Forget Heaven

How Seeking Heavenly Glory Can Distract from Being like Jesus

“Falling Stars” (1912) by Franz von Stuck

In this essay I want to argue the following thesis: to become full Christian disciples, we should let the afterlife take care of itself. Particularly, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we might lessen the degree to which we talk about who will end up where in the afterlife. I believe this to be true precisely because such thoughts distract us from what it means to follow Jesus.

Lifelong church members might find Matthew chapter 20 a bit discomfiting, as it seems to cut against a great deal of our thoughts, culture, and rhetoric. In the first half of the chapter, Jesus tells the parable of the workers who begin their labors at different times of the day. As most of us know, Jesus explains that those who had spent the whole day working felt put out when the late-comers received the same compensation, but Jesus responds that all were treated fairly and that those who received what they expected for a full day’s labor have no justification for being upset at the generosity of the wage-payer.

But then, as if to highlight one possible lesson to be drawn from this parable, Matthew next tells us about an exchange between Jesus and the mother of James and John. Let’s recall that the members of the little band who followed Jesus were, in effect, risking everything to follow a homeless, itinerant, rabble-rousing rabbi. While the account makes clear that this mother believed in Jesus, it also makes sense that she would have been worried about their heavenly recompense—something to balance out the sacrifice they had made to follow Jesus.

But that context makes Jesus’s response more striking. Famously, Jesus seems to have little time or even compassion for the question. He makes it immediately clear that the problem is not the details or presentation of the question, but rather, the very logic upon which it is built. He explains that worrying about a place of prominence in the afterlife is wrong-headed precisely because it distracts from the heart of his message. As he is wrapping up his response, he says that the concern should not be about who will sit where at the heavenly banquet but, instead, that “whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matt 20:27).

This counsel strikes me deeply because it cuts so painfully against much of the way I sometimes want to orient my life. As one America-centric example, we often think that the United States should be striving to become a meritocracy. We Americans blanch at what we view to be archaic forms of government—things like aristocracy, monarchy, and oligarchy. So, although we recognize that meritocracy is not, per se, a form of government, we still view meritocracy as both the right principle for organizing an economy (the best stuff goes to the people who rise to the top) and also the undergirding operating system behind supplying the government with the “best and the brightest.” Part of the reason the Barack Obama candidacy was so appealing, after all, was that he seemed a walking and breathing embodiment of meritocratic ideals and systems—if a “skinny (African-American) kid with a funny name” could become president, that fact seemed to suggest that some very deep part of what is supposed to make America, America, was working brilliantly.

But one consequence of all this love for meritocracy is that it can infiltrate the way we think about religion, and especially into the way we think about heaven. This is true perhaps nowhere so much as in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the great restorationist upendings of traditional Christian belief, after all, is the eschatology that comes to us through what early church members knew simply as “The Vision” (and which we know as Doctrine and Covenants 76). As church members we often celebrate—and understandably so—the way this vision adds nuance and complexity to traditional notions of heaven and hell. After all, it would seem kind of unfair that all beings throughout time would be lumped into two simple fates—heaven and hell—and that the “top” person in one fate would luxuriate in or suffer from the same eternal destiny as the “bottom” one. How much better to have three degrees of glory, multiple gradations of happiness within each degree, and, we gather, infinite gradations beyond those. This whole system strikes us as both fairer and more logical.

And yet.

Even as I describe what strikes us an intuitively fairer about this system, we can feel the vines of meritocratic thinking beginning to worm their way into the stonework of our theology, chiseling away with quiet but persistent force. Pretty soon, we find ourselves talking about the “highest degree of the celestial kingdom” in a way that feels uncomfortably like we are talking about acceptance into Harvard Business School or, as Hugh Nibley once joked (in earnest), like we are talking about how we need to enjoy, not just lunch, but the “Marriott lunch.” Once we’ve given up that ground, then we’re entering into a truly fraught moral territory where up is down and down is up—after all, if the celestial kingdom is the Harvard of heavens, then shouldn’t those who suppose themselves to be going there feel justified in a bit of unspoken pride? It seems only natural, after all, that a place in that kind of heaven is reserved only for a very special kind of person. And, of course, most of the people who think like that will be very unsurprised to learn that that kind of person is a person very much like them.

Perhaps it is partly for this reason that Dallin Oaks, in his very first sermon as a member of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles, explained explicitly that, while hope of heavenly reward can be a powerful and honorable spur in moving us toward good works, such hope is still not the best motivation for doing what we ought to do. After quoting several scriptures in service of his point, he explained, “We know from these inspired words that even the most extreme acts of service—such as giving all of our goods to feed the poor—profit us nothing unless our service is motivated by the pure love of Christ. For our service to be most efficacious,” he continued, “it must be accomplished for the love of God and the love of his children” (emphasis added).

And I think that is where we arrive at the deepest and most paradoxical reason that we must take care regarding the way we think about the afterlife. Of course, the dream or promise of heaven can be both a balm in times of trouble and a vision in times of despair. The promise of “good things to come” (to borrow an Elder Holland phrase) can revive flagging spirits when we feel the world is too much with us and when we worry that our best efforts will never be enough. Further, there is something to be said for using the prospect of heavenly beauty as an enticement for doing what is right, right now. As my grandpa liked to say, “do the right thing for the best reason you can think of.”

Still, if we aren’t careful, this very thinking can quickly contort itself into a theology that reeks of both the prosperity gospel and of the worst vices of meritocracy. Believing that the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom represents the “best heaven” reminds us of the narcissistic Princeton graduate in The Good Place who never stops insisting (even when he thinks he has literally “died and gone to heaven”) that there must be a “better heaven” reserved “just for VIPs.” That kind of thinking begins to canker our souls—corroding the very charity that is meant to underlie the process of becoming like Jesus.

Which brings us to a final, and perhaps most insidious danger: in some religions, the body is seen as inimical to the spirit. That is, in some theologies we are meant to supersede the desires of the flesh so that we can embrace the things of the spirit. In this way of thinking, it makes sense to put off enjoyment of anything here in hopes of enjoying better things to come in heaven. But in our theology, we find quite a different view. Restored Christianity sees this earthly sphere not as an obstacle to be overcome but, rather, itself—ipso facto—as an experience that will be sanctified, as a realm that will itself one day become celestial. Woven all through our beliefs and our liturgy is the idea that what can be bound on Earth will also eventually be bound in heaven. We are veritably obsessed with the idea that what matters most in heaven will be a transcendent version of what matters most on Earth.

Because this is true, we face a real danger: focusing our sight on heaven can mean we miss out on the heaven we are supposed to be creating on earth. We are not meant to retire into monastic repose (as nice as that sometimes sounds) precisely because our theology and our covenants call us to dive into the work of making the world around us better, here, now. We are called to involve ourselves in politics because we are not meant to wait for a future nirvana to come but are meant, instead, to act “justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with [our] God” (Micah 6:8) while we still have time here. We are not meant only to wait to taste some heavenly fruit in an imagined celestial future, but to let the nectars of peaches and plums delight our tongues even now. And we are not meant to imagine a love that hovers somewhere over the post-mortal horizon like a mirage but, instead, to get our hands dirty—in the dirt at our feet, today—in doing the hard work of building love and making peace among the imperfect friends, family, and co-congregants who surround us. In other words: heaven is not a kingdom toward which we are journeying, in hopes of a distant arrival someday, but rather, heaven is who we are and what we make of the world around us, right now.

Tyler Johnson is a medical oncologist and associate editor at Wayfare. To receive each new post to Tyler’s column by email, first subscribe to Wayfare and then click here to manage your subscription and select On the Road to Jericho.

Art by Franz von Stuck (1863–1928).