glimpsed heaven, and came back to write about it. 

In his first book, Heaven is Beautiful, How Dying Taught Me That Death is Just the Beginning, Peter describes his death from hypothermia while hiking along the Ice Fields Parkway of Alberta, Canada. As he lay dead he experienced heaven and he found it beautiful.

Peter has had a second near death experience and today he encourages people to calmly face their own death:

“Be prepared to be loved and to be welcomed: you are going Home. Death is only a doorway. When your time comes, as it must, walk through that doorway and love God. Trust God. Believe. That’s all you have to do—simply believe. You can believe in God, because God is Real. This life is simply one bridge in between.”

 But here’s the thing: near death experiences are very personal and you can’t take anyone else’s word for it. The heaven Peter Panagore saw may not be the same heaven you or I would see under similar circumstances.

Peter is a preacher, not a scientist, and most scientists are skeptical about near death experiences. They blame them on the brain’s synaptic defense mechanisms when the body begins to die.

So what is your concept of heaven?

John of Patmos had visions of a gleaming crystal city gilded with gold and garnished by living trees and flowing waters.

Jesus talks of a place with many mansions or dwellings.

I imagine a place in which I rejoin an interrupted feast with Jesus and departed loved ones and, if I so wish, interview John F. Kennedy.

But as we bring our study of Revelation to a close, I think John is using poetic metaphors to make us feel good about what is to come, and to help us endure the trials and pains of what is now.

As to what heaven actually looks like, I try to be at peace about it.

We shall find out soon enough.

And John’s primary message is this: God has sent Jesus – the sacrificial lamb of Revelation – to conquer death. 

God grant us the grace to accept these promises in faith, for the apocalyptic future is bright.

We will be going to the home Jesus has prepared for us.

And whatever it looks like, it will be the most beautiful place we have ever seen.

Come, Lord Jesus.