The Diversity of Heaven

I have started off the New Year with a regained desire to read. I am presently reading my forth book of the year, Letters To Malcolm by C.S. Lewis.  In it he writes a most interesting sentence.

“If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and Heaven will display far more variety than Hell.” 

This concept is not new to me, but I am always excited when I can borrow the eloquence of Lewis. 

It is common to point out the uniformity and lack of diversity and creativity that exists within many institutionalized religions. Christianity is no exception.  It would seem that as soon as belief becomes a religion all diversity is sucked right out of it.

In some circles I find it rare to find a person who beats to a different drum. Even when I find them, I usually find them to be the ostracized one.  The misfit, the outcast, the one that is quite uncomfortable around those considered “normal” or “popular.” Even though they have this insatiable desire to be themselves, they feel they haven’t the permission from others to be thus. This is sad.  Conformity is often expected over diversity. 

This kind of social behavior is the story of many movies set in a school campus such as Never Been Kissed, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or Mean Girls. Just the same, it is far too common inside one’s local church. 

Even our concept of heaven is often one of multitudes of believers dressed in fancy white robes singing the same wondrous chorus in praise before the throne of God. We seem inept to think outside of pristine uniformity.

If it is true then that the reality of heaven ought to be far more diverse than the realm of darkness, why is this not reflected in the Church to a visible degree?  I do know of ministries, churches, artist, musicians, and other individuals where a diverse creative flavor is continually produced.  But it is still at a level of being the exception rather than the rule. 

One reason, which may account for the lack of diversity, is that believers are often of the persuasion that they are earth bound and heaven hopeful.  By this, I mean, we often purport that we will go to heaven when we die, but haven’t much concept of presently living from the reality of heaven.  We put into the afterlife much of what is intended for the present life, to such an extent that we cannot see heaven without looking through earthly bound eyes.  Instead Jesus called us to see earth with heaven’s eyes.  We have the whole thing reversed.  Our template has not been the creativity of heaven, but the predictability of a fallen earth. 

We have turned the truth of God into a religion of man that filters that truth through our earthly perspectives instead of receiving the truth and the perspective of heaven.  As a result we are very boring, mundane, conformed, and unified without real unity.  We unify around doctrines and practices instead of around Jesus.  With Jesus at the center there is much room for diversity, but with doctrines at the center there is only room for conformity. 

If a person’s relationship with another person was based on believing a list of facts about them rather than knowing them by experience, the relationship would be stagnant and old.  It would be based on fact-knowledge rather than experienced-knowing; the former being stationary and the latter being ever growing and expanding. 

We can see that God is creative. I find it fascinating that Revelation mentions creatures in heaven that are unlike anything on this earth.  If God is a Creator God then those who claim to know Him and have Him living inside them, should be very creative people.  They should be originally themselves copying not their friends, family, church, or pastor, but the Lord Himself. We become more and more who we are without fear or wounds keeping us from being that person as we get closer to Jesus.  As He conforms us to the image of Himself, we become more like ourselves than ever before and less like anyone else.  That is the beauty of the diversity of heaven. 

Unity In the Midst of Diversity

A common question regarding Christianity surrounds the issue of unity. If Christianity is true, why are there so many doctrinal differences? If we claim that God exist and that He is knowable and has revealed true information about himself in the Bible, then why do many Christians disagree about many specifics of our worldview?

Jesus prayed in John 17:23 for the unity of all believers and He says that our unity will let the world know that He was sent from God and that God loves the world. So unbelievers and believers alike rightly ask where is this unity? However, they mistake unity to mean uniformity of thinking and doctrine.

At the same time, the same people who claim that for Christianity to be true there must be uniformity do not wish for a moment to ascribe to any belief system that tells them how to think about every little thing. They are the same to hold the mindset that the church ought not to control their thinking. So is it really uniformity they want to see? Or is it what Colossians 3:14 proclaims that over all virtues we must put on love which binds us all together in perfect unity. Unity comes from loving one another not from dictating how one thinks.

Usually if everyone has the exact same response people believe it to be coached and not authentic. We know we are all unique and we think differently about things. One can notice that a car is bright red and the other notices there were three children in the back seat. Both are correct, but different things stood out to them. The problem is when they take that perspective and turn it into an absolute instead of a piece of the pie. For instance, all cars are red, or all cars must have three children in the back seat. Sometimes a truth applies across the board and sometimes it does not. I Corinthians 13 explains that now we know in part and then we shall know fully. On earth our knowledge is partial and not complete knowledge. The more our knowledge lines up with reality of what is the more we know, but even then we still don’t see the whole picture as God does.

Thus, unity is not a matter of uniformity of thinking, but a matter of being bond together by love despite our different manners of thought. And yes, this unity by love is something that is also a process that is being worked out in us and is not fully manifested in our lives. For we are all at different levels of relationship with God--growing into deeper levels all the time and the deeper we go in our walk with God the more love will prevail.

This does not mean that our thinking is not to conform to God’s truth for we can know and agree on many things that are central to Christianity, but that even with those foundational agreements there are specifics that are not nailed down and concrete in uniformity.

However, on the other hand as we mature in Christ we will become united in mind and thought as well, not because a church dictates how to think, but because we have relationship with Him who is Truth. Ephesians 4 says that God has given people gifted as leaders to the church to equip the church until she reaches unity of the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then, it says we will no longer be tossed too and fro by every wind and doctrine. Meaning, that as the Church enters maturity, even doctrine will become solid. One day all will culminate to be a glorified Church made ready for Christ. Still that unity that comes into being will be something greater than uniformity.

Again our whole desire for unity shows that there is One who brings unity to diversity. We do not wish to live in a world of rampant diversity without any unity, nor do we wish to live in a world of strict uniformity and no creative diversity. In the Triune God we find both unity and diversity and that is why He is highly qualified to bring about unity without loosing diversity in our lives. The community believers have with each other and with God joins the diverse parts to effectuate a unified whole complete with our own creative gifts and talents.