Climb the Mountain

We have all stood on the topsoil – the gravel, clay, and rock – and looked to the skies – the clouds, air, winds, and heavenly lights. The distance between heaven and earth is perhaps closer when we pause to see a sunset or a blanket of stars. You feel the wind. You hear a whisper. Your feet ache. Your eyes look up.

Cultural history – the human story – rests atop aeons-old histories of rocks, cloud, and mammalian flesh. Humans are mammals near to both rock and cloud throughout the ages of history. Ours is the tragic-comedic story of creation, fall, promise, and longing. Scripture (network of ancient texts) tells just how the unique form of mammalian life we call humanity was made in the image of God and how God breathed into those nostrils for Man to become a living soul. This story takes place in history in the glorious dome (frame) which we call the earth and the heavens. And despite what the telescope might tell us, heaven is very close in proximity to us today. We can see it… if we only look up.

The history of human thought (cultural history) has led us to assume we know the truth about the actual measurable distances between the earth and sky. Factually speaking, in fact, it is an unfathomable distance into the heavens from here – not only up but out… in every direction. It amazes us to see pictures or read facts about what we so innocently call “outer space.” It is amazing. And it is true. Physical scale and scope is noteworthy and accurate. On our end of the heavens, though, we see the clouds and atmosphere which although damp and close are also “the heavens” to an ancient, or from the ground up, perspective. And that they are always close – even to the point of touching the earth – sometimes observably. For instance, when in a fog we feel the thickness of the air on our skin. At these times the distance is clearly very short between earth and its atmosphere, and we know it.

So, could we say then that Heaven has come down to earth in that case?

Not exactly. This is because the “atmospheric heavens” from the limited perspective of our more sciencey pattern of thinking is already totally explained and fully enclosed to us by our observations and our measuring of it. Charles Taylor calls this the immanent frame. And to top things off, scientific instrumentation from the time of Copernicus to the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed much, much, much deeper and astounding measurements of the heavens.

We did not have this kind of knowledge until the 1600’s. Then the “truth” about the distance between the earth and heaven was “out.”

Or was it.

Is heaven now really gone from our immediate experience? It depends. If scientific truth has not set us free we have been ghosted religiously by an old truth only for this new and more reliable (measurable, manipulable) truth to take it’s place. In other words, Heaven has been relocated to a galaxy far, far away.

This is unfortunate, but it can absolutely be reversed.

Some have… since the 1600’s, let’s just say… have thought that heaven and God do not and never did exist. They say we are ‘enlightened’ now and so, to the extent they are prophetically correct about it being ‘we’, then who is ‘enlightened’ includes even Christians. Many Christians are not very heavenly minded anymore. Imagine that! And this is good, they say. It exposes religion as the real problem.

But these atheist philosopher types (and the non-religious but spiritual types) have it all wrong. We may have Christianity in-name-only worldwide which makes the thought of really swimming and climbing and walking the country of salvation evoke a mere yawn, but have we really actually been ghosted by the God of the ancient world? Is the sky empty? If scientific measurements revealing the emptiness of “outer space” be damned the sky is really is full of the glory of God, what does does this even mean? How is it so?

Heaven is not far away means we may find it. It means that it still elevates us, that it is accessible by ladder. More precisely, it means that it is accessible by the Logos, the Word, the Son of Man in the story that begins anew in an ancient text Bible readers know as the Gospel According to Saint John, chapter one.

“In the beginning was the Word…” [and]… “you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

John 1:1a & John 1:51b

I do not have to talk about this as if it is a movie or a fictional story. It is more real than Pike’s Peak. It is more real than any mountain in the Middle East, in fact. It is closer than Pike’s Peak and closer than Jerusalem, even for those people who live on Pike’s Peak or in Jerusalem.

It is within.

You see, our language breaks down about how to describe where heaven is, so I simply want to suggest a return to the language of “up and down.” It is symbolic language. The “ghosting” of humanity only happened, remember, as people tried to “help us” see that there is no God and encouraged us to “leave all that religion stuff” behind. The heavens were finally clear to us. And it was clear that they were empty. This gave us thew sense of having an incredible lightness to our being.

We need tethering.

However, the “the heavens are full” is not just in our heads and hearts. And in fact, that it isn’t only in our heads and in our neurology is also a cultural belief. In the 1600’s the average person (maybe not not every person, but most) assumed it unthinkable that heaven could ever be empty. And I think the same thought is still even unthinkable to many today. And more, we must actually bank on it being full. What I mean it, we have not been imagining well enough how we might speak of the fact that the heavens are full of what we need them to be full of – the presence of our Creator. We have not imagined well enough how the earth is full, too. God is our Maker. He is present to us in his Creation. Heaven is very close.

Good science (for there is certainly a good use of science) produces a set of hard facts that is only partially true, albeit 100% correct, regarding the distances between heaven and earth. There have been introduced, also, other ways to understand heaven scientifically, but I don’t busy myself with figuring that out because I am not Einstein. I only have a Masters of Divinity and an Associate’s Degree in Nursing. However, I am smart enough to see that in this late modern period, we are returning to the pattern and language of some unseen, transcendent, immeasurable, cultural, and religious beliefs about reality. And they are the future, and yet still we use this language without leaving out the newer understandings. We simply, rather, resume the narratives that are happening in this world just above the treetops and in our mysteriously arboreal world. If we believe faith is only in our neocortex, then it is honestly not worth the trouble. Our faith must reside in Heaven.

Get ready for what I am about to tell you, but the belief that heaven and earth are observable, measurable, and factual can even falsify us when we say that. Why? Because saying it limits and reduces heaven and earth to the contents of the latest science books, and it relegates humans (our entire cultural history) to the latest science books, too.

But there is so much more to the story of us than what hard and soft science can ever tell! It stupefies me that we were (our species was) breathed into by God. Whenever we claim science as our main story, we immediately un-know this one amazing truth. Instead, the emerging of science is merely inside this other story – not above it. Science is inside the main Story. It is a part of it. It does NOT stand apart from religion and faith. Science not being above the human story is what C.S. Lewis means in The Abolition of Man and in other places when he says that science – as any religion can but much more effectively – be used to allow a very small number of humans to control all the rest of them.

If you don’t see this, you aren’t paying attention.

The Christians believe that our broken race and our messy history involves a coming and promised renewal… one that isn’t yet complete. And anyone who is really paying attention knows that science will never complete this for us. It cannot. Science can only extend our broken reach, and broken that reach is, regardless of how well-intended. For “the heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked…” and “when I seek to do good evil is right there with me.”

So neither social science nor hard science can ever hold a candle to the full truth. Religion on the other hand, has been holding candles for a very long time, and it continues to do so today. We must return to the mountain to touch heaven. But we need help doing it.

We must leave science in its rightful place and become open to purely religious (though also science-friendly) thinking as we walk up the mountain toward God.

We cannot count, however, on our Babel-ish towers of technology – rockets, healthcare, Western-style government, or intelligence (artificial or otherwise) – to get us any closer to that place that was once just above the treetops. On the contrary, that kind of religious project apart from true religion will only fail us. Even if by all the above entities we may joined forces to promise a kind of life eternal, it would still not get us anywhere. And intergalactic travel is a moot point when what remains is an inner journey that we must take. And this journey only begins with us actually feeling the local gravel beneath our feet. It only begins when we become embodied creatures devoted to the art of tacit learning and living where we are right now. When we finally see where and what we are, and when we hear the whisperings from above, only then will we remove our shoes – for we’ll then see and hear that we are standing on holy ground. And we, like Moses, will then be able to journey up the not-so-far-away mountain.

Modern man truly stands before a mountain today. When we leave behind our delusional science-as-savior mentality we set up camp at the base of something much greater than Pike’s Peak or even Kilimanjaro. Friends, climbers… get ready… this mountain is even greater than Everest – and even greater than Sinai, for that matter. At Sinai, present and embodied, and in person himself – was our very Guide and Leader for this modern journey. Present at Sinai, on the cross of history under Pontius Pilate, and also at the very dawn of creation – our Leader created Pike’s Peak and also spoke to the winds and they obeyed him. He invited Moses to meet with him up high in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula.

He gave us the law of the first Moses. And he became the second. He crossed the river and climbed the mountain of all mountains for us. We must encounter that Man, that Preacher, on the mountain of our current times. And we must do it together. That is what is before us. Pikes Peak and Everest are only a small part of this good earth that reaches up to the heavens. The rest of the earth is just plain. Pun intended. It is low and difficult and troublesomely dark.

But even in the plains and near the water at the edge of the world where I live down here in Mississippi, one fact remains: I must climb the mountain.

So… how do do it?

We follow Christian tradition and obey his teachings and worship Christ every week… every day. We do this together by worshiping God. Wherever two meet in his name there He is.

His feet have walked our sands and rocks. (Have you been to or read about or heard about the Holy Land? It is real.) He has looked and seen the heavens so close at the time of worship. He has prayed in the fog of the hot, damp, sultry garden. And doing so, brought Heaven down to us. He taught us how to pray for heaven and earth to be united in purpose. He made it begin when He climbed the mountain and swam the river of death and was raised to walk in newness of life. And rumor has it that he lives today as our guide on this very same journey. Maps from great publishers and how-to’s from gifted scholars will not ultimately help. There is too much historical and spiritual fog, too many facts, too much info, too much distraction. However, wisdom sees through the fog of expertise and presumption. Zombie educators and salespersons miss the whole point of religion.

We need a Person. And we need the history, the creation, and the community that Person gave us. We need the Church and the Holy Spirit… not GPS and AI.

Only one: the One and only Son, sent from the Father. He is the Way, and He calls you and me to base camp.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s climb the mountain – you and me together – not being distracted by lesser things.