We Know More About What Heaven Is Not Than What It Is

Having touched on what heaven will be like, trying to describe the indescribable, it can be argued that things beyond our comprehension are often best depicted in a negative way. It is easier to say definitively what heaven is not than to say definitively what heaven actually is. This is not to say that anything about heaven will be negative. It is an admission that positive statements about the indescribable will prove woefully inadequate. To say that heaven will be fantastically pleasant leaves room for the possibility that heaven will not be pleasant enough and ignores the possibility that there are forms of pleasantness that we have no experience of in this world. Likewise, the absence in heaven of some desirable things from this life becomes unfathomable because we are too bound up in earthly lives. For example, some men anticipate having seventy-two virgins in heaven without considering the reality that such a situation might be closer to hell for both the man and the women.

Jesus provides some insight in this regard when the Sadducees, in an attempt to deny the resurrection, ask about a hypothetical woman who was married to seven men in this life, having remarried another man after each of her husbands died. Jesus makes it clear that the woman will not have seven husbands in heaven: “‘At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Are you not misled because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven’” (Mk 12:23-25). Jesus does not say we become angels. He is saying we will be like the angels in that there will be no procreation in heaven even after receiving our resurrected bodies. Thus, having seventy-two virgins will be much less exciting than anticipated, especially given that there is no change in eternity. Those virgins will remain virgins for ever and ever. A man with such fleshly expectations and ambitions as well as the Sadducee’s misconception of the resurrection are based on thinking that is far too worldly and carnal.

It is thus safer to say that there will be no unpleasantness at all in heaven than to describe how pleasant it will be. The earthly strife between husband and wife, between parents and children, and between siblings will be absent. There will be no strife between a woman’s seven former husbands, between a wife and any or all of her seven former husbands, or between seventy-two imagined virgin wives. All human relationships in heaven will be harmonious beyond our ability to imagine, but it is more accurate to say that there will be no discord. Likewise, there shall be no pain, no tears, no sorrow, no fear, no disputes, no division, no acrimony, no grudges, no toil, no fatigue, no want, or any other unpleasantness common to life in this fallen world. We normally accumulate unfortunate situations and conditions over time, often to the point that many begin to yearn for the eternal rest that Jesus promises. Experience, wisdom, and the ravages of time begin to make it clear that there is a better life to be had. St Paul was no stranger to discomfort and affliction associated with his evangelizing such that he longed for heaven, not out of despair but out of hope: “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain. If I go on living in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. And I do not know which I shall choose. I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better. Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit” (Phil 1:21-24). He wrote this after almost thirty years of ministry, probably within a year or two of his martyrdom.

Could the young Paul, had he come to Christ as a younger man, long for departure from this world not having tasted pain, rejection, and affliction? After all, the perfectly healthy and fit twenty-year-old man will have a limited experience of life and therefore a limited understanding of pain and suffering. He looks forward to a perceived future that is more pleasant than unpleasant. After time passes, however, when the earthly pleasures are more in the past than in the future and unpleasantness looms more and more in the years to come, he begins to understand less what heaven is but more of what heaven is not. We must always understand, however, desiring heaven is not escapism but a recognition of where our true happiness and our true home lies.

—Fr Booth