Made for Another World | Sunday, May 11, 2025

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." — Revelation 21:1–5

Is our longing for heaven just wishful thinking, or a signal of the world we were truly made for?

Freud's Charge: Religion as Wish Fulfillment

In 1927, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, published a book entitled The Future of an Illusion, in which he wrote that religious beliefs are illusions—fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind. He argued that helplessness in childhood arouses the need for protection provided by a father, and because that helplessness lasts throughout life, we cling to the existence of a more powerful father. The benevolent rule of a divine providence allays our fear of life's dangers, and the prolongation of earthly existence into a future life provides the framework where these wish fulfillments take place.

Freud's basic premise is that any religious beliefs you hold about God and His kingdom are merely the product of wish fulfillment. God is not real in his mind, and neither is heaven. The only reason you hold those beliefs, he says, is that life in this world is hard, and you wish for the protection, provision, and security of a benevolent Father God. So you project that reality into the future. Religion, in his view, is just wish fulfillment that gratifies a deep longing.

It is highly probable that some people in your life think exactly this about you. Perhaps you once held this view yourself. Others imply that religion is fine for weaker people who need it, but not for them. And here is the challenging part: in a certain way, Freud is not entirely wrong. If you stopped a hundred people on the street and read them Revelation 21:4—that God will wipe away every tear, that there will be no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain—and asked, "Would you like that to be true?" almost no one would say no. We absolutely wish it were true.

The Hegelian Trap and Lewis's Answer

So in one sense, Freud's observation isn't wrong: there is that wish in all of us. The real question is whether I believe in God and heaven only because I wish it were true, or whether there is another reason. Freud's words have shaken the faith of many, especially first-year college students. They come home convinced their childhood faith is foolish because they took Psychology 101 and read Freud—and Philosophy 101 introduced them to Hegel and his dialectic.

The Hegelian dialectic works in three steps: a thesis (a proposition), an antithesis (a counterargument), and a synthesis (a merging of the two). Many were raised on the thesis: there is a God and there is a heaven. Then they encounter Freud's antithesis: that belief is just wish fulfillment. They recognize the wish in themselves and conclude the synthesis must be that there is no God—after all, Freud was a modern, post-Enlightenment, post-scientific intellectual, and Sunday school was precritical myth. Imagine there's no heaven; it's easy if you try. But here is the question: Is Freud's answer truly the antithesis, or is it just a new thesis that itself requires an antithesis?

Two years after Freud's death, in August of 1941—about three months after the conclusion of the bombing of Britain—C.S. Lewis came onto the BBC for several evenings of fifteen-minute talks that became the book Mere Christianity. In a near-closing chapter called "Hope," Lewis wrote: "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing."

Freud said your belief in heaven is just wish fulfillment. Lewis says maybe the fact that you have this desire indicates there is a way for it to be fulfilled. As with every other desire—hunger has food to satisfy it—if there is in you a desire for a heavenly reward, perhaps that points to something beyond this world. Perhaps Freud is the thesis, Lewis is the antithesis, and the synthesis is that our longing for heaven is not an illusion but a signal—a signal to what we were truly made for.

Homesickness, Not Wishful Thinking

Point number one: the desire for heaven isn't wishful thinking; it's homesickness. Deep in every one of us, the desire is not for fantasy but for fulfillment. King Solomon observed this three thousand years ago in Ecclesiastes 3, that God has put eternity in our hearts. There is, deep in your heart, a desire for eternity.

Billy Graham wrote about this in his day-by-day devotional: "One of the basic desires of the soul is to live on. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. God has arranged to satisfy this yearning of the soul to live forever, and the desire to be free from pain and sickness and trouble. Jesus Christ is the only one who holds the keys to death, and in His death and resurrection He took the sting out of death. Now God offers eternal life to every person who puts their trust and faith in Jesus Christ." I have shared these truths from Lewis and from Graham in every funeral I have done in the last decade or more. God has placed eternity in every one of us. There is a deep yearning in us for life to live on, and God put it there to stir us to seek for it—because in seeking, there is only one ultimate place we will find it.

The Gospel of John chapter 1 says, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." One way to read that is that the life is the desire, and Jesus came to fulfill it. So heaven is not escapism; it is the desire for home.

Jesus: Not a Symbol, But the Savior

Some in our culture say Jesus is merely a symbol of comfort—that the serene look on His face on the cross is meant to help you bear your cross and go through whatever you face. That is the purely humanistic way to look at the crucifixion. But the Gospels say, "In Him was life." Jesus affirms this in His "I am" statements. In John 11, walking with a family that had just lost their brother Lazarus, He says, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live." Then He asks a question ultimately put to every one of us: "Do you believe this?"

In the face of death, Jesus says, "Let not your heart be troubled"—and what is trouble of heart but anxiety? "You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also." And in another great statement: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Point number two: Jesus isn't a symbol of serene heavenly peace; He is the Savior who shows us the way. Nobody enjoys sickness, pain, suffering, death, or tears. We want a world where death dies and tears are wiped away. Freud says you believe this only because you wish it; Lewis says you desire it because there is a place where the desire is satisfied. We long for an alternative to the brokenness caused by sin, and the gospel—the good news—is that the wish is fulfilled in Jesus. In Christ we have, as Colossians 1:27 says, "the hope of glory." And biblical hope is not wishful thinking or blind faith; it is absolute certainty according to the promise of Scripture.

How Hope Changes Our Present Reality

This promised hope changes our present reality in several ways. First, when someone we love is lost in death, our grief is not without hope. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4, "I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus." Twice within a couple of paragraphs he adds, "Comfort one another with these words." God is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, and there is not a single person in this room who has not lost someone in death. The grief is real—it is not an illusion—but for the believer whose Lord said "I am the resurrection and the life," we have hope in the midst of it.

Second, this hope changes our reality because suffering, though real, is temporary—and may also be purposeful. Some worldviews say suffering is an illusion, but it doesn't seem like one. You may have had a dream in which you suffered—a car accident so vivid you were grateful when you woke up—yet within thirty seconds you forgot it, because it was an illusion. But the pain you felt when you lost your mom still hurts today. Suffering is real; the Bible doesn't gloss over it. It says suffering is temporary and may be working a purpose in us. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

This is the same Paul who was shipwrecked, beaten, and imprisoned multiple times and finally beheaded as a martyr—and he calls it "light affliction." Moses observed in Psalm 90 that the days of human life are seventy, or by strength eighty years. Even if every day of a hundred-year life were full of horrific suffering, what is that compared to eternity? "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).

Trials as Tests of God's Faithfulness

Third, the trials and troubles of this life are tests—but I would suggest they are not so much tests of my faithfulness as tests that reveal God's faithfulness. Paul writes in Romans 5: "Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God... and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." James adds, "Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be complete, lacking nothing."

Point number three: death isn't final, suffering isn't forever, and trials are but tests revealing God's goodness. Heaven doesn't erase the difficulties—it acknowledges that trials are real, that suffering is not an illusion, that grief is real. It doesn't erase those things, but it eases them and reframes them. It makes them more bearable, perhaps even meaningful, and it emphasizes over and over that they are not final.

What About the One Who Died?

You might appreciate the encouragement and still carry a weighing question: What about my brother, my mom, my dad, my friend who died in Christ? Perhaps the most painful part of death is not the dying itself but the experience of those who lose a loved one. As a pastor and fire chaplain, I have often been in that environment. My wife was a critical care nurse through COVID and many times had to hold up an iPad so families could say goodbye to a loved one on a ventilator. I have stood with a mother and father looking at their eighteen-year-old son, killed instantly in a car accident two weeks before graduation. There is nothing more hellish here on earth. My family has walked with friends whose daughter Layla passed away from cancer just months ago. Those griefs are real, and some in our church are walking through that now with terminally ill loved ones.

So what happens to the believer when they die? Paul said something strange in Philippians 1:21: "For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Another word for gain is "advantageous" or "profitable." What kind of person says death is profitable? Only someone who knows something very important. In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul explains: "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven... that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord... We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord."

Death as a Doorway to God's Presence

Paul could say dying is advantageous because his confident conviction was that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Point number four: death is a doorway to the presence of God. For many in our culture without this hope, death is final—the annihilation of existence, the ceasing of consciousness. But for the Christian, death is a doorway into God's presence, and God has prepared us for this very thing.

This passage defeats two prevalent false teachings. First, the Roman Catholic teaching of purgatory, which says the soul goes to a place of purification before reaching God. But Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord—not in a long period of purification. Second, it defeats the Jehovah's Witness teaching (and some Seventh-Day Adventist teaching) of soul sleep, that the soul rests unconscious until the resurrection. Both views fall before "absent from the body, present with the Lord."

It does raise other questions—what exactly is the state of the soul between death and resurrection? Honestly, there is much uncertainty here. Many theologians believe Paul's language of being "naked" and "unclothed" indicates we will be a bodyless soul in God's presence until we are reunited body and soul in the resurrection. How that all works, I don't know. But I can say this: when Jesus told the repentant thief on the cross—who, by Catholic reckoning, surely needed purgatory—"Today you will be with Me in Paradise," He named that place in God's presence as paradise.

Three thousand years ago King David wrote in Psalm 16, "You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." In ancient Jewish thought the afterlife was dim and dark, not fully understood—but Jesus brings life and immortality to light through the gospel. So David said in faith, "You will show me the path of life," and a thousand years later the Son of David came and said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." With all of this as context, Paul could say, "To depart and be with Christ is far better" (Philippians 1:23).

Pascal's Wager and Lewis on Heavenly-Mindedness

Freud said we hold these beliefs for their psychological utility but dismissed them as wishful thinking. Centuries earlier, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal offered what we call Pascal's Wager: If you live your whole life trusting God and hoping in heaven, experiencing peace and joy and comfort through life's difficulties, and then die to discover there is no heaven—you've lost nothing, for you enjoyed those gifts here and now. But if you live rejecting God, without that comfort, and then die to discover heaven is real, you are in a very difficult position. You wagered on the wrong bet.

Lewis answers the scoffers directly in his chapter on hope. "There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of heaven ridiculous by saying they do not want to spend eternity playing harps. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups"—books written with metaphor—"they should not talk about them." He continues: "I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside. I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same."

Lewis also answers the objection that the heavenly-minded are no earthly good. He notes that the very Christians who were most heavenly-minded undid the Roman Empire in the first century and overturned slavery just a hundred and fifty years ago. Many earthly goods have come from the most heavenly-minded people.

How Then Shall We Live?

Because we hope in heaven, there are six ways we are called to live. First, we live without fear, for "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." Second, we live by faith, for "we walk by faith, not by sight." Third, we live with boldness, because we are citizens of an eternal kingdom that shall not end. Fourth, we live at peace, because our future in Christ is secure. Fifth, we live in expectation, because Jesus said, "I will come again and receive you to Myself." And sixth, we live in purity.

Peter writes in 2 Peter 3: "Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless... as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles... in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction." So if you find Paul hard to understand, you are in good company—Peter did too. "You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall... but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Paul exhorts likewise in Romans 13: "And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light... but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh."

Point number five: live as if life will not end when this life ends. That is the exhortation of Scripture, and that is what the hope of God and His kingdom stirs in us.

Closing Prayer

God, thank You for Your word. It is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, and it exposes all kinds of things in our lives—fears and anxieties. Lord, would You remind us today and this week of the reality of Your kingdom? And with that reminder, would You stir us to long more for it and to live more for it? May the virtues of Your kingdom—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control—and the many other virtues we find in Scripture be evident in us like a fully ripened tree of fruit in season. God, do a work in us. We ask this in Jesus' name. And all those who agreed said, Amen.