Heaven

I have a pet peeve. My pet peeve is the conception of heaven as an ethereal place where we will spend eternity floating around the clouds and strumming harps. There is a sister pet peeve: people who think Heaven is like an earthly Mass (except it's eternal). Not very attractive for people who can barely stand an hour liturgy. (Hear me out on this one.)

That is categorically not how we will spend our eternity. In fact, we won't be spending our eternity in heaven, you may be surprised to learn. The reason Scripture says we will be resurrected in the flesh and there will be a new heavens and a new earth is so that we can live on that new earth. We will receive our bodies back and return to earthly life! How people who confess the "resurrection of the body" every week can think we will be floating around the clouds for all eternity is frankly beyond me.

Jesus's resurrection was a pattern for our own. Yes, we will have the same glorified body he had, the one that can walk through walls and appear at random and can eat.

What will we be spending all eternity doing? Well we sure won't be doing what the angels of Ezekiel are doing, singing "holy, holy, holy" endlessly. We will be doing what Adam and Eve were destined to do in the beginning — be co-creators with God and doing what our heart desires to do. Basically what our hearts truly want to do on earth (once you strip away the fallen nature), except that our hearts and intentions will be upright, which will actually enable us to get things done. Engineers will be able to build. Artists will be able to create whatever they want (without the concern of "making a living"!). Musicians will create all the opuses they want. The difference is that we will do these things in worship to God, and assisted by him.

So it is true that we will worship God endlessly; the problem is with people's definition of worship. We won't be standing up singing hymns without end (unless that's our hearts desire). We will worship God in what we do. Will it be an eternal liturgy? Yes, but liturgy means "work of the people". Again, our liturgy will be using the gifts God gave us and using them to glorify God. But by the time we get there, wanting to glorify God will be totally natural to us and pretty much indistinguishable from what we do now, except it will be more successful and will make us happier (technically, blessed). Everything that is now wrong will be set right, and then God will invite us to do what we always wanted to do in the first place but couldn't due to our fallen nature.

It's almost like this life is a practice run for the life to come. You can't appreciate something good until you've experienced bad first. Once you know bad, you truly appreciate good. This life is bad, but having experienced it, we'll appreciate all the more the life to come.

So don't perpetuate this myth about harps and clouds and crap. Our destination is not heaven, it's a new heavens and a new earth, where we will live in bodily form. Our job will not be to inflate the ego of God by telling him how wonderful he is; it will be to carry out our heart's true desires (and in that, glorify God).