In 2 Timothy 4:8, 18, Paul again mentions the hope of heaven as his “crowning” joy. It has long seemed to me that, in general, believers long too little for heaven and are satisfied too quickly with earthly joys (and dissatisfied too deeply with earthly sorrows). Two passages from C. S. Lewis stimulated further thinking about that for me this weekend.
Saturday evening, in my preparation for Sunday morning, I reread C. S. Lewis’s chapter “Heaven” in The Problem of Pain. There he makes the commonly quoted statement that appeared in the sermon outline on Sunday morning (which I quote more fully here):
Scripture and tradition habitually put the joys of heaven into the scale against the sufferings of earth, and no solution of the problem of pain which does not do so can be called a Christian one. We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about “pie in the sky,” and of being told that we are trying to “escape” from the duty of making a happy world here and now into dreams of a happy world elsewhere. But either there is “pie in the sky” or there is not. If there is not, then Christianity is false, for this doctrine is woven into its whole fabric. If there is, then this truth, like any other, must be faced whether it is useful at political meetings or no. Again, we are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are re, wards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because be wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because be wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition seeks to enjoy its object.In the chapter I also came across the following statement, which give us further reason for heaven to be our great desire. Lewis’s comments are made in the context of his consideration of Rev. 2:17. He writes,
What can be more a man’s own than this new name, which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.Let our longing for heaven be deeper and our sorrows and pains on earth be shallower!
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