7. Human Longing for Heaven

Ananda: Please tell me more about heaven. How do you understand it?

John: By the word “heaven” people usually mean a perfect world up there. It is a world fully controlled by God, and there is peace, joy, love and justice in that world. However, unfortunately, we have only our imagination and beliefs about heaven, for nobody has ever seen heaven. It is like our speaking about God although no one has ever seen God.  

How we conceive heaven depends on how we conceive the whole world. People in various lands have different pictures in their minds about the world. In our tradition, we imagine a heaven up there where God and the angels reside.

We received a slightly modified version of heaven from the Persians. Persians compared the world to a large building of three floors-- heaven at the top, hell at the bottom, and earth at the middle.  Heaven is a place of perfect good and bliss, hell is a place of utter evil and misery, and earth is a place of both good and evil, for it is influenced by both heaven and hell.

This metaphor was further elaborated as follows: Heaven and hell are kingdoms, ruled by God and Satan respectively. Both kingdoms, with elaborate military power, are always at war with each other. Obviously, earth is the battleground, and the fight is mainly for human beings. Both kingdoms try their best to persuade people to join their sides. People decide to join either the forces of good or of evil, and accordingly, their souls fly either to heaven or to hell after death. But the ultimate victory will be to heaven.  Sometime in the future, the kingdom of hell will be utterly destroyed by the kingdom of heaven.

This picture has been modified recently. Nowadays, heaven is believed to be at the very top, earth at the very bottom, and the evil spirits somewhere in the middle.

Ananda: I am familiar with this idea, for we, in India, were also influenced by the Persian civilization. This seems to be a very useful metaphor as it makes it clear that our world is a battleground of good and evil for us. In our day-to-day life, we frequently meet with situations in which we have to choose between good and evil, and we feel the force of the conflict within us. Such abstract things like good and evil are difficult for us to grasp. A metaphor like this gives them a concrete form.

But let me ask you this question. Do you really think there is a world up there?

John: I like to think of heaven slightly differently. We perceive the world with our five senses, and they determine the world we perceive. This means that the world that appears to us is only a part of the real world. The part of the world that we cannot perceive may be thought of as heaven. Looking at heaven this way, it is not up in the sky, but right here; only we don’t perceive it.

Ananda: So, you think that heaven is that part of the world that we cannot see. It is a limitation of our senses that makes us see the world in two parts—earth and heaven. But the inhabitants of heaven probably do not have such a limitation, and therefore, in their eyes, only one world exists. Thus for them, heaven is all there is, and earth is a part of it. This could also mean that we are already in heaven; only we don’t realize it.

John: How true! There is also another way to understand heaven. It is a poetic way. Heaven is thought of as a world of love, joy, and peace. A family in which there is love, joy, and peace is often called a heaven on earth. Thus we may say that where there is love, joy, and peace, people experience heaven. On the other hand, where there is hatred, sorrows, anxieties, and discord, people experience hell. We all experience heaven and hell while alive on the earth. Often we ourselves create heaven or hell in our own lives.

The world is heaven for those who love unconditionally, but for those who have not learned to love unconditionally, the same world will appear a hell. If we expect love from others, we often become upset and depressed, for our expectation will not be fulfilled always. However, if we do not expect love from anybody, we will have no reason to get upset. Expect the worst from others, and nothing can take away our joy. In return, always love others without any condition at all. Only those who can love unconditionally can experience the joy of heaven. Where there is love, there is joy and peace as well.

Some people equate the idea of salvation to leaving this world and going to the heaven up there. They feel that there is something seriously wrong with the world we live, and the only solution they can think of is escaping to the wonder world above.  There are people among us who believe that some day Jesus will come back, take all those who believe in him to the heaven up there, and burn the entire world with all the unbelievers in it.

Ananda: Well, this idea is contradictory to what Jesus taught, but I think I know why even followers of Jesus believe it.  It is a comforting thought for this persecuted community that Jesus will come back some day to save them from here, and burn those who persecute them.

John: Your observation is true. That Jesus will come back as king of kings to take the church with him, and to cast all those who persecute us into everlasting hellfire is a precious belief that makes it survive.  

Salvation as Jesus preached is something we attain here and now, but for the persecuted church, it has become something of another world and after death. Many of the people in the church are hopefully looking forward to experiencing salvation after death in heaven, or when Jesus comes back.

Ananda: Well, I can see another reason too for them to believe in a salvation after death. It helps them to overcome the fear of death. In India, people generally believe that there is a life after death. They believe that after death people either go to the world of gods or return to earth. This world is thought to be a place for people to learn. Once they learn everything they need to learn, and become perfect, they go to the world of gods; otherwise, they reincarnate and come back to this world so that they get another chance to learn.

John: That is interesting. In our culture, people resort to various forms of beliefs that help them overcome the fear of death.  According to our tradition, a human being is a combination of the earth and the breath of God. As birth is a union of these two elements, death is nothing but their separation. The life-giving element in us is the breath of God, and it has neither birth nor death. This belief has always been very encouraging to our ancestors. The universe for them didn't have a heaven or a hell, but it consisted of only whatever we see around us with the unseen creative spirit of God over it. The world was a large farm for them with God as its farmer. There was no room for anything else there.

There is another idea in our tradition that helps people overcome the fear of death. It is the belief in resurrection, that is, after death, we will come back to life with a transformed, immortal body, and enter the heaven. This belief contradicts a popular false idea that our body is a bad thing, which in turn is derived from a more general false idea that whatever material is bad. This idea is opposed to what Jesus taught that the world is the good creation of the good God.    

Just as Jesus broke the wall of separation between God and man, he broke the wall that separates heaven and Earth. Also, he broke the wall that separates life here and life after death. In fact, what Jesus broke was the illusory walls of separation in human minds by letting us see the reality. There has never been a separation between God and man, between heaven and Earth, and between life here and hereafter.

John, the baptizer, believed that God, the just king, will grant heaven as a reward to those who do good, and hellfire as a punishment to those who do evil. This belief made him a judge.  Do you want to hear what happened to John?  One day, he walked to the palace of Herod, the king of Judea, and accused him for committing adultery by marrying his brother’s wife. John was immediately put in prison, and later he was beheaded. His behavior was true to what he believed about God. He believed in a judge-like God, which made him a judge.  

On the other hand, Jesus preached that God, the father, who loves everyone unconditionally, has already granted heaven to anyone who chooses to live there. This belief made him a brother who had unconditional love for all. He didn’t look down upon any human being. He believed that each human being was a priceless treasure for God. All people commit sins, which are nothing but mistakes, and without which we can’t learn to live and do good. No child learns to walk without falling several times. Therefore, he knew that it was senseless to call some people sinners, and the others righteous. In our society, in which people are divided into classes and races based on various criteria, Jesus was willing to befriend anybody. He ignored the set differences between male and female, Jews and non-Jews, and righteous and sinners.

In short, building upon the ideas of John, Jesus set a standard of doing good-- unconditional love. When he found that the existing image of God was contradictory to it, he broke it and replaced it with a complementary image-- a father-like God.

Ananda: Now, let me try to put these ideas in my words. When a physician treats a sick person, first he makes every effort to make the correct diagnosis. And based on the diagnosis, he prescribes a treatment. If the diagnosis goes wrong, the treatment will be ineffective. It can be even harmful.  

We have before us a sick world. John and Jesus, like physicians, attempted a diagnosis, and prescribed a treatment.  

John's diagnosis:  The world is really sick, with the deadly contagious disease called sin. Soon God would separate all sinners and cast them into fire, and save the others from the deadly disease.  

John's prescription: Anyone who wants to escape the eternal fire should turn from sin and do good deeds.

Jesus' diagnosis: Ignorance or misunderstanding is the problem.  In the eyes of God, the world is healthy, beautiful, and perfect. We convert it into a hell for us with our blindness. There is not any disease out there called sin which makes the world sick. There is no darkness out there. Only, we keep our eyes closed, and say that the world is filled with darkness. People can’t love God and fellow beings unconditionally because of their misunderstanding of God.

Jesus' prescription:  Open the eyes, have God's perspective, and know the truth about God, world and ourselves.

John: True. Darkness can occur by two causes: by the absence of light, or by the absence of sight. According to John, the spiritual darkness in the world is caused by the absence of light. But according to Jesus, it is caused by the absence of the power of sight. For those who can see, darkness doesn't exist.

Ananda: I can sense a danger here. It is easy to misunderstand Jesus' teachings at this point. One might misunderstand that Jesus gives unrestricted license to humans to live any way they want, and do whatever they want.

John: Well, the truth is that Jesus set the highest possible standard of morality. According to him, only those who are as perfect as the heavenly father are worthy to be called the citizens of the kingdom of God.  Jesus demanded perfect obedience of rules.  A slight feeling of hatred was the same as murder for him, and a lustful thought was the same as adultery.

Not only did he set the highest standard of morality, but also he showed the way to reach there, which is to realize that God's love is unconditional.

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