What Heaven Is Not (An Editorial)

As this is my first editorial, it is principally opinion - not dogmatic assertion.

This is my best description of heaven:

• You can do everything, which means two things:
1. Everything is allowed.
2. You have unlimited power.
• The color spectrum is infinite.
• You can explore worlds, realities and times.
• The bliss of peaceful silence perpetually (and impossibly) coexists with the most beautiful music God could invent: music and silence at the same time, inextricable and ubiquitous.
• You can create objects, animals (even former pets), adventures, or lower dimensions and worlds, including earth if you want to recreate it for memories' sake.
• Everyone knows everything there ever was, is, or will be to know.
• The atmosphere is so clear and refreshing, the earth's fresh air would seem like a latrine by comparison.
• You can talk and spend time with everyone individually at the same time, including God.
• Nature is so gorgeously otherworldly, you can be entranced by one scintilla of it for an interminable amount of time.
• You are everywhere at once.
• Artworks are interdimensional.
• Humans are spirits, and everyone's soul feels the highest intimacy equally with each other (Mark 12:25).

    And I suspect the reason God didn't say any of these things explicitly is because they are so far inferior in desirability versus what is actually there that it is insulting to compare them.

     I've been very surprised to find such universal misunderstanding of what heaven must be throughout the entirety of my life. In high school, a friend tried to persuade me of the advantages of hell, asking, "Would you rather play a harp on a cloud forever or be at a giant party where all your friends are?" The misconceptions baked into the question are multitudinous enough to formulate a book of its own. But now that I'm decades into adulthood, even people that believe in heaven and see it as more than sitting on a cloud seem to imagine it in incorrect terms. These are things I'd like to set straight.

    1. Time does not go on forever.

    There is a difference between time forever moving and time never moving. The incorrect notion of eternal time is even in Christian hymns: "When we've been there ten thousand years..." There is no thousand years (Revelation 10:6). Time is absorbed into eternity. There is no progression. Although I believe we can cause things to be in heaven, I do not believe there is cause and effect, as we understand it.

    2. You are not limited in what you can do.

    There are no rules. You have perfect liberty. And you will have powers to do beyond what you can now think. The irony of trying to wrap our mind around this truth and timelessness is that though time is perfectly still and unmoving, our potential activities are not zero but infinity. We can do anything always without limitations. The reason I believe we will be able to create is because we can already create here on earth, to a certain extent - but being in a spiritual realm, there would be no boundaries around our creations. Imagine the kinds of otherworldly places a billionaire can create here on earth using their vast wealth. Is anyone in heaven less powerful than the most monetarily empowered man on earth?

• Some may contend we are limited in what we can do: we can't sin. Response: we will have no desire for sin; it won't be an option; it won't exist in that dimension. Therefore, we can do whatever we want.

    3. There is plenty of room (John 14:2) but no space.

    I've often heard the incorrect assertion that there will be a long line to talk to Jesus. This imagines a three-dimensional heaven. If heaven is another existence, and God lives there, it is not part of this dimension. Space doesn't work the same way. And with time out of play, everyone can commune even individually, simultaneously. There is no conflict of time or space because neither exists.

    4. We will remember everything about our entire life and can look into the realm of earth.

    Many times, I have heard Christians claim that no one in heaven can look down to earth because that would cause them sadness, of which there is none in heaven. While it's true that there is no sadness in heaven, it's not true that looking at sad things would cause sadness. It is the capacity for sorrow that is removed, not the view into humanity. The Bible's claim is that we shall know even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). How are we known? Completely. So we will know completely - we will know everything. We'll know the history and future of the entire universe and all there is to know about God's realm also.

    5. There is no language as we understand it.

    There is no vocal apparatus nor air molecules to convey sound waves in heaven. Those are necessary elements for our dimension. On earth, we already communicate without words to someone in heaven. Why would we need language once we get there? Unlike earth where prayer bridges the gap between dimensions, every being there in communication will be heavenly, so the "language" will even go beyond the transcendentalism of prayer.

    6. We will instantly know who everyone is.

    When Peter was on the Mount of Transfiguration, he had never seen a photo of Moses or Elijah before. Yet, he knew who they were. He was in a heavenly atmosphere.

    7. Your body is a spirit.

      I used to wonder: if I see my grandfather in heaven will he look like an old man as I knew him or will he resemble his youth? When I grew older, I thought perhaps everyone sees them as they wish to see them. It was not until adulthood that I realized spirits do not have shape. It is the spirit we will see with our spiritual eyes and recognize instantaneously. You have no physical body as you understand it - heaven is where the spiritual is the physical. There are no boundaries. You, as a spirit, are in all places at once.

    8. Your unique human personality is preserved in your soul forever.

    There are no character flaws anymore in heaven, but just as angels have individual names, your core essence is what makes you particularly special. Only sin is eradicated in heaven - the soul is preserved. And your personality is contained in your soul. Everyone's mutual love, just as on earth, will be rooted in your unique individuality.

    Heaven is an extension of God, and we know from what he put in humans that within God is the exploratory, the adventurous, the artful, the beautiful, and the creative. Heaven must be that way, and we must be agents of those attributes. And if there is any other chimerical fantasy that I have imagined which is unsupported by scripture, it is supported by this scripture: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." 1 Corinthians 2:9.

• There is nothing too wildly imaginative to describe heaven. There is no description that could be more vibrant, more sublime, or more difficult to believe than the real place which was conceived by the mind of God.

    If I could imagine a better heaven than God, why would I worship him? Christians today seem to imagine the entirety of heaven to be unidimensional, no more complicated than praising God on streets of gold, the sea of glass, and the gates of pearl (which will no doubt be the most rewarding, honorific, and pleasurable thing we will want to do in heaven); yet it doesn't seem to excite many people of today, as if it weren't imaginative enough. As soon as I imagine something that excites me about heaven, one of two things must be true:

1. That will be in heaven.
2. Something will be in its place that is so far superior and specifically tailored to me, I would mock my own self to think that I ever wanted the other.

    The three most fundamental things to remember about heaven that we seem never to be told are:

1. In heaven we are not less; we are more.
2. Concerning realness, the spiritual is to the physical as consciousness is to a dream, even though in the dream, it seems vice versa.
3. Heaven is not the highest thing we can imagine. It is the highest thing God can imagine. It is not a place that stretches what we can believe. It is a place that stretches what God can believe.