John Koessler's Blog

Back in the day, we used to sing, “Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace.” But eternity is a long time. For some, the few pictures of heavenly activity that we have in the Bible are insufficient to convince us that this is truly the case. I have heard more than one Christian express reservations about what we can look forward to in the age to come.

It is tempting to blame this anxiety on the nature of the descriptions themselves. It is certainly true that the Bible is remarkably spare in its details about such matters. We know a little about Heaven, but not as much as we would like. What is more, the few depictions that we do have are either so strange that we cannot relate to them or so familiar that they fail to capture our imagination.

The Bible’s visions of crowns, thrones, and four-faced cherubim may be of some interest. Yet, for most people, this is not the kind of landscape that would inspire us to pack our bags and move. As a result, many believers are puzzled about what their heavenly experience will be like, and some are anxious.

Signs and Wondering

Theologian Josef Pieper’s observation about Scriptural imagery offers a helpful starting point for considering such matters. Pieper warns that “one must clearly distinguish the images that are meant to make the essence of the matter visible to the imagination from the essence of the matter itself.”1 Pieper is actually talking about Hell, but his point is equally applicable to Heaven.

We should not think so narrowly about the imagery that the Bible uses that we miss the essence of what it is intended to signify. There is more to heaven than white robes, fantastic creatures, and glass seas. The reality to which these signs point is more expansive than the pictures the Bible uses to convey it. The whole truth of what is coming to the believer cannot be contained in the images alone.

However, we also need to guard against a view of heaven that is so abstract that its reality becomes completely obscured from our sight. The symbols that Scripture uses to speak of Heaven are concrete enough to suggest the old Sunday school song was right. Heaven is a wonderful place. It is more than a philosophy, moral rule, or spiritual principle. Heaven is a true location.

Heaven is where Jesus “came down from” and was “taken up into” (John 3:13; Luke 24:51). Whatever is intended by this directional language, we can at least say that heaven must be a place that is substantial enough to receive the human body of the resurrected Christ (Luke 24:39). Furthermore, our heavenly experience is personal, conscious and human. In the life to come, our humanity does not dissolve. We are not absorbed into the Godhead. We do not turn into ghosts or lose all memory of our earthly life. As the patriarch Job declared, after our skin has been destroyed, we will see our redeemer with our own eyes (Job 19:26-27).

These earthly descriptions are signposts more than they are windows. They are intended to spark recognition and enable us to make correlations. They are not meant to show us the features of heaven in photographic detail. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to dismiss the literalistic language that the Bible employs to speak of Heaven as a kind of baby talk that says less than the words themselves convey. These familiar images are used precisely because they imply more than the images themselves.

Hungering for Heaven

The song the children used to sing is correct on two points. Heaven is indeed a place, and it is wonderful. Such an assertion begs an obvious question. Is there anything so wonderful that we can enjoy it for eternity? On the one hand, human beings possess a capacious desire that the earth does not seem to have the ability to satisfy. “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,” Solomon complains in Ecclesiastes 1:8.

Is our problem that we want too much? It may seem so when we read Hebrews 13:5, which urges us to “be content with what you have because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Yet the point of this verse is just the opposite. Our difficulty is that we want too little. As theologian Josef Pieper observes, the real difficulty is “that every fulfillment this side of Heaven instantly reveals its inadequacy.”2

Nevertheless, there is a corollary truth in Solomon’s complaint. The weakness he speaks of is not only in the objects themselves; there is also weakness in us. The dissatisfaction that Solomon laments is the result of a weariness which suggests that, as much as we might desire eternity, we are not yet suited for it. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun,” Solomon complains (Eccl. 1:9). 

Mark Twain seems to intuit this in one of his last tales when a fictional resident of Heaven observes that eternal rest may sound comforting from the pulpit, but “you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.”3 Eternal existence without a corresponding change in our nature would not be a blessing but an intolerable burden.

We Shall Be Changed

This intuitive sense that no pleasure we now know would be expansive enough to occupy our attention for all eternity is a sign that we must be changed before we can enjoy heavenly experience. All Christian traditions acknowledge this, but focus primarily on the moral side of this dilemma. Without the perfection of holiness, “no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

C. S. Lewis takes it a step further by speculating that believers must also be strengthened before they can truly enjoy and even endure the beauties and pleasures of the heavenly realm. Perfection in holiness is certainly part of this transformation. But there must also be a corresponding strengthening of our humanity as well. Lewis pictures Heaven as a place that is so substantial, we are mere ghosts by comparison. This is the solid country, a reality whose flowers are diamond hard, its grass rock solid, and the drops of rain that fall upon those petals as sharp as a bullet.4 He is not trying to be literal, but neither is he speaking allegorically.5

The world as we know it is not enough to make a heaven. No earthly pleasure can be sustained for an eternity. The distracted search for fulfillment that Solomon laments is a clue that we were designed for something more, something higher. Correspondingly, we are not yet substantial enough to endure the eternal joy that we crave. Just as the world must be remade before its pleasures can truly satisfy, so also must we.

Infinite Possibility

Scripture is deliberately ambiguous when it compares this life to that which is to come. This indefiniteness is born of infinite possibility. “‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit,” the apostle declares in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.

The things we look for in the world to come are both promised and beyond words. Heaven is real, not only because it is literal, but because the life it brings is even more substantial than the one we are living now. Like our spiritual forefather Abraham, we are “looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). The world to come is one with an. entirely different kind of gravity than the world we now inhabit. Its name is glory.

In the Greek text of 2 Corinthians 4:17, the apostle speaks of an eternal “weight” (baros) of glory. The word is missing from the NIV, possibly because translators considered it redundant. Its absence is unfortunate because it causes us to miss Paul’s startling juxtaposition of light and weight.

Lewis seems to have got it right after all, with the more substantial light, grass, and flowers of his heaven in the Great Divorce, as well as the “solid people” who inhabit it. This is the lesson behind all our unfulfilled desires. This is the sacred reminder embedded not only in our delight but also in our hunger and our disappointment. We were meant for more. We were made for eternity.

Josef Pieper, The Concept of Sin, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 90. ︎Josef Pieper, Happiness & Contemplation, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1979), 16-17. ︎Mark Twain, Excerpt From Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, (Amherst: Prometheus, 2002), 41. ︎C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 28,47, 57. ︎Ibid., 8. ︎

The post Insatiable Desire & World Weariness: Signs We Were Made for Eternity appeared first on A Stranger in the House of God.

There are times when it’s easy for me to be impatient with the slow faith of Christ’s first disciples. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand why faith was such a struggle for them. From where I sit, they appear to have had all the advantages that I lack. They knew Jesus face to face. They spent night and day with him for the three years of his earthly ministry. They saw him die and were among the first to speak with him after he had risen from the dead.

In other words, they experienced what I have often wished for myself. As John later wrote, the proof offered to them consisted of evidence that they saw, heard, and touched (1 John 1:1). Acts 1:3 says that after his resurrection, Jesus “appeared to them over forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” Luke also says that during this period, Jesus not only taught them, “he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.”

A Slow and Uncertain Faith

So it comes as something of a shock to find in Matthew 28:17 that when Jesus appeared to the disciples once more at the end of all this, “some doubted.” Matthew doesn’t say who these doubters are. I wish that he had. I’d like to know if they were the traditional heroes of faith that come to mind, like Peter, James, and John. Or a small handful of marginal disciples who lurked on the fringes. A part of me hopes it is the former rather than the latter because I think I recognize their slow faith.

Doubt, even at this late stage, is consistent with the picture we have of the disciples throughout the gospels. They come to complete faith but not easily. Their belief develops in stages and seems to falter at several points, sometimes in the most surprising circumstances (Matt. 14:31; 16:14; Mark 4:4). Even during the final hours of Jesus’ earthly ministry, they are still struggling to grasp the details of the storyline. 

The epigram that I think best describes Christ’s disciples’ struggle to believe, at least until the Holy Spirit descends at Pentecost, is the phrase that Jesus uses to describe the two disciples to whom he appears on the Emmaus road. He calls them “slow to believe” (Matt. 24:25). There are several reasons for this slowness.

In an encounter that feels almost parabolic, Luke tells us that Jesus drew near to two unnamed disciples who were traveling from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, listening as they puzzled over the events that had taken place earlier that Sunday morning. He reveals that although Jesus himself walked with them, they were “kept” from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). This was a supernatural veiling intended to drive home the reality of Christ’s resurrection to them.

I think there is an underlying grace note of humor, indeed even playfulness, in Jesus’ interaction with them. Imagine the risen savior listening to these two disciples as they give their account of the things that he has just experienced. They speak of Jesus’ words and deeds, his crucifixion, and the reports of his resurrection on the third day. They also express sorrow over the failure of their own expectations, saying, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (v. 21). I can’t help imagining Jesus suppressing a smile as he listens to them.

I Want to Believe

Their questions seem understandable. Jesus had only just risen that morning. He had appeared to a few of his followers but not yet to everyone. These two disciples were trying to piece together the information that they currently had. Their doubts don’t seem to reflect an outright refusal to believe but are more of a lag in faith caused by a combination of incomplete information and their attempt to reconcile what had happened with what they had expected to take place.

Like the slogan on the old X-Files poster, these disciples wanted to believe. ButThey had expected the story to unfold quite differently. They were indeed looking for someone to “redeem” Israel. But the nature of that redemption and the mode in which Jesus accomplished it came as a surprise. They couldn’t see it because they were looking for something else.

This goes a long way in explaining the disciples’ struggle to believe all through the Gospels. It also helps us to understand our own doubts. I think there is a difference between being slow to believe and a stubborn refusal to believe. Like the first disciples, we may be confident that God is doing something but with preconceived ideas about how God’s plan should unfold. We have a kind of faith, but it is faith with an agenda. When God ignores the agenda we have set for him, as he almost always does, we become disillusioned. Instead of questioning our initial assumptions, like our first parents in the Garden of Eden, we begin to question God’s wisdom, goodness, and perhaps even his existence.

Also, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, our questioning usually springs from incomplete information. We don’t understand why God allows the circumstances that provoke our questions because we are unable to see how they fit into his larger plan. The concerns that challenge our faith are personal and are often narrowly focused on the limited sphere of our own lives and circumstances. What God is doing is much larger. Because we are on this side of eternity, it’s not yet clear how the little threads of our personal experience fit into the larger tapestry of God’s kingdom interests. If our faith suffers as a result, it’s usually because of the assumptions we have made about what God should be doing as much as it is about what he has done.

Irrefutable Evidence

The language that Luke uses in Acts 1:3 to describe  Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances emphasizes their persuasive nature. He calls those proofs “convincing,” using a Greek term other writers employed to speak of irrefutable evidence. In the medical realm (Luke’s own field), the term was used to refer to symptoms. Given the context, which is the bodily resurrection of Christ, perhaps this is intended to underscore the physical nature of this proof. Luke’s main point is that the evidence Jesus offered to his disciples was not only concrete, it was indisputable. However, I think that Luke’s description implies another equally important fact about the disciples themselves that is less obvious. It means that they needed persuading, even at this late point in the redemption story.

That they came to believe is clear both from their subsequent testimony and the tenor of their lives. As Peter would later put it, “. . . we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16). The apostles eventually came to full conviction, a belief that was strong enough to withstand the threat of certain death. But they were not quick about it. Or, at least, not as quick as we might think they should have been, given the advantages that were theirs as eyewitnesses of Christ’s majesty both before and after the resurrection.

This slowness is a blunt reminder that the faith Christ demands of us relies on something besides physical proof. When Jesus criticized the doubters on the Emmaus road for being slow to believe, he might have urged them to pay attention to the evidence that was in front of their own eyes. He might have told them to heed what their own senses now told them was true. Instead, the risen Lord rebuked them for ignoring old promises. According to Luke 24:25–27: “He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Believing is Seeing

An old cliché says that seeing is believing. However, the slow faith of the disciples who beheld the risen Christ tells us that it is the other way around. It is faith that opens our eyes to see Jesus as he truly is. What is more, the faith that Jesus demands is faith in a word. This faith is a matter of believing the word of promise uttered long ago through the Scriptures. It is also faith in the word of the apostles, a testimony that is rooted in history and confirmed by the fact of the resurrection.

When Jairus, the synagogue leader, was told that his daughter had died and there was no longer any reason to trouble the master, Jesus replied, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” (Mark 5:36). The adjective “just” or “only” in Jesus’ answer captivates me. It’s a word with limiting force, as if Jesus has simplified everything by saying this. All Jairus has to do is believe. Yet “only” faith is not necessarily “easy” faith. Slow faith is not synonymous with unbelief. The repeated testimony of Scripture regarding the disciples’ experience confirms this. Faith came to them, but it did not come easily. When it did come, it did not come merely as a result of external proof.

With this command, Jesus isn’t focusing on the ease of what he tells Jairus to do but on its singular nature. In this moment of need, there was only one path forward for Jairus, and it led through Christ. The only way forward was to believe and, more particularly, to concentrate that belief on the person of Christ. The one option that was open to Jairus was to lean into Christ. This is the essence of faith. Faith does not look inward in the hope of finding some hidden reserve of confidence. It focuses its attention on Christ, who is not only our help but our only hope.

Philosophers and theologians have puzzled over the question of faith and its origin for millennia. Their conclusions seem to diverge into two primary streams of thought. One leans into human reason and emphasizes evidence. The other leans in the opposite direction by viewing faith as a supernatural result of the work of God. Each of these views seems to cancel out the other.

The position that Jesus takes, on the other hand, seems to be a more mysterious middle ground between the two. The faith that Jesus demands from his disciples is not without evidence. Most of Jesus’ dealings with his disciples, especially when it comes to the miraculous, seem to presume that they struggle with slow faith. He builds an irrefutable case for his claims about himself. He doesn’t expect them to believe without substantial proof. Yet their story shows that strong evidence is not sufficient to elicit faith. They saw Jesus perform miracles and even raise the dead. They had healed the sick and even cast out demons in Jesus’ name. Jesus told them point-blank that he would be crucified and rise again. Yet after Jesus appeared to them in the flesh, allowed them to touch him, and spoke at length about what was to come, “some doubted.”

Although our slowness to believe is nothing to boast about, we can at least take some measure of comfort from the fact that we are not the only ones to wrestle with this problem of slow faith. The Bible is full of similar examples. All of this suggests that slow faith is often normal faith.

But neither should we trust our doubt. We are those that Jesus described to Thomas, those who are blessed because they believe without seeing. We also stand with Jairus, whose only viable option was the path of faith. And if we find ourselves faltering, then we stand with Peter, who, in his sinking faith, knew enough at least to grasp the hand that Christ held out to him.

The post Slow Faith: Lessons About Belief from the Disciples appeared first on A Stranger in the House of God.

What happens when we die? When my oldest son, Drew, was just a toddler, we had the conversation that parents dread. No, not that conversation. The other one. Something had happened that prompted him to ask us about death. We tried to answer as gently as possible, in terms a small child could understand. We shared the good news of the gospel with him. Along with it, we talked about the hope of heaven. We told him that if he died, he would be with Jesus. But his reaction was not what we expected. Rather than being reassured, he burst into tears. He wailed in sorrow. “Where will you be?” he asked. “Who will take care of me?” It was sweet, in a way. It was also a little unnerving because I could identify with his anxiety.

Much of what the Bible has to say about what heaven is like seems ambiguous. It’s almost as if Scripture speaks in code about this subject. It is, at least, expressing itself by way of images that are both strange and familiar simultaneously. We take comfort from the sight of things we know, but their juxtaposition with the strange is often unsettling. Saints cry out from under the altar. There are rivers and trees, or at least one river and one tree. The old heaven and earth pass away and are replaced by the new.

Shakespeare called death “the undiscovered country.” More precisely, Shakespeare’s Hamlet describes death as “The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns . . .” Most who travel to the undiscovered country do not come back, which is Hamlet’s point. But there have been some, like Samuel, Moses, Elijah, and Lazarus, to name a few. However, they don’t tell us what happens after death. Then, of course, there is Jesus, the one that Revelation 1:5 calls “the firstborn from the dead.” Yet, even he did not describe that place to us in the kind of detail that most of us would prefer.

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet seems to speak more of ordinary experience than these extraordinary cases. He has just seen a ghost, and he questions his senses. Or perhaps it is that he is pondering what might lie beyond the senses. Hamlet goes on to assert, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This is certainly true when it comes to heavenly reality.

On the one hand, the apostle Paul quotes Isaiah 64:4 when he describes the life to come and speaks of “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived,” calling them “the things God has prepared for those who love him.” Then, with his next breath, he claims, “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9–10). What things does Paul mean? They are what the apostle elsewhere characterizes as “things above,” which he also urges us to set our hearts on, seek, and set our minds upon (Col. 3:1–2).

It’s hard to think about things we don’t know. It’s even harder to set our hearts on something that seems to be at odds with everything we have always known and experienced. This is one of the problems we face when it comes to thinking about heaven. My son couldn’t imagine being happy in a world without the people he already knew who loved and cared for him, even if it was God who was taking their place. He knew his mother. He did not know God, at least not in the same way.

“Heaven is rhetorically anti-world,” Baylor University professor of theological ethics Jonathan Tran has observed. “Whatever we don’t like about this world, heaven promises the opposite.”[1] But our difficulty isn’t just that we have been taught to expect the opposite of all we hate about the present world in the life to come. It’s the impression we have that heaven stands against all that we know and love. While this is certainly true when it comes to sin, we have come to believe that it is also true of the more concrete aspects of earthly life that we know. To many, heaven is an amorphous realm of spirits, clouds, and gossamer wings. It is too indistinct to describe and too immaterial to look forward to.

Mark Twain, a religious skeptic, lampooned the popular stereotype of heavenly bliss by characterizing it as a place where the newly arrived expect to be fitted out with a harp, a halo, a wreath, and a hymnbook. If, as Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, why does the Christian message place so much emphasis on bodily resurrection?

The heaven of Scripture is not a fantasy or a philosophy. Neither is it merely a projection of our personality, style, and individual tastes into eternity. Heaven is not an invention of the church meant to serve as the carrot that motivates its members to toe the line on this side of death. It is a real location where an embodied and resurrected Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). Heaven is also an order or rule that intrudes into our earthly experience even now and will one day control it entirely.

The landscape of the undiscovered country is not as alien as we thought. Nor do we have to wait until we pass through the gates of death to catch a glimpse of its powers. In fact, if we take Scripture at its word, all those who are in Christ are already in residence there in some mysterious sense. At the same time, “we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:11). What is more, those same passages that speak of the believer’s dual residency on earth and in heaven, also promise that we have begun to experience the righteousness that is characteristic of the new heaven and earth even now.

The discomfort that some Christians feel when speculating about what is to come is often not due to uncertainty about their ultimate destination but rather anxiety about what that transition will be like. After Adam’s fall, the Lord warned that the first stage of life’s journey would be marked by discomfort. God told the woman, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children” (Gen. 3:16). It is the hope of new life that enables those who suffer such pain to bear with it.

Although the Lord doesn’t mention it there, subsequent human experience showed that the final stage of life’s journey would also often be accompanied by discomfort. Perhaps Paul is alluding to this when he writes about bodily resurrection and admits that “while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:7). The apostle goes on to say that God has “fashioned us for this very purpose” (v. 8). God designed us for bodily life. That is what the future holds for us. One of the first confessions of faith recorded in Scripture, at least in terms of chronology, was that of Job, who declared:

“I know that my redeemer lives,
    and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
 And after my skin has been destroyed,
    yet in my flesh I will see God;
 I myself will see him
    with my own eyes—I, and not another.
    How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25–27)

Shakespeare was right. The country for which we yearn is still undiscovered by us. But it is not as unfamiliar as we thought. There is far more to the Christian’s heavenly hope than harps, halos, and hymnals. In fact, none of these seems to figure in it at all. The hope of the Christian is the hope of things above. That same hope is also the secret to holy living in the here and now. We are going there. But the real secret is that we have already arrived.

To learn more about John Koessler’s new book, On Things Above: The Earthly Importance of Heavenly Reality, watch the video below or click here.

[1] Jonathan Tran, “Looking to Heaven Without Looking Past Earth,” The Christian Century, September 2022, 36.

The post What is Heaven Like? Discovering the Undiscovered Country appeared first on A Stranger in the House of God.

When my oldest son, Drew, was just a toddler, we had the conversation that parents dread. No, not that conversation. The other one. Something had happened that prompted him to ask us about death. We tried to answer as gently as possible, in terms a small child could understand. We shared the good news of the gospel with him. Along with it, we talked about the hope of heaven. We told him that if he died, he would be with Jesus. But his reaction was not what we expected.

Rather than being reassured, he burst into tears. He wailed in sorrow. “Where will you be?” he asked. “Who will take care of me?” It was sweet, in a way. It was also a little unnerving because I could identify with his anxiety. Heaven is generally considered the ultimate good. But, in many respects, it is also the great unknown. We know some things but not as much as we would like. Moreover, some of the things we think we know are merely assumptions.

Much of what the Bible has to say about heaven and the life to come seems ambiguous. It’s almost as if Scripture speaks in code about this subject. It is, at least, expressing itself by way of images that are both strange and familiar simultaneously. We take comfort from the sight of things we know, but their juxtaposition with the strange is often unsettling. Saints cry out from under the altar. There are rivers and trees, or at least one river and one tree. The old heaven and earth pass away and are replaced by the new.

Shakespeare called death “the undiscovered country.” More precisely, Shakespeare’s Hamlet describes death as “The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns . . .” Most who travel to the undiscovered country do not come back, which is Hamlet’s point. But there have been some, like Samuel, Moses, Elijah, and Lazarus, to name a few. But they don’t tell us what they have seen. Then, of course, there is Jesus, the one that Revelation 1:5 calls “the firstborn from the dead.” Yet, even he did not describe that place to us in the kind of detail that most of us would prefer.

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet seems to speak more of ordinary experience than these extraordinary cases. He has just seen a ghost, and he questions his senses. Or perhaps it is that he is pondering what might lie beyond the senses. Hamlet goes on to assert, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This is certainly true when it comes to heavenly reality.

On the one hand, the apostle Paul quotes Isaiah 64:4 when he describes the life to come and speaks of “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived,” calling them “the things God has prepared for those who love him.” Then, with his next breath, he claims, “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9–10). What things does Paul mean? They are what the apostle elsewhere characterizes as “things above,” which he also urges us to set our hearts on, seek, and set our minds upon (Col. 3:1–2).

It’s hard to think about things we don’t know. It’s even harder to set our hearts on something that seems to be at odds with everything we have always known and experienced. This is one of the problems we face when it comes to thinking about heaven. My son couldn’t imagine being happy in a world without the people he already knew who loved and cared for him, even if it was God who was taking their place. He knew his mother. He did not know God, at least not in the same way.

“Heaven is rhetorically anti-world,” Baylor University professor of theological ethics Jonathan Tran has observed. “Whatever we don’t like about this world, heaven promises the opposite.”[1] But our difficulty isn’t just that we have been taught to expect the opposite of all we hate about the present world in the life to come. It’s the impression we have that heaven stands against all that we know and love. While this is certainly true when it comes to sin, we have come to believe that it is also true of the more concrete aspects of earthly life that we know. To many, heaven is an amorphous realm of spirits, clouds, and gossamer wings. It is too indistinct to describe and too immaterial to look forward to.

Mark Twain, a religious skeptic, lampooned the popular stereotype of heavenly bliss by characterizing it as a place where the newly arrived expect to be fitted out with a harp, a halo, a wreath, and a hymnbook. If, as Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, why does the Christian message place so much emphasis on bodily resurrection?

The heaven of Scripture is not a fantasy or a philosophy. Neither is it merely a projection of our personality, style, and individual tastes into eternity. Heaven is not an invention of the church meant to serve as the carrot that motivates its members to toe the line on this side of death. It is a real location where an embodied and resurrected Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). Heaven is also an order or rule that intrudes into our earthly experience even now and will one day control it entirely.

The landscape of the undiscovered country is not as alien as we thought. Nor do we have to wait until we pass through the gates of death to catch a glimpse of its powers. In fact, if we take Scripture at its word, all those who are in Christ are already in residence there in some mysterious sense. At the same time, “we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:11). What is more, those same passages that speak of the believer’s dual residency on earth and in heaven, also promise that we have begun to experience the righteousness that is characteristic of the new heaven and earth even now.

The discomfort that some Christians feel when speculating about what is to come is often not due to uncertainty about their ultimate destination but rather anxiety about what that transition will be like. After Adam’s fall, the Lord warned that the first stage of life’s journey would be marked by discomfort. God told the woman, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children” (Gen. 3:16). It is the hope of new life that enables those who suffer such pain to bear with it.

Although the Lord doesn’t mention it there, subsequent human experience showed that the final stage of life’s journey would also often be accompanied by discomfort. Perhaps Paul is alluding to this when he writes about bodily resurrection and admits that “while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:7). The apostle goes on to say that God has “fashioned us for this very purpose” (v. 8). God designed us for bodily life. That is what the future holds for us. One of the first confessions of faith recorded in Scripture, at least in terms of chronology, was that of Job, who declared:

“I know that my redeemer lives,
    and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
 And after my skin has been destroyed,
    yet in my flesh I will see God;
 I myself will see him
    with my own eyes—I, and not another.
    How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25–27)

Shakespeare was right. The country for which we yearn is still undiscovered by us. But it is not as unfamiliar as we thought. There is far more to the Christian’s heavenly hope than harps, halos, and hymnals. In fact, none of these seems to figure in it at all. The hope of the Christian is the hope of things above. That same hope is also the secret to holy living in the here and now. We are going there. But the real secret is that we have already arrived.

To learn more about John Koessler’s new book, On Things Above: The Earthly Importance of Heavenly Reality, watch the video below or click here.

[1] Jonathan Tran, “Looking to Heaven Without Looking Past Earth,” The Christian Century, September 2022, 36.

Several years ago, I sent a letter to Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite authors, inviting him to write a foreword to a book I had just written. A few weeks later, I received a note from him which gently declined the invitation. “I am fast becoming an old man; the strength diminishes; I’m unable to do what I used to take on effortlessly,” he explained. Then, in true Eugene Peterson form, he added a line from a Wendell Berry poem: “I am an old man / but I don’t think of myself as an old man / but as a young man with disabilities . . .” I was disappointed by his answer but loved his letter. I still have it today.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what Peterson wrote. I probably crossed the line from “fast-becoming” into full-blown old manhood when I turned 70 a year and a half ago. I didn’t think about it much at the time. Like Wendell Berry, I could still think of myself as a young man, at least on the inside, if it weren’t for the old man who peered back at me every time I looked in the mirror. Lately, however, something has changed. I don’t feel young anymore. I feel my age more than I used to, and not just physically. I find myself wondering what the spiritual implications of old age might be.

Tarnish on the Golden Years

As a rule, our common perception of aging tends to be a negative one. We may stereotype this stage of life as our “golden years,” but many, if not most, people see aging through a negative filter. They view it as a time of loss and debilitation. Health declines, and friends die, leaving us isolated. There may also be a feeling that we have been set aside and marginalized. Some of this comes from within. When we are younger, our work is a major contributor to our sense of identity. It also occupies most of our energies. When that disappears, it can be traumatic. We aren’t sure who we are anymore.

I believe this loss of a sense of self is aggravated further by an underlying suspicion that the idea of retirement is unbiblical. Christians, we have been told, should burn out rather than rust out. When I announced my retirement, the question I was asked most often was, “What are you going to do with your time?” People seemed anxious for me. One of my colleagues reproved me for even considering the idea. “You can’t just do nothing!” they said.

One negative consequence of this anti-retirement theology is guilt by association with the old sin of sloth. It also suggests that our value is determined by how busy we are. For some, it may lead to a general perception that older saints are either unproductive dead weights in the church or that they are a drain on its attention and resources. Having a congregation that primarily consists of older people is seen as a problem, not a strength. For the elderly, this anti-retirement rhetoric can be a source of false guilt and produce in them a sense that God no longer values them.

Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by those who enter the last stage of their journey is the wrestling match with one’s past that often ensues. The latter years are a season of remembering and reflection. “I’m in my anecdotage,” congresswoman and journalist Clare Boothe Luce said when she was 78. It is not an accident that older people speak so much about the past. One reason is that there has been a shift in the focus of our attention. There is much more road behind us than in front. What lies before us is shrouded in mystery. We cannot make reservations, create itineraries, or even nurture ambition. What is certain is known only in broad strokes.

The final stage of life is a processing space. Our latter years are years of reflection that can turn into a downward spiral into the depths of regret. These regrets are not always for ourselves. They are often directed toward God as our focus on what took place in the past inevitably leads us to ask why. We cannot always find a satisfactory answer. At least, not one that we find compelling enough to assuage the disappointment we may feel.

The Five Blessings of Old Age

The truth is that the Bible’s general perspective when it comes to aging is a positive one. Old age is spoken of as a blessing. When Scripture tells us that Job lived to be “an old man, and full of days,” it is emblematic of blessing. In fact, in Job’s case, it is a sign of restoration (Job 42:16). In the book of Proverbs, old age is portrayed as a kind of arrival. “The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old,” Proverbs 20:29 says. What strength is to the young, age is to the old. Age is an asset, not a liability.

But for the old, there is also a hint of loss in this verse. The strength that is the glory of the young is no longer the possession of the old. What do they get in its place? Gray hair? Really? Is the benefit merely cosmetic? I was hoping for more. What is it that age brings to the table?

First of all, and this is no small thing, old age brings length of days . In general, Scripture portrays the prolongation of life as a blessing and not a curse (Gen. 15:15; Deut. 4:40; 5;33; 22:7; Isa. 53:10). More time is more opportunity. But to do what?Old age is associated with fruitfulness in the Bible, but a specific kind. The Psalmist says that those who are planted in house of God will flourish. According to Psalm 92:14–15: “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.” What the Psalmist describes might be characterized as an extended vision of God. Age leads to insight when God is our primary reference point.Consequently, there is often an association between age and wisdom in Scripture. It is no accident that counselors and advisers in the Bible often held the title of elder. But it isn’t the case that age automatically conveys wisdom. Older doesn’t always mean wiser. Ecclesiastes 4:13 observes, “Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to heed a warning.” The downside of aging is that it can produce a rigidity in thinking that leads to stubbornness and an unwillingness to receive correction. Those who are used to giving advice often find it hard to take it. However, the general principle is that time and perspective go together. The more extended our days, the more expansive our perspective. The biblical word for that perspective is wisdom.Age is the repository of memory . “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past,” Deuteronomy 32:7 admonishes. “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.” Ironically, the stereotype of aging that we have usually focuses on memory loss. Perhaps this is the anxiety that proves the point. Maybe we know by instinct that memory is a treasure. This is lived memory interpreted through personal experience. The biblical word for it is witness. Friendship with God is the ultimate gift that age has to offer. Genesis 48:2 describes how, at the end of his life, Jacob sat up in bed, and blessed Joseph’s sons. In many ways, Jacob had lived a hard life that included several disappointments, discord within his family, and great sorrow. Indeed, this was so much the case that when Pharaoh asked Jacob how old he was upon his first arrival in Egypt, the patriarch answered: “My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers” (Gen. 47:9). But on his deathbed, sick and nearly blind, Jacob pronounced a blessing over Joseph’s sons with these words:

“May the God before whom my fathers
    Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
    all my life to this day,
the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
    —may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
    and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly on the earth” (Gen. 48:15–16).

The End of the Matter

That being said, any older person can tell you that if aging is a blessing, it is a mixed blessing. The Bible does not dismiss or sentimentalize the challenges that come with aging. If anything, it is uncomfortably frank about the subject. “Remember your Creator, in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them,’ Ecclesiastes 12:1 warns. The same Bible that portrays length of days as a blessing also calls them “days of trouble.”

Scripture does indeed say that Job died old and full of days. He died on the upswing with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He had seven sons and three beautiful daughters, and every one of them was rich. Job lived to be 140 years old and saw his children’s children to the fourth generation. But I can’t help wondering if there were nights when that old patriarch closed his eyes and dreamt of the children he had lost. Did his heart leap with surprise to see their faces again? And when he awoke in the morning light, were his eyes wet with tears for the days he had missed with them?

We don’t have to deny the very real changes and challenges that come with age. We don’t even have to like them. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if they are the only things we associate with the last stage of our lives. Aging does involve loss. Our capacity does indeed change. Eugene Peterson was right. Strength diminishes, interests change, and we are unable (or unwilling) to do some of the things we once did. We may find ourselves shaken by the years and haunted by the losses that have accumulated.

I appreciate the counterpoint that I find in Jacob’s testimony to Pharaoh about his own experience. He is no Pollyanna. His words are born out of 130 years of lived experience. He is honest enough not to hide from the reality of the sorrow he has experienced. Yet Jacob’s last words confirm what the author of Hebrews says was true of him and of all who are like him. Like many others, Jacob died in not yet having “received what had been promised” (Heb. 11:39). Yet Jacob died believing that the God who made these promises had been a shepherd to him all his life. Right up to the day of his death.

I have often said that the primary work of the last stage of life is to let go and prepare for death. There is some truth in this. I suspect one of God’s purposes for the rigors and losses that accompany old age is to pry our hands away from the life we have known so that we hold them open to the life to come. But in saying this, I think I overlooked another even more important truth. The greatest gift that aging has to offer is the opportunity to trace the hand of God in what has gone before. It is the gift of piecing together the mosaic of all that has happened and recognizing in it the hand of a shepherd.

Christmas is the day that holds pride of place for most Christians. Of all the holidays, it is the one that garners the lion’s share of our attention and generates the most excitement. But this has not always been the case. In terms of church history, Christmas was a relative latecomer. Andrew McGowan, a scholar of early Christian worship, observes that feasts of Jesus’ birth “are not part of the earliest strand of how Christians sanctified time.”[1]  Christmas, at least as we now observe it, did not become a fixture on the church’s calendar until the early part of the fourth century. McGowan points out that this is also reflected in the Gospels, the church’s primary sources for biographical information about its savior, which “offer nothing of significance” about either the year or the month of Jesus’ Nativity. [2]

To moderns, this apparent lack of interest seems odd. So many biographies begin with a simple statement of the date and year of their subject’s birth that it has become a literary cliché. We usually think of such data as a fundamental starting point for understanding any historical figure’s life and thinking. The absence of such a fixed point for Jesus has even caused some to conclude that the church’s belief in Jesus is a product of myth or legend.

We would be wrong, however, to conclude that the first Christians considered Jesus’ birth unimportant or less than factual. Three of the four Gospels emphasize Jesus’ birth, and the apostle Paul asserts that Christ died for the ungodly “at just the right time” (Rom. 5:6). The precise day and month may not have been of primary interest to the early Christians, but the timing was.

Matthew, for example, begins his account with a genealogy that traces the lineage of Jesus from Abraham but does not identify Joseph as his father. Instead, he describes Joseph as “the husband of Mary,” calling her “the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah” (Matt. 1:16). This distinction sets the stage for Matthew’s narrative of the events surrounding Christ’s birth, in which he underscores its miraculous nature without minimizing its factuality. He takes pains to portray the Nativity of Christ as a natural birth that was the result of a supernatural conception (Matt. 1:18).

Although Matthew does not fix the exact date of the birth, he does provide a narrative framework that indicates that these events took place in real-time. For example, Matthew begins his account by pointing out that Mary conceived while she was betrothed to Joseph, but before the actual wedding had taken place (Matt. 1:18). In Matthew 2:1, he tells us that the Magi arrived in Jerusalem “after” Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea and “in the days of Herod the king.”

Luke also begins his Gospel with a birth story. But Luke begins his account with a narrative of the birth of John, the forerunner, whose mission will be to announce Jesus’ coming. Luke also does not give a precise date or year for Jesus’ birth but does provide the same general historical beginning point for his account as Matthew does by observing that John was born “in the time of Herod king of Judea” (Luke 1:5). Herod the Great reigned from 40 BC to around 4 BC. Therefore, like Matthew, Luke places the Nativity of Christ within the framework of history.

Luke further anchors Jesus to history when he describes the circumstances that moved Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. He explains that the change of location was precipitated by a “census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2). Admittedly, there are scholarly differences of opinion about the actual identity of Quirinius and the precise date of the census. However, none of these obscures Luke’s clear intimation that the birth of Jesus occurred in historical time. Luke was not repeating stories that had their roots in the mists of legend and myth. His certainty of the historical nature of Christ’s life was bolstered further by the Gospel writer’s sources. He tells us that his information comes from “those who from the first were eyewitnesses” as well as careful investigation (Luke 1:2–3). Luke interviewed those who had seen and heard Jesus in the flesh.

Luke is also the first, at least in terms of the order of the Gospels, to use language about Jesus that describes his entrance into the world as an epiphany. In his prophetic hymn of praise, Zechariah (the father of John the forerunner) employs the imagery of light in a way that characterizes Jesus’ first coming as a divine visitation. Zechariah speaks of Jesus as “the rising sun” who “will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace” (Luke 1:79). Zechariah’s language alludes to the words of the prophet Isaiah, who spoke of a “great light” that would shine upon those living in deep darkness (Isa. 9:2).

John, like Matthew, wrote as an eyewitness of Christ’s acts and words both before and after the resurrection. Like Luke, John begins his Gospel by speaking of Jesus’ birth as a manifestation of God while confirming its historical nature (Luke 1:17). However, instead of narrating the specific details, John begins with a simple statement that simultaneously affirms the factuality of Christ’s birth and the reality his pre-existence. He describes Jesus as the Word, who was with God, was God, and tells us that this same Word “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1, 14). Jesus, John tells us, was the God who has always existed but was also born as an infant.

Like Matthew and Luke, John does not give us the date of Christ’s birth. Yet, in his first epistle, he speaks of Jesus in the most concrete way possible, calling him the Word of Life, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1). John knew Jesus as flesh and blood. But he also understood that Jesus was more than this. In 1 John 1:2, the apostle also uses a word that describes Christ’s incarnation as an appearance or manifestation (φανερόω) of the divine. This is the language of epiphany, but not in the lower sense that we often use the word today. We usually speak of “having” an epiphany. It is a way of talking that implies that such experiences are primarily subjective. One person’s epiphany is another person’s fantasy (or worse). But in its theological sense, an epiphany is primarily something God does. It is a manifestation of God. John does not merely say that he eventually came to understand Jesus in a deeper sense. His assertion is more concrete than this. John claimed to have heard, seen, and touched God himself. The birth of Jesus was a visitation of God.

The notion of God visiting was certainly not a radical one in the ancient world. The old myths were full of such stories. Nor was the idea of divine visitation entirely alien to the religion of Israel. The foundation of the Old Testament is laid with stories about Abraham, Moses, and others who experienced theophanies in which God appeared to them in human form.[3] In Jesus Christ, however, God not only appears in human form, he becomes human. As John so strikingly puts it, with the birth of Christ, God is not only seen and heard, but also touched. John says that the Word “became” flesh.

Matthew, Luke, and John are not the only New Testament writers to employ the language of epiphany when speaking of the incarnation. The Pauline hymn of 1 Timothy 3:16 says that Christ appeared (ἐφανερώθη) in flesh. This refers not only to Jesus’ birth but to his entire life and ministry, which is summarized in the poetry of this verse. This statement was not intended to be a work of art. It is a confession of the faith that was “preached” and “believed” by the church. In a similar way, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls Jesus “ the exact representation” of God’s “being” (Heb. 1:2). Yet he echoes the language of Genesis 1:27, where we are told that God “created mankind in his own image,” when he says in Hebrews 2:17 that the pre-existent Son was “made like” (ὁμοιωθῆναι) us, “fully human in every way.” The Te Deum, a Latin hymn of the 5th-century church, declares: “When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.” These New Testament writers tell us that neither did Jesus abhor the humanity that he became as a result of his sojourn there.

The miracle we celebrate at Christmas is that of Jesus Christ “becoming” the ultimate epiphany. The incarnation of Christ was a form of divine revelation in a tangible mode. John testifies that Jesus was heard, seen, and touched. Luke goes even further when he tells us that Jesus was conceived, carried in Mary’s womb, born, wrapped in cloths, and laid in a manger (Luke 2:6–7). The infant Christ did not merely look like a baby. He was a baby, as human, small, and fragile as the carols say. His birth was real, and so were its effects. Colossians 2:9 tells us that in Christ, “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” But equally astonishing is the promise of verse 10, which assures us that in Christ, we also “have been brought to fullness.” This is a consequence not only of the “fullness of the Deity” that Christ has always possessed but also of the fullness of Christ’s humanity that was made possible by the incarnation.

Christmas is a celebration of the manifestation of the fullness of God in the humanity of Christ. Implicit in this is the promise that God will also manifest the fullness of his power in us. Christ is the embodiment of God. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we become the embodiment of Christ. We do not become gods ourselves. But as Ephesians 2:4 reminds us, by putting on “the new self” we become “like God.” You might call that an epiphany.

[1] Andrew B. McGowan, Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014), 249.

[2] Ibid.

[3] For example, Gen. 12:7; 16:13; 17:1; 18:1; 26:2, 24; 35:9; Exod. 3:2; Judges 6:2; 13:3, 10.

During this past presidential election, Joe Rogan attempted to sit down with Kamala Harris for an interview. When they were unable to come to terms, the host of the Joe Rogan Experience, often described as the world’s most successful podcaster, expressed disappointment. “I hope she does,” Rogan said. “I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her.”

Whatever you may think of Rogan, he was correct in describing conversation as the art of talking to someone like a human being. Other creatures can communicate. Dogs bark. Cats yowl. Even bees dance to signal to other bees where they can find food. But humans converse. James Como has called the ability to have a conversation “the most concrete, palpable, frequent and important act of human being.”[1]

More Than Messaging

There is more to conversation than talk. The word converse comes from a Latin verb that means to dwell or keep company with. We can still find a vestige of this sense in the old King James Version, which uses the term conversation to translate a Greek word that means “way of life” (cf. Gal. 1:13). But in our day, conversation usually refers to casual communication with someone. Still, it is not the atmosphere, or what some might describe as a “chill vibe,” that transforms ordinary speech into conversation. To converse is to turn toward someone. It is to open the door and invite others to share their thoughts with us. When we converse, we entertain ideas that we might not otherwise consider. They may be notions that seem strange to us, opposed to our own, and perhaps even offensive.

Conversation is an act of hospitality. In modern parlance, hospitality is a particular form of socializing. If you invite a friend over to your house for dinner, you are showing them hospitality. Its industrial sense adds another dimension. If you work in a hotel or a motel, or even if you rent your house out to weekenders for vacation, you are a part of the hospitality industry. All of these ideas have echoes of the ancient exercise of hospitality. But in the ancient world, hospitality was something much more serious.

Three Pillars of Hospitality

Traditionally, hospitality was something extended to an outsider. By it, one offered the comfort, safety, and privileges of family to someone who was not normally a part of the household. The ancient practice of hospitality was grounded on three foundational assumptions:

In order to be genuine hospitality, that which was granted must be the actual possession of the one who offers it. This idea is reflected in the adjective Philos, the first half of φιλόξενος (philoxenos), the Greek word for hospitality. As Mary Scott explains, “Philos is used of people or things which belong to one, and with which one should be able to feel relaxed in that one is not in competition with them; so that philon is used of things or actions which are not alien, which are natural to one’s character or mood at the time.”[2] Hospitality happens when we temporarily extend the boundaries of what is ours by inviting an outsider (literally a stranger) into our circle and treating them as if they were friends or family.Even though hospitality was widely regarded as a cultural obligation, the one to whom it was extended did not have an inherent right to what they received. The ancients did not think of hospitality as the utopian practice of an egalitarian world where everyone was free to use the possessions of another. Nor was their vision that of a possessionless society. It was instead the opposite. The virtuousness of hospitality arose from an awareness that we live in a competitive and often hostile world where others might attempt to take what is ours. But this virtue is also energized by the potential for reciprocal benefit. As Mary Scott observes further, “The relationship of xenia, hospitality or guest-friendship, is basically self-seeking.”[3] One of its aims was to create a circle of cooperative relationships. As Scott explains, “To travel in his own country and in other countries, the agathos needs a network of xenoi, guest-friends,  who will provide him with the basic necessities of life.”[4] For the early church, hospitality was a means of spreading the gospel and disseminating Christian doctrine (1 Cor. 16:3; 2 Cor. 3:1).Hospitality established boundaries that enabled those who would otherwise be competitors and enemies to relate to one another as if they were friends. These did not automatically make their differences (or even their mutual antipathy) disappear. Hospitality is a social convention, not an emotion. It imposes obligations and maintains boundaries, which result in a temporary cessation of hostilities between parties that might otherwise relate to each other as enemies. The exercise of hospitality created a temporary social structure that allowed those with strong differences to interact and perhaps even begin to understand one another better. For the ancients, hospitality was a unique category of friendship that assigned the status of ξένος to both. Consequently, in ancient Greek, the word could describe either the guest or the host since they were both strangers to one another. 

Strange Conversations

All three assumptions have parallels in the practice of conversation. For example, conversation involves a kind of extension of one’s intellectual boundaries that allows us to entertain strange and perhaps even disagreeable ideas. It differs from proclaiming, which is one-sided. The gospel can still be proclaimed in a conversational mode, but when this happens, its message is expressed within a framework where there is a mutual exchange of ideas.

In the turning toward another that is at the heart of conversation, one opens the door to the thoughts, ideas, and feelings of others. Conversation implies mutual consideration. However, it does not automatically follow that one who converses abandons their convictions and positions in the process or even temporarily puts them “on the shelf.” Conversation belongs to the family of speech known as dialogue. A dialogue is a kind of encounter that involves mutual exploration and exposure. To dialogue is to talk with someone, not just at them. It is an activity that involves discussion, an exchange of reasoning, and even argument. Those who discuss do not necessarily agree. Where there are opposing ideas in play, any agreement is highly unlikely without some form of dialogue. Nor should we assume that this kind of exchange is dispassionate. Dialogue can be heated. When some came down to Antioch from Jerusalem and began to teach that it was necessary to be circumcised according to the custom of Moses to be saved, Acts 15:2 observes that this “brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.” Dialogue was part of the toolbox of the church’s earliest evangelists. They also employed discussion and debate to refine their own understanding of the church’s doctrine. Conversation creates a safe space where new ideas can be proposed, explored, and tested. This does not mean, however, that the first messengers of the Christian faith treated everyone’s ideas as if they were as credible as their own. Rather, they employed questions, debate, and discussion in order to challenge the false thinking of their age.

In order for conversation to occur, words must be spoken and ideas exchanged. This much is clear. But what seems less obvious is that conversation also involves shared silence. As Ann Berthoff observed, “If dialogue is at the heart of conversation,  at the heart of dialogue is silence.”[5] Berthoff points out that silence is necessary for the act of speech itself. As anyone who has tried to decipher a mumbled or run-on sentence can tell you, the words we say are made discernable by the spaces that the silence between words creates for them. Berthoff explains, “The polar opposition of silence is the necessary condition of speech: when we talk, the sounds are shaped and differentiated by means of silence.”[6] But it is not enough to simply hear the words or even to know their definition. Conversation is an interpretative art, and Berthoff uses the phrase “homiletical silence” to speak of the intellectual space that enables the listener to do this. Berthoff’s analogy draws on the sermonic tradition, which is also a kind of conversation between the preacher and the listener.

In the context of a sermon, homiletical silence is a three-dimensional discipline that involves listening, patient reflection, and understanding. Since most sermons take the form of a monologue, the burden for a conversational element rests primarily upon the shoulders of the preacher, who must practice a kind of “priestly advocacy.” The preacher stands between the text and the congregation and listens to the Word of God on their behalf.[7] In ordinary conversation, however, this burden is shared along with the accompanying silence, rendering the silence of conversation more than the pause that waits until it is my turn to speak. In that silent space, we entertain the strange, seeking to understand even though we may already know that it is likely that we will still be at odds when the conversation ends. After all has been said, we may remain strangers and perhaps even opponents.

Protected Spaces

Hospitality does have limits, as Jael’s story in the book of Judges bluntly reminds us (Judges 4:17–24). In the same way, some intellectual spaces are meant to be protected, especially within the confines of the church. Not all ideas should be entertained (cf. 1 Tim. 4:7). Nor is everyone allowed to give voice to their views. In 1 Timothy 1:3-4, the apostle urged Timothy to  “charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.” Not every idea is a good idea. There are times when it is necessary to do battle with our words and, like Jael, drive a stake through the temple of an opposing argument.

The context, of course, always makes a difference. When it comes to the essential truths of the Christian faith, Scripture teaches us to set boundaries. Within the precincts of the church, the words of false teachers are not meant to have free reign. Their ideas are to be challenged and their voices silenced. Outside the church, however, it is a different matter. There, in the marketplace, anyone may say their piece. The public sphere is the realm of debate and public discourse. It is also the sphere where the art of conversation is most needed. But if the last election has taught us anything, it has reminded us that the human art of conversation is not as easy as it looks. It is not enough to open one’s mouth and let the words pour out, especially when those who engage with each other have serious differences. These are often differences not only about our views but also about the rules of engagement when talking about them.

Scripture does not provide a simple strategy to make this task easier for us. It does, however, offer a foundational rule that can create a hospitable space for those who wish to make an attempt at conversation. It is the rule of life expressed in James 1:19–20: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” The hospitality of conversation offers the combined grace of silent listening and acceptance to those whose thinking is strange to us. It is a discipline that is essential to the peace of any society where diverse and mutually exclusive world views coexist. But its practice is even more crucial for those whose aim is persuasion. Because before anyone can be persuaded that they are wrong, they must first believe that they have honestly been heard and correctly understood.

[1] James Como, “The Salon: Restoring Conversation,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 22, no. 1 (2014), 33.

[2] Mary Scott, “PHILOS, PHILOTĒS AND XENIA,” Acta Classica 25 (1982): 3.

[3] Ibid., 6.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ann E. Berthoff, “Homiletic Silence and the Revival of Conversation,” The Sewanee Review 122, no. 4, (2014): 587.

[6] Ibid., 588.

[7] John Koessler, Folly, Grace, and Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 96.

In a letter discussing the infant theory of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein famously observed that God “does not play dice.” Perhaps, but sometimes, it feels as if God does play games with us. At least, Martin Luther seems to have thought so. After studying the Old Testament patriarchs, Luther concluded that God is a Ludus Deus, a God who plays and often engages with us in a ludus divinus, or divine game. In modern vernacular, we might be tempted to paraphrase this by saying that God is “messing with us.”

This divine game is a kind of adversarial love, often reflected in circumstances that cause us to echo Jacob’s complaint recorded in Genesis 42:36: “Everything is against me!” What we really mean when we think this is that God is against us. In the divine game that Luther describes, God relates to us as if he were our enemy in order to make himself our friend. He judges in order to bless. He rejects so that he may eventually accept.

The nature of this adverse love is captured in the line from William Cowper’s hymn God Moves in a Mysterious Way which urges:

“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace;

behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

Luther’s thinking about this is part of a larger theological framework called Theologia Crucis, or the theology of the cross. This is, in part, a theology of suffering. Vincent Kam summarizes Luther’s theology of the cross this way: “God’s grace is hidden under his wrath, and his salvation is hidden under the cross.”[1]

What Luther describes is a sort of masquerade. This is not a pretense so much as a one-sided display that paves the way for grace. We find several instances of this in the Old Testament. One prominent example was the Lord’s expressed intent to destroy Israel after they sinned with the golden calf. “I have seen these people,” the Lord told Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation” (Exod. 32:9–10). Despite this offer, Moses argued with God, appealing to his nature and citing the promises made to the patriarchs (Exod. 32:11–14).

Moses did not really talk God out of doing anything. Rather, it was the opposite. By implying that Moses stood in his way, the Lord invited him to intercede. Moses stood between God and judgment once again when the people were on the threshold of Canaan and refused to go into the Land of Promise. As before, Moses reminded the Lord of what he had already revealed about himself, quoting God’s own words back to him and basing his appeal on the mercy that had been shown to Israel in the past (Num. 14:17–19).

Although he describes God’s anger as a kind of mask, Luther does not seem to have meant that it is merely feigned. Divine wrath is both real and dangerous to its objects. The thought of God’s anger is genuinely terrifying, even to those who are safe from it. Luther compared  this divine game to “a cat’s game which means death to the mouse.”[2] In 2 Corinthians 5:11, the apostle Paul similarly observes: “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others.” Yet, this fear was not the only driving force behind Paul’s ministry. Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not even the main driver. In verse 14, the apostle goes on to add, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”

Paul’s language in these verses echoes his conversion experience on the Damascus road, where a blazing encounter with the glory of Christ left the future apostle face down in the dirt (cf. Acts 9:4–19; 22:6–21). Although Paul’s fear was both real and warranted, it was not the reason Christ appeared to him in this way. The endgame was not to terrify but to commission. From this moment on, Paul’s relationship with Christ fundamentally changed along with his mission. The persecutor of Christ became an apostle, Christ’s ambassador, and a messenger of God’s reconciling love (2 Cor. 5:18–21).

 Fear and love, like wrath and reconciliation, do not seem like they should be compatible with one another. Scripture seems to say as much. “There is no fear in love,” 1 John 4:18 asserts. “But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Yet John’s statement about the two mirrors not only Paul’s experience but reflects a kind of order of priority. The experience of fear serves the agenda of divine love.

There is probably no one in Scripture whose experience exemplifies Luther’s concept of ludus divinus more than the Old Testament patriarch Job. According to the first chapter of the book that bears his name, Job’s great trial is set in motion when God draws Satan’s attention to him. “Have you considered my servant Job?” the Lord asks. “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). Job is offered for consideration in a way that seems to portray him as God’s champion, without a peer among the Lord’s servants. The assertion itself appears as if it’s designed to invite a challenge. The God who already knows the answer to every question that he asks is playing a game.

Satan takes the bait and outlines the general terms of the contest in Job 1:10–11. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land,” Satan declares. “But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 1:10–11). God grants Satan’s terms. But the fact that he sets limits is an indication of who is really in control. “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power,” the Lord told him,  “but on the man himself do not lay a finger” (Job 1:12).

If this is a game, or at least a contest, what is Job’s role in it? Is he a player? Or is he being played with? All of this takes place out of Job’s hearing. He has no say in how the contest should take place. Neither does he have any idea that his life is the board upon which it is about to be played or that his children, his possessions, and even his health are its pieces. One is given the impression that the real contest that is about to unfold is between God and Satan. The fact that the Lord surrenders so easily to Satan’s conditions makes it clear that God is not only playing with Satan, he is playing him. The game is rigged in God’s favor, but Satan doesn’t realize it.

Job, on the other hand, does. It’s remarkable that despite the assortment of things that trigger his great suffering (the Sabeans, fire that falls from the sky, the Chaldeans, hurricane-force winds, festering sores on his skin, and even Satan himself), the only agent that Job really concerns himself with is God (Job 9:33–35). Job doesn’t exactly call God a bully, but the emotional tone of all his complaints can be roughly summarized as: “Pick on someone your own size” (cf. Job 9:1-12; 23:13–17). Yet, as unhappy as he is with his situation or with God, Job clings to faith. He expresses remarkable confidence in how God would dispose of his case if he were to be granted an audience with him. “Would He prosecute me forcefully?” Job speculates. “No, He will certainly pay attention to me. Then an upright man could reason with Him, and I would escape from my Judge forever” (Job 23:6–7).

Job had an intuitive sense that there was more behind these things than he was able to see. If this was some game, Job’s faith convinced him that he would prove the winner in the end. Yet Job also knew that this victory would not be due to his own strength or even his righteousness, which Scripture assures us was real (Job 1:1, 8). Job may be the hero of this story, but he is not the champion. The unexpected resilience of Job’s faith is ultimately traceable to his hope in another. Job was convinced that he was not to blame for the things that happened to him. But his trust was in a redeemer (Job 19:25).

What Job saw, though only through a cloud, we now understand with the kind of clarity that the incarnation of Jesus Christ alone can provide. Long after Job’s tortured bones had turned to dust, another player stepped onto the board. As Christopher Boyd Brown has observed, “When God plays his game with his saints, he does not simply set up a game for them to play (and lose) against terrible opponents—sin, death, and hell. Rather, God himself is in the game, in the incarnation. To play God’s game is to play with God, the incarnate God.”[3] Job might also add, to play God’s game is to be played by God and win.

[1] Vincent Kam, “Luther on God’s Play with His Saints,” Lutheran Quarterly, 34 no. 2 (2020), 139.

[2] Christopher Boyd Brown, “Deus Ludens: God at Play in Luther’s Theology,” Concordia Theological Quarterly, 81 no. 1–2 (January–April 2017), 163.

[3] Christopher Boyd Brown, Ibid., 166.

I was a young Jesus freak when I purchased my first “Christian” book. It was a paperback entitled Manners and Customs of the Bible, and it changed my life. Up until then, my approach to Scripture had been somewhat haphazard. I dropped into various books of the Bible like a visitor on a day trip, interested but ignorant about much of what I found there. The Bible seemed mysterious and peculiar, especially the Old Testament. Now, I had something to help me make sense of it. It transformed me from being a biblical tourist into a student, and I’d like to think, eventually, a scholar. I kept that book on my shelf long after it was useful, more for sentimental reasons than anything else. I also began to buy books about the Bible the way a mechanic buys tools. Books were an item in my monthly budget, like the electric bill or groceries.

A little more than a decade after I purchased that first reference book, I bought a personal computer. At the time, I viewed it mostly as a souped-up typewriter. I was thrilled that I no longer needed to spend my Friday turning my handwritten notes for my sermon into typed pages. I just put paper in the printer and pushed a button. I had no idea how much I would come to depend upon the computer for my research, writing, and sermon preparation. Or how much money I would eventually spend on new equipment and software. The computer did not exactly make my physical library obsolete, but in time, it did make some of it superfluous. With my Bible software and the information I found on the Internet, I found myself going to my old books less often. But that didn’t mean I was ready to ditch them.

I eventually came to feel just as strongly about my computer as I did my physical library, but for different reasons. The way I felt about my computer was more pragmatic than sentimental, prompted mainly by its functionality and its cost. Both have increased exponentially, along with the anxiety I feel when it’s not working right, or the technology has advanced to the point where my machine has become obsolete. As Neil Postman observed:  “Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not either or, but this-and-that.”[1]

The books on my shelf don’t change. Computers and the software that runs on them are a different matter. The users of Logos Bible Software got a fresh reminder of this with its latest release, which its makers are describing as the “next era  of Logos.”[2] The biggest changes in this version are economic and technological. First, like many other software companies, the makers of Logos have moved from an ownership to a subscription model. “Logos is moving to subscription, that’s for our software,”  Bill McCarthy, CEO of Logos, explains. “It doesn’t change the relationship or the dynamics of how our content is acquired.”

According to McCarthy, the benefit of moving to a subscription model is reciprocal. On the one hand, it means that Logos software will be accessible to more people than ever because it is now offered at a more affordable price. “It’s a huge unlock for us,” McCarthy said. “It extends our reach to millions and millions of more folks.” On the other hand, changing the payment mode also benefits the company by providing a steady stream of resources to fuel future development. It’s part of a larger strategy whose goal is to reach a billion users. McCarthy explains, “We can’t do that without a model that allows for it from a cost standpoint.”

“It’s a huge unlock for us.”

Bill McCarthy, CEO of LOGOS

This may be a watershed moment for Logos but not for the software industry as a whole. Companies like Adobe and Microsoft have employed a subscription model for a while now. It’s a model that guarantees that subscribers are always on the cutting edge of the latest developments. The downside for the consumer is that the cumulative cost can be significant over time. However, the three price points that Logos is currently offering seem fairly accessible, especially when compared to the buy-in price of their older packages. Every subscription level provides access to a library of resources. If users cancel their subscription, access to those base libraries goes away, along with the other new features that are tied to the subscription. The books that users purchase during their subscription period remain theirs to keep, along with any they may have bought under the old model.

Logos offers three subscription tiers, each one aimed at a specific audience. As might be expected, the more you pay, the more you get. The distinction between them isn’t just in the volume of material you can access. The nature of the content also differs. The lowest tier is geared toward small group leaders and teachers who want a basic library of study tools that will help them understand the Bible, prepare lessons, and formulate study questions. The highest tier is for scholars who are doing in-depth research in the area of biblical languages, writing papers for academic journals, or preparing sermons. Between these two, the middle tier is designed for those who prepare sermons while engaging in the busy life of the church.

Feedback from current users about this new economic model seems mixed. Some have expressed excitement about the lower buy-in cost. Other users who have already invested a significant amount of money in building their library, some running in the tens of thousands of dollars, are less happy about the prospect of paying more through a monthly subscription. A former colleague of mine whose seminary students are required to purchase Logos for his classes observed, “Personally, I just don’t like the idea of subscriptions.” Still, he says that he understands why Logos would want to have a consistent revenue system and notes that it makes the software more affordable to students. He told me that his school is currently reevaluating what their relationship with Logos will look like moving forward.

The company will continue to offer a simplified, free version of the software. However, it won’t be the same as the subscription version. The free version comes with a limited library. It combines books in the public domain, free versions of titles that publishers have granted Logos permission to include, and titles from Lexham Press, which is the publishing imprint of the company that produces the software. Sean Metcalf, a Logos representative, explained to me, “Subscription is our way of delivering the newest, upcoming features of Logos, which will be coming out in the next year.” Subscription is what separates the advanced tools in the new software from the library bundles that those who have Logos 10 or above already own. Anyone who has already purchased bundles will still be able to use them, but the advanced features of the new version will only be available to subscribers. Logos will continue to offer “add-on” libraries for purchase, which will be owned by the user in perpetuity regardless of whether or not they stay subscribed.

The new features in Logos that are tied to subscriptions reflect a substantial investment in the use of artificial intelligence. AI enables Logos to search across its extensive library and summarize the results. It also creates prompts that help Bible study leaders formulate discussion questions, and preachers construct sermon outlines. Artificial intelligence is an anxiety trigger for many today due more to popular mythology than anything else. The mere mention of it brings to mind visions of popular movie franchises like The Matrix and The Terminator, which imagine a world to come where intelligent machines are out to get us. Like all technologies, it is certainly possible for artificial intelligence to be used unethically. Its role in the creation of deepfake images, videos, and audio is a good example. AI technology has made it easier to plagiarize and cannibalize the intellectual property of others and repurpose it without attribution. Some have also questioned whether this technology marginalizes the Holy Spirit’s role in the study of God’s word.

However, these threats spring chiefly from the human heart, not the software. The lazy will still be lazy, and the unscrupulous will be unscrupulous no matter what software they use. I’m sure that someone could use results of an AI-powered search in Logos to cobble together a sermon based on the work of others. But this was already possible with the old version, just as it has been for many years now by more traditional means and through a number of Internet sites. No technology is neutral. As Neil Postman observed in his book Technopoly, “. . . embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.”[3] Postman points out that the effects of technology are ecological. “A new technology does not add or subtract something,” he explains. “It changes everything.”[4]

In the case of the new Logos, as with most computer technology, the controlling ethos for the user is the advantage gained by speed. This was the first benefit I ever reaped from owning a personal computer. The implied promise of AI-powered searching is that it enables users to get results more easily and quickly. The practical value of this is obvious. But we might also reasonably question whether faster is always better in a contemplative discipline like the study of God’s word. The other ethos embedded in the new direction Logos has taken is the one that led to the change in their economic model. The company’s CEO has explained it in missional terms. The move to subscriptions is designed to get more people to study God’s word. If it works, it also happens to be good business. A billion subscribers translates into billions of dollars.

There is certainly nothing wrong with Logos wanting to gain a billion subscribers. Yet it is unlikely that those who have purchased an earlier version of their software will be compelled by that vision alone to opt for a subscription. Their participation will depend on whether they feel the new features add enough value to warrant the additional cost. After all, Logos isn’t only a tool. Fundamentally, it’s a product. And we all know the first rule when it comes to selling a product. The customer is always right.

[1] Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, (New York: Vintage, 1992), 5.

[2] https://www.logos.com/future-of-logos

[3] Neil Postman, Technopoly, p. 13,

[4] Ibid., p. 18.

My wife, Jane, spent her career as an elementary school teacher. On one occasion, the principal brought a new student to her class who had a reputation for being a behavior problem. “This teacher doesn’t play,” he said. It was both a compliment and a warning. I think most of us might be inclined to say something similar about God. Playfulness is not typically attributed to the divine. We think of God as holy, sovereign, just, and merciful. But playful? Not so much.

The handful of statements that explicitly speak of divine laughter reinforce this impression. When the nations conspire against the Lord’s anointed, the one enthroned in heaven laughs at them in contempt (Ps. 2:4). If we restrict ourselves to those instances where the Bible explicitly mentions God’s laughter, we might conclude that God’s capacity for humor is limited. He laughs, but he does not play. He is all business.

John Chrysostom, the fourth-century bishop of Constantinople and the most influential preacher of his day, did not believe that laughter was necessarily sinful, but he did feel that it was dangerous. The sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict, a guide that shaped monastic life for centuries, condemned idle speech that caused mirth, boisterous laughter, and the telling of jokes. C. S. Lewis has the demon Screwtape advise his apprentice Wormwood that some forms of humor are useful to his cause, but he warns that the laughter of joy is comparable to what happens in heaven.

God does not declare, “I am playful” in the same way that he says, “I am holy.” But his work does reveal a penchant for something that we would probably describe as humor in a human context. We might even call it a joke if God were not involved. Often, this humor is played out in connection with humanity’s failure. Balaam’s donkey has a better moral character and sees spiritual reality more clearly than the prophet (Num. 22:21–34). Haman ponders, “Who is there that the king would rather honor than me?” Not realizing that he is the least likely candidate (Est. 6:5–13).

In the New Testament, Jesus calls mercurial Simon “the rock,” knowing that he will deny that he knows Christ three times. His favorite nickname for the band of believers is “you of little faith” (Matt. 16:18; 6:30; 8:26; 16:8; Luke 12:28). He refuses at first to cast the demon out of a gentile woman’s daughter but eventually grants the request because of her playful banter with him (Mark 7:24–30).

Playfulness is a nuanced form of humor that may have the lightness of flippancy but lacks its dismissive scorn. The thing that separates playfulness from bare ridicule is the presence of affection. Christ’s playfulness demonstrates his superiority and control but is also evidence of his love. Playfulness poses the danger that all humor possesses. It may dull our sense of the real situation by treating the serious as if it were silly. But the converse may be just as true. The seriousness of a situation can obscure the underlying humor that is found there. In such cases, what makes the circumstance humorous is not that we find it laughable but rather its absurdity. Something is present which does not belong. By this definition, there is something deeply comic about sin.

Perhaps this is why, when God laughs in the Old Testament, it is in derision of the wicked. He sees the absurdity of their thinking (Ps. 2:4; 37:13). Sin, by its nature, is always tragic, but it is also an absurdity. Theologian Josef Peiper explains, “Sin is an act against reason, which thus means: a violation against one’s own conscience, against our ‘better’ knowledge, against the best knowledge of which we are capable.”[4] Based on this, Pieper calls sin “a kind of ‘craziness.’”[5] Sin is no joke, but it is always ridiculous.

It cannot be denied that the Jesus of Scripture never laughs. The human face that Jesus puts on God in the Gospels is, for the most part, not a smiling face. As Isaiah predicted, He shows Himself to be “a man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus groaned at the grave of Lazarus. He denounced the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and the Scribes because they were spiritually dull. “He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell,” G. K. Chesterton notes. Yet Chesterton suggests that there was a hidden attribute: “There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”[6]

The God revealed in Scripture is not only a God who speaks but one who laughs. He is not the jolly God of pagan religion but a being of infinite joy. Divine humor is a reflection of this joy. Although we have not yet experienced the joy of God in its full force, we have been granted a foretaste and are “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” through the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 1:8–9). Just as we need to be transformed through the grace of Christ to stand in God’s glorious presence, surely we will need to be similarly changed to grasp the humor that springs from His infinite joy. Indeed, I think we will need to be changed to even endure it.

Without such a change, God’s humor must come crashing down upon us with the full force of His holiness and glory. The book of Revelation tells us that when Jesus Christ comes again to take His stand on the Mount of Olives, He will be dressed in a robe dipped in blood. The armies of heaven will follow Him, and “out of His mouth will come a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations” that oppose Him (Rev. 19:15). Likewise, the apostle Paul writes that at that time, Jesus will overthrow His enemies with the breath of His mouth and the splendor of His coming (2 Thess. 2:8). I have always thought that the phrase “the breath of His mouth” was a reference to speech. In the end, Jesus will defeat Satan and the Anti-Christ with a word. But it could just as easily be a laugh.

[1] J. C. Gregory, The Nature of Laughter, (London: Routledge, 1924), 3.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 54.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Josef Pieper, The Concept of Sin, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 45.

[5] Ibid., 42.

[6] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (Mineola: Dover, 2004), 154.