When Heaven Leads to Harm
by Rebecca Brothers | 24 November 2023 |
Several years ago, I made a new friend while volunteering at a school. Let’s call her Agatha. Agatha was 81 years old when I met her. She was a lifelong teacher who retired, got antsy, joined the Peace Corps, moved to the Dominican Republic, married a local man, and ended up staying there for many years.
One of the things I loved about Agatha was that she never held back her opinions—and she had a lot of them. When she died several years later, her obituary described her like this: “She left nothing undone and nothing unsaid.”
Something I heard her say more than once was that maybe there is no heaven and no hell.
“Think about it,” she’d say. “If there is no hell … and there is no heaven … maybe this is all we get—this one lifetime, here, on earth. So maybe we’d better make it a good one and take care of each other.”
If you disagree with Agatha and believe in a real heaven, I’m not going to argue with you. If you find comfort in that “blessed hope” after the death of a loved one, I’m not going to try to take that away from you.
Where I do think our beliefs about heaven could use some fine-tuning is the place where they impact our response to others’ suffering. All too often, placing our hope in the Second Coming and the existence of heaven can bring real harm to people in the here and now.
This harm can happen in three places.
When the promise of heaven is used to justify inaction.
It’s so tempting sometimes to wave away “wars and rumors of wars” as just “the beginning of birth pains.” This is a fine line to walk. If the words of Matthew 24 help calm your anxiety about global events, again, I’m not going to try to take that away from you.
But if they’re nudging you towards inaction—say, disengaging from political activities because none of that will matter once Christ returns—that’s when I reckon we need to take a good, hard look at our motivations. The civilians caught up in a war most likely don’t care about our beliefs regarding the role of global conflicts in the end times. They most likely have no interest in a sermon about the Great Controversy. They need clean water now. They need health care now.
I’m no theologian, but I have noticed an interesting pattern in Bible stories where more weight is assigned to actions than to beliefs. Look at the story in John 9 about the man born blind, for starters. Here’s a man who’s an interesting theological conundrum. Is he blind because of his sins, or because of his parents’ sins? And what would that mean about the nature of sin? Can unborn babies sin? Can parents pass sins along to their innocent children? What does that mean about the nature of God’s love and mercy?
And then Jesus takes this theological tangle and sweeps it away. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” He says, and heals the man’s blindness. Jesus knows what matters in that moment. Here’s a man who needs healing. Healing him will glorify God. So he’s healed.
2 Kings 5 doesn’t mention whether Naaman’s fundamental beliefs changed after his servants intervened. It just says that he “went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times […] and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.” Maybe his servants did actually change his mood; or maybe he was still angry or skeptical when he finally went down to the Jordan River. All we know is that he went, and he was healed.
The next time you hear a pastor talk about a conflict or a natural disaster in a sermon, pay attention to the context. Is it being mentioned purely as a “sign of the times”? Are there any hints of the power we all have as witnesses who can vote and lobby and donate in ways that make a tangible difference? Do you feel helpless and anxious, or empowered to be part of an informed, engaged movement that works for justice and healing?
When activism is condemned as showing a lack of faith.
If I had a dollar for every time an Adventist decries climate change as a Satanic deception, I would be a wealthier woman. (Not meaningfully, but enough for some avocado toast every once in a while.)
Their argument, as I understand it, runs like this: If we are serious about saying that Christ’s Second Coming is imminent, then any action running contrary to that belief shows a damning lack of faith. We can’t build an endowment for University X, because that shows a lack of faith. We can’t cultivate the goal of leaving a cleaner, healthier, safer planet to our children, because if we really believed that Christ was returning soon, that wouldn’t be a priority.
This is a heartbreaking argument. It speaks so much to our desire for a better world, and the feeling of helplessness we have when we look at the brokenness surrounding us.
But Matthew 24 has advice on this matter:
About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. […] Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of.
It is entirely possible to place our hope in the idea of heaven and fulfill our obligations to our communities in this world. We can believe fiercely that our imaginations don’t do heaven justice, and work hard to improve the lot of our fellow humans in the here and now. Faith isn’t a zero-sum game.
When we focus on helping individuals, and turn a blind eye to the systemic failures that brought those individuals to that place of needing help.
If the people in a certain town keep getting sick from drinking the water from a certain river, is it prudent to focus 100% of our resources on getting medicine to those people? Wouldn’t we be better stewards of our time, money, and efforts if we also dedicate some attention to what’s happening upstream that makes these people so sick?
There are recurring issues today that contribute to the suffering of mankind. In the United States, racism is a big one. The patterns of thinking that led to 250 years of legal slavery in America didn’t vanish the instant Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. They echo into the present, affecting how people are judged and sentenced, how law enforcement operates, what neighborhoods are chosen for demolition, what job applicants are hired, and what they’re paid.
Thinking more globally, the legacy of colonialism is another of these recurring issues. When exploitative outsiders strip a country of its natural resources, oppress and kill its native peoples, and subject them to harsh laws for decades or even centuries, we cannot plausibly be surprised when this history leaves deep wounds—economically, environmentally, psychologically, medically, politically.
Thinking even more universally, let’s prod at capitalism too. Why are we so quick to defend an economic system that fails to meet most people’s basic needs and is actively destroying the planet?
Systemic failures demand systemic solutions. When the river water keeps making people sick, we need to bring medicine to those people and also make the water safe to drink. Paying a single mom’s rent for the month is an honorable deed and should not be dismissed, and also we need to notice how her situation fits into a bigger trend of rising rents and stagnant wages.
There is a danger in this way of thinking, of course. Once you start noticing these things and asking these questions, you will be angrier than you ever thought you could be. You will be frustrated and lonely. The lows will be very low, and the highs infrequent and fleeting. From time to time, you will lose hope.
But remember this: We were not put on this earth to live comfortably, but to live truthfully. As the Pirkei Avot (a compilation of rabbinic ethical teachings) says, it is not our duty to finish the work of healing the world’s wounds, but neither are we free to neglect it. Like my friend Agatha, we are here to leave nothing undone and nothing unsaid.
At our deathbeds, no matter what comes afterwards, let it be said of us that we were good and faithful servants—of Christ, of our communities, of our world. Amen.
Rebecca Brothers is a Tennessee-based librarian who writes at the intersections of faith, gender, sexuality, politics, and weight. Besides Adventist Today, she has published pieces in Our Bible App, Earth & Altar, Cirque, How to Pack for Church Camp, Spectrum, and The Gadfly, and she is a regular contributor at the Sundial Writers’ Corner. In her spare time, she does carpentry work around her tiny farm and tries to keep her poultry out of trouble.
