When I was growing up watching cartoons, the world was still Judeo-Christian enough that when a cartoon character died, it wasn’t surprising to see a “ghost version” of themselves, now clad in a white robe, with a halo, wings, and a harp, floating upwards towards the heavens. And had you asked me at that time what I thought heaven would be like, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that those images were a part of my heaven.

But that’s not exactly the Biblical picture of heaven. Heaven itself is not described in much great detail in the Scriptures (nor is hell, really, for that matter). Both heaven and hell are described enough that we know that they are real, but almost as if God was telling us, “yeah yeah yeah, those are real, but that’s not the point….wait until you see what I have planned with the Resurrection….”

Hell is certainly not the point of our faith. It is a guardrail against the lack of faith, of course. But that is hardly good enough to be called “the point”. It brings urgency to our witness and it brings definition to God’s justice, but it’s not the point. The point is the Resurrection.

Likewise, heaven isn’t really the point either. Now, heaven is closer to the point than hell is, but heaven is a promise to us that before the Resurrection, we will begin to realize the promises of God in significant ways. Jesus calls it paradise. That isn’t bad at all. I like the way paradise sounds. But it isn’t the point. The point is the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is when Jesus melds heaven and earth together and we have an existence of the nearness of God and our own sinlessness. It is holistic, we’ll have bodies – perfect bodies redesigned for eternity, not just ethereal cartoonish transparencies holding harps. We will walk with other humans, talk with other humans, probably eat with other humans, laugh with other humans. And then we’ll go play the angels in a softball tournament (that one not promised by Scripture, just to be clear). It’ll be great. And at that time, God will look at all the people who had faith in His Son gathered together in a new heaven and new earth, and he’ll say to us, “Now THIS, this is the point.”