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Rethinking Harps, Halos, and Inadequate Views of Heaven

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Angels are angels. People are people. Some like to play harps, but not everyone does.

“In the beginning [of time] God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) In the end of time, God will recreate the heavens and the earth. (II Peter 3:13) At this pivotal recreation of reality as we know it, all will be restored to a righteous state of being. Righteousness is an elaborate word that means something or someone is as it/he/she ought to be. Oh, the wonderful thought of things being as they ought to be! We dream of bodies functioning as they ought to function, of minds thinking as they ought to think, and of relationships working as they ought to work. This spectacular condition of righteousness is the essence of Heaven.

God obviously knew what He was doing when He created all that is. Note from a thorough reading of Genesis chapters 1-3 that is human rebellion against God and His perfect plan which set into motion the disintegration of the universe, relationships, and people. When the same Jesus who entered the world to pay the price for human sunfulness returns again to the world, He will vanquish the curse of sin and reintegrate degree as we enjoy the heavens and the earth unhampered by human sinfulness and its dreadful consequences.

Redeemed people-redeemed by the blood of the God-Man, Jesus Christ-will always be people. We will not suddenly grow wings and don halos at the end of time. Our bodies will no longer be limited by space and time, and so traveling through the universe will no doubt come with ease! However, we will remain the humans we were always created to be. You know the saying, “God does not make junk.” We may be marred by our sin, but we are infinitely valuable as God’s creation. if we make the choice to allow Jesus to redeem us, we will function in the new heavens and the new earth with all the energy we always wanted, doing all the things we love to do. If Jesus made you to love walking and laughing, so you will! If-like me-He made you to love studying, speaking, and leading, so you will!

Heaven is an exciting place; it is more exciting than the best this sin-cursed earth has to offer. This old earth will be remade by Jesus, the same Jesus who remade our hearts when we asked Him to.

Letter to the Editor of The Atlantic

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Rachel Dickinson’s article (“At Land’s End,” July/August Atlantic) caught my eye because of the author’s obvious appreciation for the beauty – and mystery – of nature. I wonder if Dickinson realizes what a grand, theological truth to which she has alluded in the last portion of her writing. As a person with a Biblical Christian worldview, I was genuinely excited by Dickinson’s indirect and – most possibly – completely unintended observation of a timeless metanarrative.

Dickinson details her thoughts on a foggy morning in the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula, “I thought about the cranes in their balletic flight, and the ravens pecking away at the whale carcass, and how the beauty and desolation of the Russian Far East converges in this spot on the tundra, at the edge of the frigid Bering Sea.” Amazing! The beauty of cranes meeting in air and flying in tandem juxtaposed against the eerie reminder of death and destruction as ravens devour a whale’s remains. The magnificence of just one aspect of this profound creation – those amazing creatures of flight – converges, as Dickinson says, with the dismal result of humankind’s rebellion against the Creator – disintegration and death.

In this world we do observe quite simultaneously two Biblical truths: God made everything good (Genesis 1:31), and human sin against His plan brought ruination (Romans 6:23). The majesty, intricacy, and unfathomable beauty of the created world hints at the perfection God intended and will – one day – dramatically restore (II Peter 3:10-13). At the very same time, the imperfection, dissatisfaction, and disaster we so often witness hints at the severity of broken relationship with the Creator and a need to regain what is right and good.

As Dickinson amazingly reminded us of this convergence of beauty and destruction in any given moment, may we recall the answer to the dilemma lies in the convergence of two other seemingly diametrically opposed concepts: God and Man in Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:9). This divine convergence in the Person of Jesus is our salvation – our hope for life and beauty to win out in the end.