One of my problems with Rattlesnake Creek is that there are all these tempting logs straddling its rushing waters; and they call out to me. I mean, they actually talk to me. Our conversation goes something like this:
Logs: “Luke, climb over us! You can get to the other side of the creek.”
Luke: “No way, man, you look too slippery. I’ll fall in for sure. Get thee behind me!”
Logs: “We’re not slippery. It’s the light; it just makes us look shiny. Come on…it’s an adventure!”
Luke: “Seriously, stop calling to me. I’m not adventurous and I don’t want to see the other side anyway.”
Logs: “So…you call yourself a Texan and you’re afraid of a little water?”
Luke (immediately running wildly onto the first log and discovering that it is, in fact, quite slippery): “AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH! This water’s COLD!”
My point is that you shouldn’t climb over the logs, no matter how much they tempt you. Logs are evil! And Rattlesnake Creek is cold. I wouldn’t recommend falling in. Though that memory of falling into its icy waters makes me think of another important fact.
Rattlesnake Creek is also wild. And, in a strange way, I find its wildness comforting. There is a sense that I cannot possibly sully its wild beauty; it is beyond me. It is untouchable. When I fall in, the Creek washes me clean of dirt; but somehow I don’t seem to make its waters dirty. And whether I fall in or not today, next year it is still going to be exactly the same, still rushing, still uncontrollable. You see, its source is miles and miles away, high up in the mountains, and it turns out that I can pretty much climb only about 10 feet in that general direction on a good day. If I ate a 10th donut that morning, maybe only 5 feet. (When I get to 20 donuts, I just roll over and hope a bear carries me to my car).
That leads to our question today: Is Heaven an actual place that is beyond us, or is it just a beautiful metaphor for building a better world? Is there really a place where the waters run wild and free, springing from a source that we can truly neither produce nor alter?
I think this is an important question. It is silly to talk about Heaven without first deciding if it is a real place that exists beyond this world. Because if it is, then that fact should inform a lot of our beliefs about the universe.
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For full disclosure, the title of this post would more accurately be captured in the question “does Christianity teach that Heaven is a real place?” Because my goal here isn’t to provide a coherent argument that Heaven exists. (In fact, I generally find such abstract arguments about Heaven very uncompelling. It’s like making an abstract argument that Tahiti exists. I believe in Heaven mostly for the same reason I believe in Tahiti; that is, because a source I trust told me it exists. Since I have a very good intellectual reason for trusting the source and no compelling reason not to believe in Heaven, I’m fine with this state of affairs. At this moment, my concerns are mostly two-fold. First, I’d like to know why the spell-checker says that “uncompelling” isn’t a word – seriously, vile computer, that is a word – and second, I’d like to get out of this seemingly endless parenthetical note. The second is easier, so here we go).
Christianity has always, so far as I know, taught that Heaven is a real place. And that’s what I believe. Now, let’s be clear: I’ve always been someone who liked the “here and now” more than the “pie in the sky.” One of my favorite verses growing up was John 17:3, because it defined eternal life as “knowing God” and not as “something out there.” I’ve always had a kind of aversion for the doctrine that Heaven was something that we would “see someday.” Tell me about the here and now (the young Luke said)! But my personal preferences are not at issue here. There are days I’d prefer to live in a world where no God existed to hold me accountable to a real standard; but even on those days I believe He is actually there.
And here’s the truth. It’s hard to get around the following fact: The reality of Heaven is inseparable from Christianity. It’s right in the Christian Creed that Christ “came down from Heaven.” The Bible teaches that Heaven is an actual place, and Jesus taught that it is, too. And really Christianity makes absolutely no sense without it. Otherwise, what did Jesus mean when he said, in plain language, that we should store up treasures in Heaven (and not on earth), or that He was going to prepare a place somewhere else, and that our focus should be on that other place?
So, while I think it is possible to conceive of hell as simply a metaphor for non-existence (though I think it more likely it is a real place, too), in Christianity Heaven is most definitely not just a metaphor for making the world a beautiful place. It is a real solid thing that exists somewhere else, or Christianity is false.
That is not to say that we shouldn’t try to make Missoula more and more like Heaven; in fact, Jesus talked a lot about that, and it’s a central feature of the Lord’s Prayer that we ask that “God’s will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.” And of course we don’t know a whole lot about Heaven; the Bible says very little about what Heaven is actually like. I am personally quite sure that there will be a Starbucks there serving me a daily Venti Decaf Iced Caramel Macchiato (with whipped cream; I mean, without the whipped cream, what’s the point, really?), but that’s just me. But my point here is that Starbucks rocks…and that, whatever Heaven is like, it is a real place running wild and free that cannot be sullied by earth. We want to make earth more like Heaven, but that command would not make any sense if there was no actual Heaven.
One of the most common accusations I hear about believing in Heaven is captured in the phrase that someone is “so Heavenly-minded that they do no earthly good.” The implication is that thinking about Heaven makes you of no use here on earth. I used to think kind of like that, too, but long experience has taught me a different lesson: The exact opposite is true. It is a belief in the eternal that makes me do anything good at all; if I was only trying to create Heaven on earth and didn’t believe in Heaven in Heaven, then my dreams would die every day. Every thankless word, every stolen dollar, every gift abused, every good effort thwarted, would make me realize more and more and more that nothing is going to create Heaven here permanently. (At least, not without outside intervention, but that’s another story for another day). But if Heaven “hangs in the sky unhurt” (to borrow G.K. Chesterton’s phrase) – if it is, in fact, a real place outside of ours – then what I am sowing here will always be reaped in that better world. Everything has value, whether it seems to have value or not. That’s what Jesus taught repeatedly, and constantly turned our focus to the eternal value of our actions, independent of their apparent consequences on earth.
Imagine that you were on a job interview and it went great (note: the grammar police have invaded my computer and tell me that I should have said “went extremely well”), and they offered you a huge salary. And, just as you were going to sign on the dotted line, you noticed an asterisk by the six-figure salary number. So you scanned down and saw the following note at the bottom: Salary does not equate to actual money; it is a beautiful metaphor for all that is good and right, monetarily speaking.
Well, I doubt you would sign that document. And I personally would not be nearly as inspired by Jesus’ teaching to store up my treasures in Heaven if there was an asterisk that read heaven does not really exist; it is only a beautiful metaphor. I am far more inspired to give up my life here by believing that Heaven is a real place, and there are some real treasures that I am, in actual reality, storing up there.
If there really is a place running wild and free, where, as Jesus said, no thieves can break in and steal, no humans can possibly sully…if such a place exists, it is worth investing in. Why tie myself solely to the stuff of earth when I can drink the waters of Heaven that always flow, and feel the light of Heaven that never fades?
I am curious if any of the readers of the Apologetic Professor have any thoughts about Heaven: Do you think it a literal place, and if so, what do you think it will be like? If not, what do you think about the meaning of the word?
I don’t believe in heaven–why would I, atheist that I am? But I do think you’ve done a wonderful job introducing the topic, and there’s no doubt that you’re correct in saying that Christianity traditionally taught Heaven (Hell, too) as a real place–and most Christians even today continue to understand it that way. I also applaud your Montana-friendly use of “wildness” and your description of Heaven as “a place where the waters run wild and free.” That’s called, I believe, “knowing your audience”.
Having said that: I’m always fascinated when theists assert that, without Heaven and immorality awaiting us, there just wouldn’t be any point to life at all. I say “fascinated” but in fact I’m both perplexed and slightly annoyed by the claim, since I for one manage to find lots of reasons to cherish life (as does Richard Dawkins, I bet) even though I have no expectation whatsoever of eternal life in Heaven or Tahiti or Montana or anywhere else. Non-theists seem to manage okay, most of the time, even without the carrot of Heavenly bliss; we muddle through, that is, which is all that can be said of pretty much anyone. I obviously can’t disprove your personal testimony that “It is a belief in the eternal that makes me do anything good at all”–you would know yourself and your own motivations best–but nevertheless I seriously doubt it. I’m fairly certain that if you tragically lost your faith in the Eternal and the Absolute you wouldn’t stop being a good husband and father and human being (though you might change your blog title to “The Disillusioned and Somewhat Crestfallen Professor”).
Your statement “If I was only trying to create Heaven on Earth, then my dreams would die every day,” is thought provoking, profound, and even poignant. I’d like to respond, “Yes, and that’s part of being human,” but you and I have wrestled with my inane “that’s part of being human” cop-out before, so I won’t revive the controversy. I don’t believe in Heaven on Earth, in any case; my dreams are more modest, and some of them (not all, but some) have actually survived–at least so far. But your point remains important, I think, and might help explain the ferocity of (some) secular utopians: if we must needs create our own Heaven here on Earth, then all obstacles and resistance to it are intolerable, and failure or even compromise is not an option–because we (the “ferocious utopians,” that is) (and that’s not a bad name for a band) simply cannot and will not allow our dreams of Heaven on Earth to die. Anyone who claims that religion has caused most of the world’s violence has it wrong: violence is always caused by people (religious or otherwise) who absolutely refuse to take No for an answer.
Finally: you dismiss as meaningless the idea of a “Heaven” without real cash value, a Heaven that turns out to be “only a beautiful metaphor”. But metaphors by definition always stand for something, so wouldn’t the value of “Heaven” depend on what, as a metaphor, it stood for? If “Heaven” stood for, say, a life of love and satisfaction and virtue and integrity, a full and prosperous life characterized (Biblically) by the term “shalom”: that doesn’t seem so bad, and it certainly doesn’t seem meaningless. (On the other hand, maybe you could just conjure your real Heaven via the Ontological Argument: a perfect and eternal place that exists only in the mind is less perfect than such a place that exists in reality…)
Jack,
Fair points all. Actually, I almost want to become an atheist just so I can re-name my cite “The Disillusioned and Somewhat Crestfallen Professor.” I seriously nearly fell out of my chair laughing!
About your points, I have little to disagree with (except that we of course disagree about the topic of the post). I would say the following (editor’s note: you might think, by the volume of this long comment, that I was lying when I said “I have little to disagree with”…but it turns out that I can talk for a long time about a little):
(1) I think I was being a trifle melodramatic, to be honest, in my depiction of motivations. I agree with you up to a point, and I can certainly imagine other (good) motives besides Heaven. (In fact, there is a sense in which the highest motivation might occur without a belief in Heaven or God at all. C. S. Lewis wrote something like “God is most pleased when we look out upon what we believe is a Godless universe, without hope, and still obey what we think He would want.” I think it would be interesting to have an atheist build a case for atheism solely on the grounds that this motivation would be logically self-defeating and therefore God must not exist. Of course, it turns out that I think He does exist anyway, logical contradiction or no.) I think I was mostly responding to the critique, which I do believe is unfair but which you did not launch, that believing in Heaven means you don’t accomplish anything on earth. Probably I should have said, “the opposite can be true as well” instead of “the exact opposite is true.” (In actual fact, you graciously defended my point here, and I think we largely agree on the nuances both ways, with some qualifications to come).
(1a) In fact, I’d go further: It IS possible to stick your head in the sand and ignore your responsibilities on earth, using Heaven as an excuse, and that’s what the phrase I was attacking means. That’s not the Christian viewpoint, and you’d basically have to ignore all of Jesus’ teachings to do that, but still…
(2) I actually agree with your point about the metaphor, after a fashion. Really, it is the existence of some kind of eternal principle that is more likely the motivating thing for me personally (and Heaven can be one possible instantiation of that). It’s motivating for me to believe that good exists, and will go on existing, with or without me. I agree totally that Heaven must stand “for” something, and that (even if it is a real place) it will in some sense be metaphorical to us. I also agree that the existence of some kind of principle doesn’t necessarily imply Heaven, though I want to discuss that a little bit.
I wasn’t making an argument for the existence of the eternal at all, but if I did, I might start exactly where you started:
“If “Heaven” stood for, say, a life of love and satisfaction and virtue and integrity, a full and prosperous life characterized (Biblically) by the term “shalom”: that doesn’t seem so bad, and it certainly doesn’t seem meaningless.”
I agree. But love and virtue and integrity are values that, by definition, must in some way transcend time and be “outside” of us. (To wit: “integrity” means “adherence to moral principles,” and a principle means something that is still there whether I exist or not. 2 and 2 equal four whether or not I am alive, and in any possible universe). And how is that? When I think of the things that give my life meaning, not all of them are like that — so I don’t want to go overboard here — I mean, my wife and daughter come to mind, and I think that gives me a sense of meaning independent of some kind of transcendent values. But I also know that they are not enough; and that, unless I believed in “love” as some kind of eternal thing, even my relationship with them would not be what it should.
I say all of that to paint a picture more than make a logical deduction; and the picture is this. Virtue either exists or it doesn’t: But if it exists, if it is truly “good” to love one’s neighbor (say), then the values implied by “virtue” are outside of me. And there are two things here: (a) it is far more motivating for me to help my neighbor if I believe it is an eternal value built into the fabric of the universe than if it came from an inherently amoral source randomly, via physical processes, and (b) if there is something “eternal” like that, then it doesn’t follow that there is a “Heaven,” but it does follow that those values exist outside of all of us somewhere. And that fits far better with a picture that includes eternity or Heaven than with a picture than includes nothing eternal at all.
That’s not a great argument and would require more in so far as it goes (I’m actually writing a post on the “argument from morality” which will appear in a few weeks that develops it a little more), but in short, I agree with you up to a point, and yet I do think something eternal still might lie behind the substitute “meanings” you suggest. Of course, I could be wrong, and I’m not trying to misinterpret you, so please correct me if that’s the case.
(3) Going outside of myself and my own motivations a little (up to this point I’ve mostly been talking about myself): I also think you may be underplaying somewhat the motivational power of Heaven, as Heaven, writ large. It is not my place to comment on your own motives, and I have no doubt that you are telling the exact truth about them. So I’m not talking about you, but about people in general as I see them. And one thing is obvious to me: Almost everyone (Christian or no) really seems to want to believe they will see their loved ones again after they die. I mentioned earlier that one of the things that gives my life meaning, independent of eternity, is my two girls (my wife and my daughter). But if they died, I would feel empty; that motivational well would be largely (though not totally, perhaps) gone. That is, unless I believed that Heaven existed — then, I could feel like my relationship with them did not end completely.
That isn’t an argument FOR Heaven, of course (or at least not a very good one), but only an argument that Heaven has a strong motivational appeal for humanity. I don’t think it’s inconsistent with what you said, but I’m not sure it is captured in what you said, either.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Jack, as always!
(1) “values exist outside of all of us somewhere”? If not in Heaven, then in some transcendent, Platonic realm? Not as far as I’m concerned, other than in the trivial sense that I didn’t personally invent such values as “love” or “kindness” or “honesty”; they indeed existed before me and will exist after me. They don’t exist independently of people, however; they were invented/developed/selected over millennia by human beings who found them indispensable to living well, especially when living in communities. That these values are more or less universal simply indicates that human beings, and the human predicament, are more or less alike in the most essential ways; these particular values have been found/judged to offer humans the best chance to thrive–although self-seeking and greed still have their defenders.
(2) I don’t believe that “moral principles” are the same as mathematical principles or axioms, and neither does just about anybody else. Unlike “2+2=4,” “Thou shalt not kill” has always allowed for lots of exceptions (war, self-defense, legal retribution, direct revelation from God, fear of someone wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles and ice tea, etc.).
(3) To end on a note of agreement: you’re surely correct that “Almost everyone…really seems to want to believe they will see their loved ones again after they die.” And also, “Heaven has a strong motivational appeal for humanity.” I didn’t mean to dismiss either of those observations; both of your statements are beyond any doubt empirically true. And I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks, Jack! I would say:
(1) Well, it’s funny you should mention Plato, because I was actually thinking of Plato when I wrote my comment (though I would say that, although Christianity has been heavily influenced by Plato, I find him to be rather wrong-headed myself). You assert that these values do not exist independently from people, but whether or not they exist independently of people is the thing under the radar at the moment. That’s the very question on which the universe hangs. I’m going to get into this more in a different post, so I’ll limit myself here a bit, but I disagree with your argument that a value can possibly “exist” without being independent of people at some level (I’m not disputing that what we believe about values is influenced by our surroundings; but that’s not the question here). If it’s dependent on people in some sort of culturally/evoluationarily selective way as you propose, then it isn’t actually a value in any meaningful sense — it is merely a random or materialistically-determined factor, no different than the sunlight or gravity or toe jam. The fact that we believe it is just another random factor, and random factors by definition are not meaningful. No one I know believes in a “value” in that sense, therefore it is really ultimately not a tenable position to hold. I personally believe that everyone has to choose: Values exist outside of us, or they don’t exist at all.
To use your own point of view: If the values we believe are those that helped us to survive, it follows that if other values had helped us survive (e.g., unbridled greed) then we would hold those instead of our current ones. But survival is dependent on the context (e.g., what allows you to survive on Earth is different than what allows you to survive on Mars), and the context was created by random chance (in your view). Thus, we ultimately believe that helping your neighbor is better than murdering them due to completely random factors, and it could have been otherwise (indeed, WOULD have been otherwise if the random factors had fallen differently). But if that’s true, then murder isn’t actually BETTER than loving your neighbor, and no sensible person should believe that it is TRULY better. It’s just what we happen to believe, in the same way that we happen to have lungs instead of gills: Lungs aren’t “better” than gills in any meaningful sense.
I would also like to point something else out: Your blithe comment about the “Platonic realm” illustrates exactly the point I wanted to make originally. I don’t mean that to be critical; it’s exactly the same blithe comment that I would make. IF values exist independent of people, then it’s weird to imagine that there isn’t something, for lack of a better word, “spiritual.” Heaven fits with that. But if it isn’t Heaven, then what in the world could it mean to say values exist outside of people, floating out there somewhere, being free? (I realize you don’t even grant the nature of the question, but the if-then statement is useful in terms of discussing Heaven itself).
(2) I do grant that there is a sense in which 2 + 2 = 4 is less “fuzzy” than moral rules, but I don’t think you’ve (quite) hit on the fuzziness. Because a rule is conditional, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t based in an absolute rule. “Absolute” and “Conditional” are not necessarily opposites; that’s just a common misconception (in my opinion; though it depends on what you mean by the terms). If I say, “murder is wrong, except in case A” then that doesn’t mean that murder suddenly became ok; it only provides a competing value that overrides it in Case A. And that conditional statement itself is based on absolute values, and if the values weren’t real things that transcended us, there would be no sense to the conditional statement.
So the statement “you should never kill anyone except to defend an innocent person” isn’t based less in real eternal values because it is conditional. (It’s also not an argument FOR their eternal nature; my point is that we have to argue about whether or not they are eternal on other grounds). It is balancing the value of justice/protecting the innocent with the value of not murdering, and saying that the value of protecting the innocent is more important in Case A. But that statement itself “protecting the innocent is more important in Case A” is a value that you either have to accept in that instance, or not.
Now, I stated that this was fuzzier than math — so I partially agree with you. The fuzziness is not so much about the absolute values or the nature of conditional statements, but rather that when values “compete,” it’s really sometimes fuzzy which one SHOULD win out. And 2 + 2 = 4 is clearer than THAT. But that doesn’t make the value implied in “murder is wrong” any less absolute itself, in the sense that it exists as a value across all times and places, and that even when we make exceptions to it, we recognize its force and do not make exceptions lightly.
(3) I appreciate your gracious comments, Jack! I do want to emphasize that I actually don’t think I’ve made a compelling argument for Heaven…I’m only sketching out some thoughts about it. Thanks for keeping me honest!
Possibly due to post-reading malaise, I don’t think I’m up to a full discussion of these issues. I do wonder, though, just what those independent Values were doing, hanging out in Heaven or wherever, waiting billions of years for creatures to emerge here on earth capable of apprehending Them in all Their transcendent glory (although I can guess what St. Augustine would say about it). It must have been frustrating for Truth, Love, Honor, Justice, Freedom, and all the rest of the Values not to have any way to be instantiated by mortal beings. Or maybe I just don’t get what it means for human values (which I’m pretty sure is what we’re discussing, unless you also believe that the Values apply to grizzly bears, snakes, and fireflies) to exist independently of human beings.