live in several dimensions.
Up and down.
Left and right.
Forward and backward.
Three to be exact.
And yet we’ve all had experiences when those three dimensions weren’t adequate. Moments when we were acutely, overwhelmingly aware of other realities just beyond this one.
At the front edge of science string theorists are now telling us that they can show the existence of at least eleven dimensions. If we count time as the fourth dimension, that’s seven dimensions beyond what we now know.
So there’s left and right, and up and down, and front and back.
Got that.
But is there also
in . . . ?
and out . . . ?
or around . . . ?
and through . . . ?
or between . . . ?
or beside . . . ?
or beyond . . . ?
Jesus talked about a reality he called the kingdom of God. He described an all-pervasive dimension of being, a bit like oxygen for us or water for a fish, that he insisted was here, at hand, now, among us, and upon us. He spoke with God as if God was right here, he healed with power that he claimed was readily accessible all the time, and he taught his disciples that they would do even greater things than what they saw him doing. He spoke of oneness with God, the God who is so intimately connected with life in this world that every hair on your head is known. Jesus lived and spoke as if the whole world was a thin place for him, with endless dimensions of the divine infinitesimally close, with every moment and every location simply another experience of the divine reality that is all around us, through us, under and above us all the time.
It’s as if we’re currently trying to play the piano while wearing oven mitts.
We can make a noise, sometimes even hit the notes well enough to bang out a melody, but it doesn’t sound like it could, or should.
The elements are all there—fingers, keys, strings, ears—but there’s something in the way, something inhibiting our ability to fully experience all the possibilities. The apostle Paul writes that now we see “as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face” (1 Cor. 13).
Right now, we’re trying to embrace our lover, but we’re wearing a hazmat suit.
We’re trying to have a detailed conversation about complex emotions, but we’re underwater.
We’re trying to taste the thirty-two different spices in the curry, but our mouth is filled with gravel.
Yes, there is plenty in the scriptures about life in the age to come, about our resurrected, heaven-and-earth-finally-come-together-as-one body, a body that’s been “clothed in the immortal” that will make this body, the one we inhabit at this moment, seem like a temporary tent.
And yes, there were plenty of beliefs then about what the future would hold, just as there are now.
But when Jesus talks with the rich man, he has one thing in mind: he wants the man to experience the life of heaven, eternal life, “aionian” life, now. For that man, his wealth was in the way; for others it’s worry or stress or pride or envy—the list goes on. We know that list.
Jesus invites us,
in this life,
in this broken, beautiful world,
to experience the life of heaven now.
He insisted over and over that God’s peace, joy, and love are currently available to us, exactly as we are.
So how do I answer questions about heaven?
How would I summarize all that Jesus teaches?
There’s heaven now, somewhere else.
There’s heaven here, sometime else.
And then there’s Jesus’s invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place.
Try and paint that.
Click here for notes on this chapter from The Love Wins Companion
Chapter 3
Hell
First, heaven.
Now, hell.
Several years ago I was getting ready to speak in San Francisco when I was told that there were protestors on the sidewalk in front of the theater. They were telling the people standing in line waiting to get in that they were in serious trouble with God because they had come to hear me talk. A friend of mine thought it would be fun to get pictures of the protesters. When he showed them to me later, I noticed that one of the protestors had a jacket on with these words stitched on the back:
“Turn or Burn.”
That about sums it up, doesn’t it?
Fury, wrath, fire, torment, judgment, eternal agony, endless anguish.
Hell.
That’s all part of the story, right?
Trust God, accept Jesus, confess, repent, and everything will go well for you. But if you don’t, well, the Bible is quite clear . . .
Sin, refuse to repent, harden your heart, reject Jesus, and when you die, it’s over. Or actually, the torture and anguish and eternal torment will have just begun.
That’s how it is—because that’s what God is like, correct?
God is loving and kind and full of grace and mercy—unless there isn’t confession and repentance and salvation in this lifetime, at which point God punishes forever. That’s the Christian story, right?
Is that what Jesus taught?
To answer that question, I want to show you every single verse in the Bible in which we find the actual word “hell.”
First, the Hebrew scriptures. There isn’t an exact word or concept in the Hebrew scriptures for hell other than a few words that refer to death and the grave.
One of them is the Hebrew word “Sheol,” a dark, mysterious, murky place people go when they die, as in Psalm 18: “The cords of Sheol entangled me” (NRSV). There’s also mention of “the depths,” as in Psalm 30: “I will exalt you, LORD, for you lifted me out
