Heaven is up, down, and all around. Heaven is where God is, and God is the very Spirit in whom “we live, move and have our being.”
Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperOne, 1998) prompted me to rethink my views about salvation, the kingdom of God (which was the central theme in Jesus’ preaching and teaching), discipleship and the spiritual life, the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross, and the reality of heaven.
While I don’t agree with everything Willard teaches—such as his view that the Bible is inerrant, for instance—he helped me to realize that heaven is not just up there somewhere, but is, rather, right here and now.
He writes:
Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperOne, 1998) prompted me to rethink my views about salvation, the kingdom of God (which was the central theme in Jesus’ preaching and teaching), discipleship and the spiritual life, the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross, and the reality of heaven.
While I don’t agree with everything Willard teaches—such as his view that the Bible is inerrant, for instance—he helped me to realize that heaven is not just up there somewhere, but is, rather, right here and now.
He writes:
The Old Testament experience of God is one of the direct presence of God’s person, knowledge, and power to those who trust and serve him. Nothing – no human being or institution, no time, no space, no spiritual being, no event – stands between God and those who trust him. The “heavens” [he noted that heaven in the Greek is usually plural] are always there with you no matter what, and the “first heaven,” in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body. (p. 67)
Such words from Willard came to me as living water when I was in a dry, parched land. At the time I desperately needed to know that God was that close. That the world is immersed in the Divine and the Divine pervades the world came to me as very, very good news.
Heaven is up, down, and all around. Heaven is where God is, and God is the very Spirit in whom “we live, move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28). Heaven is now as well as later. It is where we experience conscious union with God and all of God’s creation.
In Falling Upward the progressive Franciscan priest and mystic Richard Rohr expresses the symbolic meaning of heaven this way:
Heaven is the state of union both here and later. As now, so will it be then. No one is in heaven unless he or she wants to be, and all are in heaven as soon as they live in union. Everyone is in heaven when he or she has plenty of room for communion and no need for exclusion. The more room you have to include, the bigger heaven will be.
It’s when and where we recognize that we all belong, that we are all connected.
The full article is available here
The full article is available here
