Joel Stein often makes me laugh. His columns in Time Magazine and the Los Angeles Times are witty and amusing even though I typically disagree with his point. Stein certainly doesn’t claim to be a Christian, or even a conservative for that matter, but I have enjoyed much of what he’s written. However, I recently read a paragraph that will change my perspective permanently.
It happened at my third place on Tuesday night. On the back of my friends’ venti Caramel Apple Cider I read:
The Way I See It #230
Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell.
I’ve written about white cup wisdom before, but I’d like to throw a brick through this small window of Stein’s “wisdom.” And as you might expect, Jonathan Edwards has the biggest bag of bricks to grab from.
In The End for Which God Created the World (#2 on my list of most influential books), Edwards writes that finite creatures will never exhaust even one of God’s infinite attributes. Though our capacity to know and enjoy God will be greater as glorified beings, we still will never deplete His riches or run out of reasons or ways to relish Him. John Piper summarizes it this way:
It will take an infinite number of ages for God to be done glorifying the wealth of his grace to us — which is to say he will never be done. And our joy will increase forever and ever. Boredom is absolutely excluded in the presence of an infinitely glorious God.
Heaven has never been about blue skies and soft music; it’s always been about taking in more of God and adoring His splendor. That will never be monotonous.
4 Comments
Sean,
I have experienced similar frustration in response to a country song I heard on the radio (not quite an intellectual a source- but a reflection of our culture none the less).
The song is “If Heaven” by Andy Griggs. Here are a couple samples of the lyrics.
Sickening and sad- O that the Spirit would open eyes to the see the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Amen. It seems like every time I think about heaven, I get more excited. But even that excitement pales compared to the excitement, joy and worship that will be when I get there!
The reason heaven is so boring to him is that his heaven has no Christ in it. Heaven without Christ is no heaven at all. A luxury hotel for all of eternity without Christ is more like hell than heaven.
Really… that just about gets to the point of ultimate foolishness. Why bother opening up your mouth that day if that sort of ignorant hubris is what’s going to spill out. I’m constantly
amusedappalleddisgustedly intrigued by our immature nature which says that Hell seems like a pretty awesome place - eternal torture, heck I can take it, at least it’ll be warm and all my favorite musicians will be there - this Heaven thing seems totally boring though. There’s a huge lack of wisdom and forethought that goes into a sentiment like that; not surprising it shows up on the “white cup”.