Is Heaven Boring?
Sitting around listening to harp music just doesn't sound attractive.
L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein raised a few hackles back in 2007 when Starbucks printed one of his quotes on their Venti cups: “Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be better than hell.” It is an old joke, as Stein himself later realized. In a piece about the controversy the cup had created, he noted: “Gary Larson did it in a ‘Far Side’ cartoon with a guy on a cloud saying, ‘Wish I'd brought a magazine.’ Mark Twain did it in ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ Isaac Asimov -- who was not even funny -- said, ‘For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.’”
I don’t think so. And actually, this is a far more serious subject than it might seem at first glance. Stein may have made his point in a lighthearted way, but he was obviously touching on a serious objection to Heaven, one that I hear quite often. As Peter Kreeft notes, “No one can run with hope or passion toward a goal that seems boring.”1 As such, we must be able to recognize and counter the bad theology that is present here and present a vision of heaven that is more biblically accurate and attractive.
That may well start with reading some Randy Alcorn. In response to Stein’s coffee cup quote, at least five people sent him a copy of Alcorn’s book Heaven and I recommend it as well. Alcorn offers a wide ranging biblical look at what heaven will be like and does a great job of debunking the notion that it will be with be an ethereal place with not much to do. His major point is that it will be a New Earth, where real people with real bodies will be “eating, drinking, working, playing, traveling, worshiping, and discovering.” I will entrust you to Alcorn with this general topic, then, except to make one brief point about eternity and how we experience time.
Our Experience of Time
Objections to heaven and hell often center on the fact that they are supposed to last forever. Even if one grants that there will be lots to do in Heaven, it seems inconceivable that we will want to do these things forever. And as for hell, even if one grants that people choose to go there and deserve to go there, it doesn’t seem fair that people should have to go there forever.
One key to addressing this issue is to recognize that our experience of time doesn’t have much to do with how many actual objective units of time have passed. It has much more to do with the quality of the experience we are having. We simply don’t experience every passing moment the same way. Some seem longer and some don’t seem to have any length at all. In other words, there isn’t much of a correspondence between how many objective units of time have passed and how much time we feel has passed. The difference in our experience of time usually depends on whether or not we are enjoying what we are doing and whether or not we find it important.
For example, sometimes it feels like time passes very quickly. Think about that first date with your special someone. You started talking and before you knew it four hours had gone by. But it felt like only a few minutes. On the other hand, now think about the most boring lecture you ever had to sit through. The clock just seemed to stop, right?
So in one instance the time seemed to pass very quickly, and on the other, it just dragged along. Each minute of the date was like a split second, but each minute of the lecture was like an hour. Moments are light and fleeting in the date, but heavy and slow in the lecture.
Now, think about these events after they are finished. Something very interesting happens. Those moments that seemed so small and fleeting while we were on the date are the ones that now become large and heavy in our minds. Each second is solid and almost visible; you can remember how the evening played out step by step. You can almost smell the food and hear his or her voice; you can enjoy taking in all the details again and again because they are right there for you all the time. The event has a continual reality; there is a sense in which it has become eternal.
On the other hand, that lecture is now like it never even happened. You can’t remember one thing that was said and frankly, that doesn’t bother you because you never gave that class another thought. It’s like a wisp, something you can’t really grasp even if you wanted to (and you don’t.) The event that seemed so solid and heavy as you experienced it is now nothing; it has no weight, no substance.
I think our experience of time in this life gives us some insight into Heaven and hell. To focus on how many moments we will exist in either place is to miss the point. The number of moments won’t matter in Heaven and hell, what will matter is our experience. In Heaven our experience will be of such a high quality that we’ll never think about time passing because we will be enjoying ourselves too much. And this experience won’t be fleeting; it will have weight and importance. All of our moments will have the solidity of eternity.
On the other hand, the experience of hell will be of such a low quality that, again, the number of moments won’t actually matter because each moment will seem to take forever. On top of that, these moments won’t have any solidity to them. A person in hell won’t be able to grab on to anything. Life will be wispy, unreal.
So Heaven and hell will both be eternal, but that has little to do with how long anyone will be in either state of existence. And in both cases, boredom will not be an issue.
Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You: “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 88