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ALWAYS TRADING UP #4

IF EVERYBODY HAD AN OCEAN, ACROSS THE USA

We haven’t yet been invited to fill the late Gene Siskel’s chair in the balcony to team up with Roger Ebert for a Sunday review of recent box-office hits, but I’d like to share with you today a rather vehement “thumbs down.” Actually, it’s not my own thumb — and I confess that Meg Ryan is probably the prettiest actress out there these days, but a marvelous Christian book we’ve been enjoying here at The Voice of Prophecy did NOT give four stars to a film entitled City of Angels. Since we’re discussing the topic of heaven this week, that particular Warner Brothers movie about an angel named Seth is quite appropriate.

Chris Blake’s book — and talk about two thumbs up, by the way — is entitled Searching For a God to Love. And the last chapter is entitled “Heaven Is Not My Home.” Now, on to his film review, which I’ll quote for you:

“A silly, superficial idea is afloat that ‘heaven’ is tame. I caught this idea again recently in the film City of Angels, the story of an angel (Seth) who falls in love with a pretty doctor (Maggie) and chooses to leave the employ of heaven. Angels in the movie are depicted as half-dead zombies. While open to reading thoughts, they remain closed to the more evocative senses — no smell, no taste, no touch — and are thus infinitely LESS alive than humans. These angels wear drab uniforms and somber expressions. They hang out in public libraries. They show as much individuality as a school of tuna. Hearing chiming music in the sunrise comprises their greatest perk. That’s it? Frankly, these sad-faced angels more nearly represent fallen human beings. Just look at those who are locked into addictive lifestyles or who endure hopeless existence and you get the picture.”

Not to give away the plot, but the angel in the film — a resident of heaven, remember — decides that earth is just so much more wonderful than heaven is . . . from a sensory perspective. Here’s a bit more from the theater balcony:

“Seth falls for Maggie and decides to fall. He longs to feel hot showers, smell his beloved’s perfume, taste ripe pears, catch the exhilaration of a thrashing ocean wave. He yearns for warm, aching sensations of sexual love. The poor angel wants his pores open. Later, after being asked if his fallen decision was worth it, Seth responds with quintessential ardor, ‘I would rather have one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand than eternity without it.’ Following Adam’s archetype” — referring to the Adam in Eden who rejected heaven to follow Eve DOWN — “he will give up eternity for his lover.”

Well, friend, the reason the thumb is upside-down here is because the theology is so completely wrong and upside-down. Is earth the place of feelings and emotions and joy and laughter and heart-stopping sexual passion . . . and heaven the ABSENCE of those things? Is this planet higher than the Kingdom of God, or lower? Which is it? And of course, if we stop to think at all, we realize that scriptwriter Dana Stevens simply has it wrong. At one point, Seth asks another angel: “Do you ever wonder what that would be like — touching?”

Here’s Chris Blake’s personal conclusion and testimony:

“Can we possibly believe that God is not into feelings? God invented sensation, including throbbing sexual touch, ripe peach juice dribbling down chins, the aroma of cooking onions, the sparkling laughter of grandchildren. God wants us as He originally created us, when sex within marriage came BEFORE sin, taste entered BEFORE sin, healthy emotions appeared BEFORE sin. In afterlife every good sensation will be INTENSIFIED. Without the deadening shroud of sin we will feel a thousand times stronger, see a thousand times deeper, communicate a thousand times clearer, hear a thousand times brighter, think a thousand times purer.” Then he adds: “If that’s tame, I’ll take it.”

What we have to do in our few minutes today is to balance two fascinating truths: that heaven is both REAL . . . and HIGHER. We’ve already studied the truth that we will really live there, have houses, have friendships, have meals where we actually eat and savor and delight in real food. Sometimes we tend to misunderstand the pivotal Bible passage in First Corinthians which tells us that in heaven we will have spiritual bodies. Here’s the entire passage:
“So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is RAISED IMperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

Note that all four times, it is still a body. What, then, does this expression “a spiritual body” mean? Are we going to be like this sexless angel, Seth, unable to eat a chalupa or hug a friend or ski down a black-diamond mountain? I appreciate the insights of the New International Version’s scholars for this verse. Here they are:

“‘Spiritual body’ does NOT mean a nonmaterial body but, from the analogies, a physical one similar to the present natural body organizationally, BUT radically different in that it will be imperishable, glorious and powerful, fit to live eternally with God.”

Theologian Samuele Bacchiocchi concurs with this thought:
“The spiritual man in this passage is NOT a nonphysical person. Rather, it is someone who is guided by the Holy Spirit, in contradistinction from someone who is guided by natural impulses.”

So friend, the challenge for us is to think of REAL. And to think of UP. Trading UP. IMPROVING our lives in every conceivable way: taste, hobbies, work, play, love, relationships. With these new, holy, pure, ALIVE, redeemed, sanctified flesh-and-blood bodies, equipped as they’re going to be with renewed taste buds, ear drums, eyeballs, and nerve endings. With all due respect to Nicholas Cage and director Brad Silberling, you and I have to keep in mind that when we get to heaven we’re going to be like the angels, who are created — in every way — HIGHER than we are. The Bible explicitly says that. We will be trading up, moving up, to become like them. We already did a recent radio program suggesting that angels might well have relationships that are CLOSER than marriage, loves DEEPER than our own, perhaps even some form of sexual or romantic expression that leaves the human concept of sex in the dust of this abandoned planet.

I’ve said that we need to picture heaven as real. Ironically, we may need to do that partly by moving AWAY from the “reality” metaphors we do find in the Bible. Let me hasten to explain what I mean. Because John the Revelator, for instance, says about the New Jerusalem that there was “no sea there.” And those of us who love to surf or ski or swim or just wade along the shallow ripples of the ocean scowl to ourselves: “Oh dear. So much for trading UP. Ocean-wise and surfboard-wise, at least, we’re trading DOWN . . . big-time.”

But both writers we’ve quoted today — and of course, this is human conjecture — point out to us that John wrote Revelation from his prison on the Island of Patmos. Now, he wasn’t really in lockdown; being in exile as he was, his prison was essentially . . . guess what? The sea. The surging ocean all around him served as the four walls of his cell.

It’s very possible, then, that this phrase “no more sea” was just his way of telling us that the barriers and roadblocks, the oceans that separate us from friends, the riptides that carry children to destruction . . . that THOSE elements would be erased. That twenty-foot waves might still exist for surfing, but not for separating.

Bacchiocchi adds this extra thought:

“The sea was seen . . . as a threat to the security of the universe, especially by the Hebrews, who, not having a maritime force, were constantly exposed to the dangers of sudden attacks FROM THE SEA. Thus, the absence of the sea from the new earth means the absence of threats to its security and harmony. The same sense of security would be best conveyed to [twenty-first century] Christians by other types of images such as: no alarm system, no security locks, no homeowner insurance, no security check points, or no strategic defense system.”

So John might just as well have said, “No more rogue nations threatening chemical warfare. No more need to have a secure server take your credit card number on E-Bay. No more Neighborhood Watch Programs. No more date-rape prevention programs in our schools.”
“We will wear crowns,” the Bible says. Well, will we really have little golden crowns on our heads all the time, or will we simply feel and think — and be treated like — royalty? “The lion will lay down with the lamb.” Is heaven going to be a glorified Wild Kingdom game preserve, or is this the Bible’s way of painting a picture of safety and peace, where people and species that were formerly a threat, formerly adversaries, will now coexist in harmony? Chris Blake suggests, maybe tongue in cheek, that Isaiah 65, which reads like this — “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox” — could today be appropriately rendered like this: “‘Every mouth-watering morsel of food shall be nonfat’ or ‘Computer programs shall never know bugs.’”

The foundation verse about heaven, of course, is where we’re told: “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard . . .” But is it possible that in some wonderful ways, God’s eternal kingdom will be FAMILIAR in all the ways we would love, and incredibly NEW in all the ways we could never imagine?