Heaven: What Do People Think About It & Introductory Thoughts | Heaven Series, Part 1

Heaven.  

What comes to mind when you hear that word?  

Ask Google and here are some of the top images that pop up:

The Pew Research center (according to a 2015 study) found that about 72% of Americans believe in Heaven.  The definition of Heaven used for their research was "where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded."  (See the entire Pew Research article HERE)

When I asked people (via my Facebook page) to give me a few words to describe Heaven, here's a look at some of what people said:

- Unfathomable and indescribable 

- Eden, paradise

- Peace, Peaceful

- Perfection

- Rest, home

- Peace and light

- Jesus, intimacy

- Never-ceasing worship

- The mountains and a nice creek or river

- Can't say - haven't been there 

- Peace and harmony

- Forever peaceful

- Coinherence

- Perfect reunion

- My home

- God's foreverland

- Utopia

- Amazing, peaceful

- Home, peace

- No judgment, Complete understanding

- Home, perfection

- Serene, peaceful

Interesting.  Notice no one said things like "evil, darkness, confusion, sadness, loneliness."  

Heaven is seen as a place of peace and goodness with almost never any mention of sickness or sadness.  It is literally 'all good.'

You may read that and say, "Well of course there is nothing negative - that's not what Heaven is about!"  Yes, I agree, but I would just note that if you asked people to describe life on this planet (as I did) you get a more mixed bag, like these responses: 

- Finite journey
- Not our home
- Asleep awake
- Really hard
- Stumbles and starts
- Pursuits, uncertain
- A glass darkly
- Hunger Games
- Hedonistic, terrifying
- Shadowland
- Broken, fallen
- Beautiful and challenging
- Bleak, exhausting

So what does this tell us?  More specifically how do our views of Heaven inform me as I start a series of blog posts on the topic of Heaven.

1. People see Earth as broken and Heaven as perfect or at least fixed (compared to the earth).  The blessings that this life has to offer are wonderful, but most people see them as mixed with great pain and suffering, confusion and sadness.  Heaven seems to be a antidote to the brokenness of this world.  

2. Most people believe in some form of the afterlife.  Do we all agree on what Heaven or the after-life look like?  Certainly not, but it is worth noting that the notions put forth by - for example - the new atheists like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris - are not representative of what the majority of Americans think.  The idea that there is nothing after death and that we all just become worm food - most people don't seem to think that is the case.

3. We live in a tension of wanting it and yet rarely thinking about it.  There is an irony to our views on Heaven.  While most people believe in the afterlife or Heaven, most people spend very little time thinking about it.  There are many reasons for this - fear of the unknown, the frenetic pace of life, and I would argue that a large part of this is because of modern healthcare.  Regardless of your opinion on Obamacare or the VA, the world is in the healthiest place it has ever been.  Sicknesses that would have been a death sentence 25 years ago are now being managed or cured.  This makes us think less about death and the afterlife since we don't see it as a looming threat.  Travel back in time  few hundred years and people were living decades shorter, and so there was a greater felt-need to figure out what we believed about Heaven.  

4. We seem to know there is something wrong.  We long for a better home, a fuller experience of life. We long to see relatives who have passed away.  We ache to have wrongs made right and justice served.  We desire to see brokenness and pain and sickness end, and to have life made whole.  In general, we agree that there is no human effort that can finally resolve all these issues, and so we long for a new, perfect home. 

C.S. Lewis said it this way:

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, 

the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

In the next several posts, I will be looking into the topic of Heaven and engaging with the idea both philosophically and theologically.  I hope you'll join me.

- tC

What IF...There Is More To Life Than Just THIS?

As we dive into our What IF series, I want to start us off with a question that you can't answer...but you can.

What I mean is this.

There are some questions in life that you can answer with precision.  

When you measure the size of a marble with a micrometer caliper, you gain precision.  

You can tell me, "This marble is _______ millimeters."  

When you look at your watch you can tell me what time is, often to the very second.

But in many areas of life - often the most profound areas - we lack the ability to give answers that are verifiable in this fashion.  The big questions of life and death and morality - the answers to these questions are arrived at in a different way.  

Let me note here that this does not mean there is no science or mathematical analysis when it comes to big life questions.  There most certainly is.  When we ask about the creation of the universe, the scientist is not left at the door of the discussion.  There ARE elements of science and research that can help us answer these questions.  But science and research ALONE cannot give us answers to the most profound questions that we all ask at some point in life.

Here is my question: What if there is more to life than just this?

More than what we perceive with our 5 senses.

More than just the physical and natural world.

More than just blood and flesh and soil.

Aren't there situations where you say to yourself, "Because of this experience, I just know that there's got to be more to life than just living as an animal and then dying."

Here's one of the reasons I'd argue I know there is more...

This is my son Hudson. 

He is not an apologetic for the existence of God in the same way that reading the Cosmological Argument is, but he is none the less an apologetic for something grand.  How is it that from his birth on - though he can do nothing for me as far as making my life physically easier by mowing the lawn or bringing money into the family bank account - despite all of his limitations as a three year-old, I would give my life for him in an instant.  His life makes me look and say, "The way I feel toward him - this tells me that there is something profound and literally awesome to life."

Perhaps you don't have children.

What about experiencing images like these?

  

Doesn't nature speak to you in some way?  

Perhaps you aren't an 'outdoors person' like I am.  Fair enough.  But haven't you had some moment in life when you were struck with wonder at the grandness of life and/or nature?  

Perhaps it was art.  

Perhaps it was a poem you read. 

Haven't you had an experience in life that screamed into your soul, "You are alive!"  

What is that about?  

What IF that is something that is hard-wired into you - an understanding of the profound nature of existence itself.  

Does this make you a devout religious person?  Not necessarily.  Even Neil deGrasse Tyson, the American astrophysicist and agnostic, is amazed by the wonder of the stars at night.  

At this point, we aren't asking anything about agnosticism.

We are just asking What IF there is more to life that just the ho-hom, day-to-day existence that leads us from birth to death with nothing wondrous and profound.  

If you have experienced wonder - in any form - a grasping that yes, you exist - well then you and I are kindred spirits.

- tC  

Reflections on the Passing of Nabeel Qureshi

(Credit: NabeelQuershi.com)

On Saturday, September 16th Nabeel Qureshi - author and Christian apologist - passed into the loving presence of Jesus Christ after a year-long battle with stomach cancer.  Qureshi was best known for his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus which told his story of converting from Islam to Christianity.  

I have been following the YouTube updates (you can see them here) that Nabeel posted over the last year (43 video posts in total).  It was a long, tough, heart-rending journey that he shared with his viewers, and I am sure some will now go back to learn more about his life and this final journey.

My personal interest in Nabbel's ministry is rooted in the fact that he is part of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, a ministry that helped me grow immensely as a young Christian and throughout the years.  If you'd like to read Ravi Zacharias' final tribute to Nabeel in the Washington Post, click here. 

   

(Credit: Ravi Zacharias - Facebook)

I never knew Nabeel, and I am certainly no Ravi, but I'd like to offer a few personal reflections on the life and passing of Nabeel Quershi and why his passing has struck me deeply.

First, I am struck because I am 7 years older than Nabeel and yet he has already left this mortal life.  There is something about not just a young person dying, but someone who gives you that sense of 'that could have been me'.  Nabeel was a student of Ravi, an apologist, and someone who was passionate about bringing the Gospel to the world.  In some small way, I can resonate with all three of those characteristics, and so his passing seems to hit home for me in a different way than I had expected it to.

Secondly, Nabeel's passing reminds me of a message I gave years ago while I was a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  The talk was entitled, "A Healthy Obsession With Death."  While no one likes to think about death, our Western world today has risen to an expert level of avoiding the topic.  Part of it is because of the 24-hour news cycle such that even when a famous movie star dies, we mourn for a few hours before we are often on to the next topic that is flashed across the screen.  Another part of it is that we have such excellent medicine compared to even just 100 years ago that we almost expect for every sickness to be cured with little fan fare.  These two realities (as well as other factors) shape us so that we avoid thinking much about the grave.  

Nabeel's passing reminds me that we should all be thinking about death a great deal - it is one of the few 'knowns' in our lives.  We will all die, and we do well to consider this fact on a regular basis.  The Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that it is good to go to a house of mourning.  Why?  Because it puts all of life into perspective.  I find myself thinking about Nabeel's wife and his daughter now and what their life will be like without this man.  It forces me to think about my own wife and children, and not on the level of 'will they be o.k. without me if I die', but instead the eternal question: when I die, will I see them again?  That - in the end - is TRULY the only question that matters when it comes to my family.  Success, careers, future marriages, providing via a life insurance policy - all these are fine to consider, but they are passing realities.  Eternity with those who I love in the presence of my Savior - that last forever.  

Thirdly, Nabeel's passing forces me to think about how I am using my time.  Not everyone will invest his or her life in apologetics and writing, in speaking and lecturing.  But what I do know is that I want my life to matter and Paul reminds us in Galatians 5 that in the end the ONLY thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love.  And so Nabeel's death forces me to ask myself: because of my faith in Christ, am I loving others well?   

Lastly, the death of Nabeel Quershi forces me to face the hard reality that God is God and I am not.  Only by faith in the character of God can I trust that the passing of this young man, this passionate apologist - only by faith can I trust that this makes sense.  On a human level, on a ministry level, on an 'advancing the Gospel in the nations' level, this does not compute.  But I am forced to trust God's providential wisdom in this situation.  The alternative is to raise my fist to the heavens which is foolhardy.  God knows what He is doing even when it doesn't seem to add up in my paradigm.  

In closing, I celebrate the fact that because of the Resurrection of Jesus and my future resurrection, I will one day be able to speak with and celebrate the life of Nabeel Quershi with Nabeel Quershi himself.  Until that day, may my life be faith-filled like this man's life.

- tC