Rethinking Bible Language: Heaven

Christians often claim that belief in Jesus is their ticket into heaven when they die. The purpose of their life on Earth then becomes the work of telling as many people as possible about Jesus so others will also go to heaven when they die. As the logic follows, if you believe a few bullet points about this historical figure then your eternal destiny will be secured. This becomes a source of comfort for some and a source of fear for others, or maybe a mix of both.

As with other popular notions of faith, the truth or lack of truth in these statements depends on how the individual words are understood. Is belief about intellectual knowledge or a deep trust in the unknowable? Is heaven out there or right here? Too often we have forced non-Jewish ideas onto these Jewish concepts and then demand that others adopt the same understanding in order to belong to our faith community. Whether or not the ancient Hebrew worldview is an accurate understanding of the world, hopefully understanding their worldview will help us to be less forceful and violent with our own. Hopefully we will stop creating so much hell for others by how certain we are about heaven.

In its most basic form, the Hebrew concept of heaven was simply that mysterious frontier that exists above our heads. It’s the realm of the non-material world - where “wind” and “spirit” are the same Hebrew word - the world of invisible forces. The heavens also contain the stars, which were thought to represent other spirit beings in the heavens - the “us” that God refers to in much of the Old Testament (e.g. Let us create humanity in our image).

From the beginning of the biblical narrative, God is inviting humanity to exist in both worlds - both the heavens and the earth. We are invited to see that our true identity is both material and spiritual. Eden represents a location where those worlds overlap, as do mountaintops, the tabernacle, and the temple. Humanity, made from the material earth, is given life by the invisible breath (same word as spirit and wind) of God. It’s the same invitation modeled by Jesus who embodied the divine Spirit of God. For the biblical authors, heaven exists here and now even if we are unable to see it. It requires faith in what we cannot easily see. We don't find heaven simply by thinking enough correct thoughts about it. We are much more likely to find heaven with a deep breath and stillness of thought. It appears in the full awareness of this very moment. No escape is needed. You are already there.

Heaven, then, is not an other-worldly destination or escape. Heaven is about a quality of life that begins now more so than a quantity of life that we discover later. It’s existing presently in a new reality where humanity finds union with divinity. This is an existence the carries the hope of eternity with it in ways that can only be alluded to poetically. When we understand our true nature to be both material and spiritual, then we can begin to imagine ways in which life will never cease to awaken us.