Perceptions from a Pewboy

I tend to agree with N.T. Wright’s opinion (referenced in my last post) that, all too frequently, the Church’s people have been guilty of truncation in their theology of heaven and afterlife. We have often made heaven into little more than an eschatological happy ending—a place in which the disembodied dead are eternally comfortable while shooting the proverbial breeze with friends and relatives who have, uh, “passed on” (sort of like Sheol but with a happier spirit and better lighting).

Such a reduction of the biblical portrait of life beyond the grave, while completely forgivable and even understandable, nevertheless minimizes what Scripture teaches about the resurrection of the body and the eschatological impact of Jesus’ return.

Personally, I have come to believe that part of our problem is our penchant for thinking geographically and architecturally. When we speak of heaven, we tend to conceptualize it as a place more than a condition of being, thereby leading ourselves into a mode of thought in which we become so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good! In other words, we become so focused on the “there and then” that we lose sight of the eternity’s connectedness with the “here and now.”

Perhaps we would be better off, biblically speaking, if we placed our focus on the “eternal life” described in John 3:16. Eternal life, as a concept, is far more fluid and much less fixed than “heaven.” I am not suggesting, of course, that we treat “heaven” as a dirty word. I am simply making the point that “eternal life” enables us to cover a great deal of important theological territory—territory that is often overlooked in some of our more static heavenly conceptualizations. Eternal life implies continued progression, growth, and transformation. Eternal life also implies a variety of “life seasons:” the season of initial “paradise” promised by Jesus to the thief on the cross; the season of restful, rejuvenating, and cognizant sleep described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:18; and the season of the “resurrected body” that Paul describes later in the same chapter (1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

“Eternal life,” in other words, is holistic enough as a conceptualization to encompass all of the different biblical proclamations concerning life beyond the grave while at the same time avoiding the tendency to fit it all into an “afterlife equation.” Best of all is the fact that eternal life begins RIGHT NOW, as soon as we are reborn through Jesus Christ. We don’t have to wait until physical death to experience it. Upon our physical death, the eternal life in Jesus Christ that we have already entered simply moves into a new condition or series of conditions.

I suppose that, in the long run, it all comes down to Paul’s proclamation in Romans 8 that NOTHING (not even death) will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That, as I see it, is the best imagery to embrace in understanding eternal life. It is a biblical promise that, in Jesus Christ, we will never again be separated from the sustaining grace and mind-boggling love of God, no matter how the specific seasons of eternal life may be organized.

My wife Tara’s dad, Tony, a man of strong faith who died of cancer in 2001, enjoyed watching movies and Steeler football (which means that we got along smashingly!). Tony was a good man who loved God, who loved people, and who always made me feel as though I were a welcome part of his family. One Sunday afternoon, about a year into his cancer journey, Tony and I found ourselves watching a Steeler game, just the two of us. During half time, I remember asking Tony how he was feeling. He responded by telling me that he felt tired. He was tired of the chemotherapy. He was tired of the pain and the doctor’s appointments. He was tired of the cancer. “What I really want,” Tony said to me that day, “is a new body that doesn’t have any cancer in it.” His words made their way into both my heart and my journal.

Perhaps without realizing it, Tony was giving expression to his desire for the kind of condition to which eternal life in Jesus Christ eventually leads—a condition of the resurrected body in which cancer is no more; in which those with Alzheimer’s Disease think more clearly than they have ever thought before; in which those with multiple sclerosis find themselves liberated from their debilitation; and in which those enslaved by depression are set free to experience the complete joy that God longs for them to experience.

Please understand, I am not a pie-in-the-sky kind of pastor. I am not someone who encourages a faith that is so heavenly minded that it is of no earthly good. Life in this world, after all, is rich with joy and meaning and blessing. You know that. But there is also suffering in the human pilgrimage. There is brokenness and weeping. What Scripture consistently reveals is that our eternal life in Jesus Christ (in which we are already participating) is leading us into a joyful eternity with Christ. It is an eternity in which our suffering and pain (not to mention our often-broken bodies) are redeemed in such a way that we begin to discern with completeness why it is that the suffering is worth it and how it is that even the pain finds a place in God’s redemptive and eternal plan.

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