If Heaven Is Real, How Should We Feel About Death?

Or: if I believe that my friend is in Heaven, why am I sad?

A Facebook acquaintance recently jeered that if Christians really believe what we say about Heaven, then we shouldn't be sad when someone dies, and therefore, since most of us are sad about death, it's proof that we don't believe our own story about God.

I didn't respond to my acquaintance; partly because I barely know him, partly because I think he may have been badly hurt by the church and his bitterness is understandable, and partly because Facebook can be a hard medium to have these conversations even with a close friend. But his comments did get me thinking. And since I lost someone I cared about last week, I decided to try and put my thoughts about death on the page.

When someone I care about dies, I am indisputably sad. I am sadder the more I cared for them. Sometimes it can feel as though I am drowning in an ocean of sorrow with no shore in sight. This can happen even when I can convinced in my bones that the person whom I lost is in Heaven looking down on me.

Why am I sad?

For one thing: whatever my religious convictions, I don't actually know what happens when we die. Most of us don't. My wife calls this part of the "murky mystery" of it all. I am pretty confident that my friend whom I lost last week is currently up in Heaven smiling down at me. If that's true, then I can look forward to an eternity in their presence, the span of which will make our time apart merely an eyeblink by comparison.

But I don't actually know if that's true. Maybe I'm wrong about the afterlife. Maybe there is no afterlife. Maybe we simply pass into nothingness when we die, or we reincarnate as some other life form. Maybe there is a Heaven but I'm not going there.

This doesn't mean that I don't have faith in Christianity or in the goodness of God. It's just that faith and doubt can coexist. I think they do in most of us, to some extent or other. And the possibility that I'm wrong about all of this, and that for whatever reason when I die I will not see my friend again, is deeply saddening.

But let's say I'm exactly right, and my friend is currently up in Heaven enjoying himself with God and (almost) everyone who ever lived. Let's say that when I die, I will in fact see him again, and we'll have an eternity to hang out together.

Even then, I would be sad. I would be sad right now, for the simple and (for me) impossible-to-get-past reason that the present is not the future.

I think of it like this. Imagine Heaven as a faraway land. Further, imagine that in this land there is no Internet, no cell coverage, and no messages of any kind can be passed back and forth. If I send a message to that land, it may be passed on to its intended recipient (I have no idea), but I can be confident that no message will be coming back.

If my friend left for this land, I would be sad. I would be sad even though this land is, by all accounts, better than the land which he is leaving. I would be sad for the simple reason that we are no longer together; that, for the next fifty or sixty years or however long I have on this earth, he is there and I am not. I would be sad for the same reason that I am sad when I go to Iowa and see one of my favorite people in the world, and then at the end of my trip I have to get on a plane to go home again; not because I think we'll never see each other again, but for the simple reason that we are not seeing each other right now and it will be awhile before we see each other again.

But while the sadness is real, it's also tempered by hope. When I was an atheist, one of my friends passed away, and I just kind of assumed that I was never going to see him again. That hurt. It stung, to lose someone I cared about and to think that that was the final and ultimate end of our relationship. it sucked thinking that I would never hear him freestyle rap again, or crack a joke, or light us all on fire with his enthusiasm for a project in our fraternity. His death brought me a sort of nihilistic despair, a sense that things had been taken from me which would never be restored.

I no longer feel that despair. Now when I pray over the death of a friend, the sense I get is very strong: "All that is lost shall be restored." I get the sense that the people I love who have passed from this world are not gone forever, but are merely in another (and better) world, and that in time I'll join them. It's the difference between boarding a plane to leave a person knowing that you'll never see them again, versus boarding the same plane with confidence that you'll see them many times more even if the gap between visits is long. Both are sad, but I think one is the sadness of despair and the other is pain mingled with hope.

Of course, there's also the question of who exactly gets into Heaven. That's a much thornier question, and it obviously has huge bearing on everything I've said above. I recently attended two memorial services, one for a Christian and one for someone who had turned away from God. The atmosphere at the second was a lot more uncertain than at the first. I have Christian friends who dearly loved both of these people, and they talk about the fate of the first person with a lot more joy and a lot less uncertainty than they use when talking about the fate of the second person.

Like I said, this is a thorny question, and not one I'm going to attempt to resolve in any kind of categorical way. I know theologians who spend their whole lives wrestling with these issues and who come away with all kinds of different conclusions. I am not a Biblical scholar, and I won't pretend to be offering a conclusive answer.

But I'll at least tell you what I believe.

I've been motivated lately by Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr, who says that the key to Heaven is to "fall in love with the divine presence, under whatever name." This is also how I interpret the story of Emeth in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle. In The Last Battle there are two divine beings: Aslan (a Jesus character) and Tash (Satan). Emeth spends all his days thinking that he is worshipping Tash, only to find that he was actually worshipping Aslan without knowing it. As he recounts his story:

"But the Glorious One [Aslan] bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek." (emphasis added)

I think God welcomes everyone who truly seeks Him, even if they call Him by a different name.

I don't mean that I'm a Universalist (a term for those who believe that everyone eventually makes it to Heaven in the end). It's more that I agree with Lewis when he wrote in The Problem of Pain that "The Gates of Hell are locked from the inside." I think that being with God can be very difficult for some of us (I may write more about this in future, but in brief: being with God requires that we let go of our pettiness, our spite, our jealousy, our desire to hurt those who have hurt us, our fear, our guilt, our shame, etc; all of which can be deeply appealing even if they are ultimately bad for us). I think that's part of what Dallas Willard meant when he wrote in The Divine Conspiracy that "I am thoroughly convinced that God will let everyone into heaven who, in his considered opinion, can stand it." Not everyone wants to seek and find God, because being with God does involve and require a crucifixion of our baser desires. But I suspect that all who truly seek Him, find Him.

Most of my loved ones are not Christian, but almost all are seekers of God. My reading of Lewis and Willard and Rohr gives me hope that, when they or I pass, it will not be the end, and that we'll all be together again in eternity.

But in the interim, life is messy.

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