Sadly, I’m convinced that we tend to view heaven the way we view our car insurance. We know we need to have it, but God forbid we ever have to use it. The best thing about having car insurance is the peace of mind it provides: you don’t have to think about it until the moment you need it. Meanwhile your focus stays fixed on the car itself—what style you like best, what features you need, how you want to use it, where you want to drive it.

What Is Your Hope?

What is the hope of heaven to your life as a Christian? The question flows from Paul’s words at the beginning of what may be his most beautiful and comprehensive passage on living as a follower of Jesus:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:1–4)

In Colossians 3 Paul talks about envy, idolatry, anger, and slander. He talks about kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness. He talks about sex, marriage, and parenting. Yet every bit of this portrait— from what sins to put off to what virtues to put on, from how we love one another to how we conduct ourselves in church and at home and in the workplace—flows from a mind that is set on things above.

Right at the center of the Christian life, Paul places an intentional, disciplined, cultivated focus on heaven. Does that sound right to you?

I’m convinced that heaven suffers from a serious brand problem.

For some, the idea of heaven seems boring. This is a problem with a long pedigree. Catherine Earnshaw, of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, speaks from nineteenth-century England what many people feel today:

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable. . . . I dreamt, once, that I was there. . . . Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy.1

Do you see the implication? Heaven is literally a nightmare. As one writer sums it up, “Our ancestors were afraid of hell; we are afraid of heaven. We think it will be boring.”2 Many Christians may know better than to accept clichés about chubby angels playing harps in the clouds, but they don’t have more relatable images to fall back on. Why should I want to be at a worship service that never ends?

For others, the thought of longing for heaven feels a little bit wrong, as if there’s a zero-sum relationship between longing for heaven and loving the world as we know it now, with its precious people and their serious problems. “Heavenly-minded” is an age-old knock on people who are no earthly good. Karl Marx famously described religion as the opiate of the people, something to take the edge off their pain and keep them from taking action to make things better. I’ve heard Christians of my generation speak of heavenly-mindedness in pretty much those terms, as cover for indifference and inaction. Isn’t it self-indulgent to look ahead to an eternal world of bliss when real people are really suffering all around you?

For still others, the notion of heaven seems almost pitiful, more like loss than gain—as if heaven means the end of familiar joys in this world, joys that are significant and wonderful. Why should I long to be in some other world when I’ve got so much to live for in this world?

My sense, however, is many Christians simply aren’t thinking about heaven at all and, if asked, couldn’t say why they should be.

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