Today’s reading: Job 42; 1 Corinthians 15
Reading 1 Cor. 15 this morning sparked a conversation with my kids about whether we “go to heaven” when we die, or whether we are “asleep in Christ” until we are resurrected to a renewed life on the Earth.
Until recently, I would have read right past the “sleep” language and assumed some kind of disembodied “spiritual” state of existence in heaven while we are awaiting the resurrection. When I was younger I learned and believed that we, after dying, would eternally be in that spiritual state with God “in heaven.” Then, as an adult, I learned that the Bible speaks of our eternity, not as a disembodied spiritual existence, but as a physical existence on a remade Earth, but even then I learned that we “go to Heaven” when we die to await our ultimate resurrection.
But then, not long ago, I was listening to an episode of The Bible Project Podcast that has made me fully reconsider these categories. I will try to find the link to the episode and add it in later, but it was an episode about the use of the word for “spirit,” and in that conversation, Tim Mackie pointed out that the Biblical conception of a human is as a physical/spiritual being, and that the common notion today of a “soul” that is purely spiritual, separated from our physical nature, isn’t actually found in the Bible. Likewise, there is no notion of “going to Heaven” when we die in the Bible, but the hope is always found in the resurrection of the physical body to eternal (and embodied) life. Mackie also pointed out that very little at all is said of the state between death and the resurrection of the body on the last day, and most of the time it is talked about the language used is being asleep. In that sense, when you go to sleep and wake up, it feels like no time has passed at all, so it would seem more likely then, from the Biblical language, that when we die we are not floating around in a conscious, disembodied state in Heaven, but are unaware of the passage of time, and will awaken, seemingly immediately after “falling asleep,” to our resurrection.
The only passages that might contradict that understanding are when Jesus, talking to the criminal on the cross, told him that he would be with Him in paradise that day and when Paul says that to be apart from the body is to be at home with Christ. That said, I do think both of those still fit with this concept in that, from the individual’s perspective, they die and, that same moment, awake to eternal resurrection life with Christ. This understanding might actually be more likely too in that when Jesus says “paradise,” He is saying “the garden,” which is the language used for the Earth renewed to God’s intended state. There is also the mention in The Revelation of the souls of the martyrs crying out for vengeance, but I would actually argue today that John is much more likely being shown a vision, rather than being shown actual, true future events (i.e. John is not transported to the future or seeing a film of things to come, but a vision filled with OT imagery that is looking forward to what God will accomplish), so that vision can’t necessarily be used as evidence either way.
When I really think about the Biblical language used for it, I have to admit I think it is probably more likely that we die and then “wake up” to the resurrection on the last day, rather than any sort of “going to heaven” in the interim (though, if I’m wrong about that, that’s fine by me…). The bigger thing this has made me realize though is just how much we take what we are taught for granted and then filter everything else through that lens. Had I read the Bible as a completely blank slate, would I have ever come to the understanding that when we die we “go to heaven”? I doubt it, and yet, I have never questioned it at all until recently.
I want to be more aware of these kinds of things…
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