Most of us think of heaven as a faraway place, somewhere up in the clouds, a destination we won’t reach until after our death. But what if we got it wrong? What if heaven was closer than we could ever imagine—and, according to the Bible, can be found right here on earth.
That’s the premise of God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal by N.T. Wright, a former Bishop in the Church of England. Considered one of the world’s leading Biblical scholars, Wright insists that the early Christians had a different take on heaven—and so should we. He writes:
Most people today imagine that the point of Christianity is to go to heaven when you die. They’re all wrong. The point of Christianity is not that we should go to heaven. The point of Christianity is that heaven comes to us. “To earth,” in Jesus’s words.
Wright believes that part of the issue is that we have put God on a pedestal: “God has often been seen as high and mighty, a long way off, not only immortal but immovable.” Yet, in actuality, the presence of God is everywhere. We don’t have to travel to see God. God is already here amongst us.
How did we get the idea of heaven so wrong?
Wright’s point isn’t that heaven doesn’t exist. It’s that the authors of the New Testament didn’t view it as a permanent retirement home for humanity. In the Biblical narrative, heaven is God’s space and earth is our space. The “good news” of the Bible isn’t that we finally leave earth to live in God’s space. It’s that God’s space and our space come together as one.
The idea of there being a heaven up in the skies predates the New Testament. In about 300 BC, the philosopher Plato first introduced the idea of souls leaving the body and travelling upward. This laid the groundwork for later Christian theological views of an afterlife that existed in the heavens.
Later, this idea was reinforced by iconic works like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. It illustrates the story of souls arriving before Christ for judgment and being sent to either heaven or hell. But it’s not based on a Biblical teaching. To this day, Wright reports that people come to funerals expecting the “go to heaven” narrative in hymns, prayers, and homilies. It has saturated western culture—and it’s a mistake.
God does not live in a place “miles up there.”
Wright tells us that “God desires to live in the heaven and earth combined reality here on earth. This is to be his home.” In fact, “Heaven’s rule has arrived, and is arriving, on earth.” To prove this point, Wright points out that the New Testament never uses the word heaven to talk about a destination after our deaths, pointing to several Biblical passages, including the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans 5:2:
Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
As Wright points out, “It is not a lavish description of heaven. It has to do with the saturation of human life with the presence and power of God.” Here are two other examples from the New Testament that talk to the presence of God here on earth:
- Look! God has come to dwell with humans! He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. ~Revelation 21 and 22
- Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. ~ Matthew 6:10
In the passage from the Gospel of Matthew above, Jesus isn’t talking about God taking people away from the present world to a faraway Kingdom. Wright tells us that “he was talking about God’s sovereign, saving rule breaking into this world. This world is where God has long desired to make his home.”
The idea of a distant heaven continues today.
The concept that heaven is in the skies has been reinforced more recently by a series of books and movies on near-death experiences, from The Case for Heaven to What Happens Next to Touching Heaven. Each has the departed traveling to another realm upon death, one filled with heavenly light and angelic beings.
But that doesn’t match the take on heaven mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, which I previously wrote about. It positions heaven not as situated in the clouds, but as a place right here on earth. Consider this passage from Luke 17:20-21 that quotes Jesus:
Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”
To clarify, the kingdom of God is synonymous with the kingdom of heaven. “In the midst of you” is a phrase that is sometimes translated as “already among you” and “already within you.” A similar passage appears in what some call the fifth Gospel, the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
Two different books from the first century, Luke and Thomas, carrying a nearly identical message from Jesus: Heaven is here right now, just out of our range of vision and perception, invisible to the naked eye.
Does heaven exist in a fourth dimension?
So how does this work? Can heaven really exist amidst the chaos and dissension we see on Earth today? If heaven is here on earth, why can’t you and I see it?
The late Reverend Dr. Calvin Butts, pastor of New York’s famed Abyssinian Baptist Church, had his own take on heaven that mirrors the previous gospel passages. Butts claimed to have had many visions of heaven over the years. He describes it as “eternal joy and happiness because you are at one with God.”
Butts was interviewed by Barbara Walters on a show titled “Heaven: Where Is It? How Do We Get There?”and said that he’s not only certain of heaven’s existence, but that it exists in another dimension. “So, you don’t necessarily have to look up but you can look out and see heaven. Heaven is a fourth dimension if you will. Or, as Luke says, heaven is in the midst of you.”
What is the fourth dimension Butts speaks of? It’s an idea based in quantum physics. Michio Kaku, a noted physicist and author, describes it as “a hidden, invisible field that permeates every part of the three-dimensional world.” We can’t readily see it, Kaku explains, because of our own evolution:
Our survival depended on operating skillfully in three dimensions, which allowed our ancestors to judge how to locate and kill game and how to elude prey. An extra dimension wasn’t necessary until mathematics, and the frustration of physicists made it so.
Kaku uses the “carp in a pond” analogy to illustrate our limited perception. He argues that just as a fish is unaware of the world above the water’s surface, humans are blind to the extra spatial dimensions that are mathematically necessary within quantum mechanics. It’s there, but our brains as they currently operate can’t see it.
If humans are growing more spiritually advanced with time, as many people believe, is it possible that we might evolve to see and sense this fourth dimension? One person who thinks this event will happen during our lifetime is the best-selling author Eckhart Tolle. In his book A New Earth, Tolle explains:
The new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all. What did Jesus tell his disciples? Heaven is right here in the midst of you.
Are we part of a reality that is larger and stranger than we can possibly imagine? Is there a thin veil that separates our world from another dimension? Are heaven and God far closer than we realize, almost within reach, just beyond our current ability to perceive them? In time, we might find that what we thought was faraway has been with us all along.
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