Longing For Heaven Is Not Delusional
It's an affirmation of life; not a defense against death
Longing for heaven is not a delusional defense against death, to be discarded by the “mature” when they arrive at an all-grown-up kind of faith where people just…die.
The longing for heaven in the Christian sense, instead, is an abundant affirmation of life—of each human life, its place and purpose here and now, extending forward beyond the horizons of space and time.
The longing for heaven—to be with God in the fullness of life—aligns with our deep sense that human life is precious and enduring, and that this life breaks through the confines of our experience and expectation.
Dismissing heaven is not a heroic stand on behalf of the life here and now (as some would tell you).
Dismissing heaven is a capitulation to death.
A flippant dismissal of heaven slowly ossifies all meaning, values, beauty, purpose, and truth—especially those gained through sorrows and sufferings—until everything is ground to dust, and we end up neither gaining the world nor ourselves.
Remember: The Bible has always noted that it is the prosperous and privileged who live as if God and heaven don’t matter (see wisdom literature in the Psalms and Proverbs).
“Too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good” is a nice slogan, challenging distortions about having no concern for life here and now. But this slogan is often on the lips of those who have practically made politics their new god (even if they deny it).
The antidote is not to be “all earthly-good without a longing for heaven”—for that evacuates all hope and exhausts itself the banality of existence (usually followed by terrible violence).
Rather, as has been the case for the ancient Christian spiritual tradition, let us long for God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”, as Jesus taught us to pray, a prayer that affirms there is so much more going on that just his life and its death.
Is our current cultural moment caused exactly because too few aren’t heavenly-minded enough?
I really appreciate how you and your work affirms scripture. Thank you!