Summary: Heaven is not a place I go when I die. It is a mysterious realm that is part of my existence right now. My problem is not that I can’t get into heaven. My problem is that I am at war with God. I don’t have to wait until I die to fix this!

Shownotes

Have you ever awakened in the morning in a new place, disoriented and confused, trying to remember where you are? That’s our human predicament.“Where are we? What is this world?” The room is spinning!

My description of the world I live in is called my cosmology. The way I understand the world I live in changes how I behave. I act differently at a football game than at the movies, or church, or a restaurant.

For years, I lived under Plato’s and Dante’s cosmology. In the last few years I have replaced this with the Bible’s cosmology. I like it. The world will make more sense. I have reason to be optimistic and have access to the presence of God in ways I would not have thought possible back in the old days. 

Where Am I? The Scientific Answer

Like most people, I have turned to the scientific community for my cosmology. Science offers solid, no-nonsense real answers that can be measured and verified. It’s not like the wild speculations of religion. At least I thought this until I started paying attention to science. 

The first scientists looked at the world and saw that the world was flat with a sky overhead and heavenly bodies that made their way across. This was updated when people began to sail around the world. The flat earth was exchanged for a sphere with other spheres circling it. Then Copernicus showed that the sun was the center. Now we know that the earth is a tiny speck in the Milky Way galaxy which is made of a hundred billion stars. Dizzy yet? Buckle up. The Milky Way is just one of a hundred billion galaxies. Even worse, space and time are not absolute and “outer space” is not a vast “nothing” but a mysterious “something” called dark matter with properties that are impossible to explain. If you trade your telescope for a microscope you discover another Alice’s Wonderland called quantum physics. The only reason I thought science offered a tidy cosmology is that I had my head in the sand.

Where Am I? The Religious Answer

Religions try to explain where we are as well. One ancient cosmology says that the world is supported by elephants who sit on a turtle. Really this is no more bizarre than what scientists are discovering! 

What does the Bible say? Well, the Bible actually gives a wonderful answer to this question, though for a long time I didn’t know it. In the Bible, the cosmos is called “the heavens and the earth.” God, the creator stands outside “the heavens and the earth,” as in the first verse of Genesis.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

So what are the heavens and the earth?

Ancient people believed that the earth was flat with a dome on top. The flat part, where people lived, was called “earth.” The dome that covered it was called “the heavens.” The heavens were mysterious, inaccessible to human beings. They included the sun and stars, weird wandering planets, clouds, birds, and thunder. What was beyond the heavens? God. 

What I find fascinating about this cosmology is that it still works. Our description of the pieces has been updated but the pieces still make sense. 

1. Earth is where I live. It’s the “real world” in which I get up and eat breakfast, brush my teeth and go off to work. This hasn’t changed much. The world of Abraham and my world are much the same in spite of cosmetic differences. The sun “rises” and “sets.” I eat and sleep.

2. “The heavens” is still an apt description of the realm I observe but cannot explain. The concept of “the heavens” has undergone enormous redefinition since ancient times due to the discoveries of science but ...