The Quiet Lie of Heaven or Earth

A false choice

Most people are quietly in one of two camps. In the first, this world is temporary. The whole point is to get to Heaven when you die, and everything here is a bit of a waiting room. In the second, there's no afterlife or at least we can't know things about it.

What's here: the Earth's pleasures--and its problems to solve--are all there is. Two opposite camps. But hidden underneath, they share the exact same assumption: that you have to pick.

Heaven OR earth. One of them counts and the other...not so much. We do have an AND that we're used to but it's.. "Heaven and hell." Think about how natural it feels to say "heaven and hell". It's like "good and evil" or "up and down." It just sounds right.

The Bible’s repeated pairing

A pairing hiding in plain sight

But author Skye Jethani points out that those two words are never actually paired together anywhere in the Bible. Not because God's justice isn't real — but because "heaven and hell" simply isn't a special pairing that the Bible itself focuses on. The pair the Bible uses over and over starting from the very first sentence — is heaven and earth.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Beginnings really matter in literature, and the Bible returns to Genesis 1 nonstop. Just a few words in, both are there, together.

This isn't a simple "God created stuff" line — it's an intentional frame the Bible carries and develops all the way to the very end. And once you see it, you'll start seeing it everywhere.

From Genesis to Revelation

When Abraham is blessed, God is named "Maker of heaven.. and earth." Moses ends his life calling heaven and earth as witnesses over Israel. The Psalms come back to it like a refrain repeating things like "Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth"

The prophet Isaiah hears God say, "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool." Then there's Jesus. The Lord's Prayer — the most-prayed sentence in human history says "your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

And after the resurrection, Jesus says "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Paul tells the Ephesians that God's cosmic master plan is to "sum up all things... things in heaven AND things on earth" in Christ. Then he tells the Colossians that God is "reconciling all things, whether on earth or in heaven."

This reconciling means bringing the two back together, making peace, restoring harmony. Peter says we're waiting for quote "a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." Isaiah again — centuries before Peter — in chapter 65 says: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth." And the last vision of the entire Bible, in Revelation 21 John writes: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth..."

The final picture

So here's the picture. The law, prophets, poetry, the words of Jesus, the church letters, the final vision...start to finish, heaven and earth is a dynamic duo.

God renews what he made

God made all of creation very good. He cares, takes pride, and delights in it. And one day, he will counter-claim it back from the enemy. He will reconcile all things, healing and filling the earth with the life and goodness of Heaven. God will reverse the curse of sin completely... having total victory -- not giving Satan or death the consolation prize of an abandoned, devastated, or replaced Earth ...

There's much more we could say about how God is a restoring, reclaiming, redeeming, renewing God--not a God who starts over.. from scratch. Or about how the climax of Romans--chapter 8--says all of creation is groaning with longing that it be unleashed from the curse of sin...

Why this changes how we live

The waiting-room logic

Here's two phrases a lot of Christians use that feel really natural — "This world ain't my home" and "I'm just passing through." Each of these come from a famous old song. And they sound freeing. They tell us "Heaven is my real home, earth is the waiting room, so no need to get very attached to anything here."

But notice the quiet logic underneath that. If this life is a waiting room... If the earth--even the entire natural cosmos: ..stars, planets, galaxies and all--is almost like a paper cup that served a temporary purpose and now is being discarded....well, it gets pretty hard to justify caring that much about anything on it.

Your neighborhood. Your city. Your work. Creative acts like art or music. And the very body you're in right now. Or whether nature is that important.

Why invest much in something so.. temporary?

Wouldn't the only thing that really matters be getting as many people escape tickets as possible before it all burns? That logic would hold up — if the Bible ends with escape--God evacuating his people before all the disaster sort of stuff happens. But that's not how the story ends.

God makes his home here

• In the Bible's final vision, Revelation 21, heaven and earth are no longer two separate places. They're joined — and God makes his home with humanity, right here. The curse of sin is conquered, and all of creation is restored to what God intended. The good doesn't get tossed, wiped, or replaced, it gets renewed. The life of Heaven fills all the universe.

The hope in the middle of the story

What the heaven-only view gets right

If any of this sounds fresh, let's be clear--the heaven-only camp is right about a lot of things. When Christians die, they really do go to be with Christ, and they're separated from their bodies...at least temporarily. It's directionally correct to say that they've left Earth. This hope of going to be with Christ immediately when we die is a real promise and comfort--not something we're throwing out.

The Bible teaches this happens to those who die today. It's just the middle of the story. The final page is heaven and earth together — the dead are bodily resurrected as all the oldest and most unifying statements of Christian belief emphasize. And then God dwells with humanity in a renewed creation... forever.

What the earth-only view gets right

Meanwhile, the earth-only camp is right that this world matters. Hunger...injustice...art...people's health and bodies...the beautiful natural world and preserving it. These aren't background noise to some quote "real" spiritual life. Each camp is holding parts of the full picture. The spiritual ie Heaven and the physical ie Earth can mix. --In fact, they did--big time--in the person of Jesus Christ. What both the heaven-only and earth-only perspectives miss is actually the same thing: the Bible never asks us to choose, though it's easy to assume so given beliefs we inherit from the Greeks, medieval folks, Eastern religions, and the movies.

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An AND, not an OR

For this video, we have just this one move:

The next time you hear "heaven and earth"— and you're gonna start seeing it everywhere now — let it land as an AND, not an OR. What if you really believed in God's purposes and power to reclaim and heal all of creation? --How would you dream about God's awesome..heaven-and-earth future and respond to his overwhelming love today?