Heaven and Science Fiction

Josh Klein
Apr 17
12 min read

Updated: Nov 24

By Josh Klein and Thomas Moller

When I (Josh Klein) was younger, around thirteen years old, my best friend and I set out to write a book together. We were enamored by Star Wars. The world of Science Fiction seemed so appealing. New worlds, different species of hominids, laser swords (lightsabers), traveling at the speed of light and from system to system. I was into it all. Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, you name it, I loved it. The reason I loved it had to do with these two words:

What if…

These same two words led me to write my one and only novel (Fracture: available for purchase on Amazon - Here) and they are the words every creative mind learns to embrace. From novelist and playwright to sculptor, composer and painter. Science fiction seems to be the ultimate in the “what if” game of creativity. But what if science fiction pointed us to more than mere imagination? What if science fiction pointed to a deeper reality? A reality just beyond our reach this side of heaven. What if science fiction is more than fiction? What if… it’s real? What if? For millennia questions about Heaven have abounded. What does this other reality look like? What will we do there? From the Christian perspective Heaven is a place of comfort, fulfillment and the ultimate answer to our inner longings to be reunified with our creator. After all, the Apostle Paul said, “To live is Christ but to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

But our vision of heaven is often limited by our fallen nature this side of eternity. Our culture has often influenced us with false tropes of heaven, causing an unenthusiastic reaction from many of us as we imagine eternal boredom. This leads us to a different kind of what if: What if I don’t want to sing for eternity? What if I don’t want to just stand around a throne saying, “holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (Rev. 4:8)?

“You’ll excuse me if this sounds boring,” you might say, “I would rather find adventure than sit around and sway back and forth singing kumbaya for eternity.”

Fair enough. If that’s indeed all that heaven was, I might be inclined to agree. This same tired trope leads many to say things like, “I’d rather party with my friends in hell, doing fun stuff, than sit with you in heaven and be bored.”

Of course, this fundamentally misunderstands the reality of Heaven and Hell. Hell is the absence of all that is good. Relationships are good, pleasure is good, desires are good, those that occupy hell will find none of those things and whatever they do find that might resemble them will be the most hideously malformed and dysfunctional version of those things that they will wish they had nothing instead of something. (For more on hell see “Rescuing Hell”). The question remains: What of heaven? What is it like? Can we know? Can we catch a glimpse?

What if?

Suffice it to say that in our discussion on Heaven in this work we will be focusing not on the holding place of the intermediate state but on the consummation of time itself in the eschaton. That is to say: The new heavens and the new earth. We believe that there is at least a glimpse of what will be available to us in heaven on this side of the church age. Our best glimpse into heaven does not come from looking into the future, but in the past. If we want to know what the perfect state of heaven will be like, why not look at the initial perfect state? The Garden of Eden. When we read about the Garden of Eden, what do we see? Genesis describes an abundant orchard of every type of tree, gold, and life-giving water (Gen 2:8-14). But most importantly, we are given a description of the intimate relationship between God and mankind. God even walked amongst them in the Garden. If that is the perfect state in the beginning, how glorious, how beautiful, how wonderful will heaven be? For the new Jerusalem is described in even more dramatic and wonderful ways. But even in our fallen state we find glimpses of the eternal. The ability to discover reality through science, the feeling of fulfillment when completing a difficult task, the warmth of love between father and child or husband and wife. These are short, momentary glimpses, but they are glimpses.

Evangelist Ray Comfort has been known to say, “this life is the only hell believers will ever know. But for those who die in their sins, this is their only heaven.”

If this is true, then momentary visions of what heaven could be like are available to us in the here and now. While we cannot know for sure, it seems to us that the best guess of what heaven is like is to consider what the maximal case of fulfilment might be in eternity. For if heaven is greater than what the Garden was, and even the Garden exceeds the limits of our imagination at times, that must mean heaven is greater than anything we could ever imagine and anything that exists. But that does not mean it is less than we could imagine. What if we could imagine a heaven that ignites both passion and anticipation in the here and now? Genuine passion. Genuine anticipation. Our argument here is that science fiction is closer to reality than one might think. That not only do the “what ifs” of science fiction lead to genuine wonder and anticipation but that they respond to the statements concerning heaven and eternal life itself in a maximally great way. They respond to scripture by saying, “what if” the fulfillment of this promise is beyond my current imagination? One famous Christian writer explored this idea in what is often termed his “Space Trilogy”. If you haven’t read the Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) now would be a good time to start. In it, the protagonist, Ransom, has a revelation about “space” and what it really

is. I find it poignant, and I find C.S. Lewis, as usual, stunningly insightful as he follows a strand of thought into a dynamic revelation through the ponderings of the main character:

“He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now - now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise… No: Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they made it simply the heavens. The heavens which declared the glory.”

Perhaps the discovery of the heavens through science fiction is less science and fiction than it is prophetic (only in a sense) and transcendent. We want to be clear; we do not intend to communicate that the “what if” goes beyond scripture but that it is based

primarily on taking the scriptures to their maximum possible end. We know that the descriptions of heaven in scripture are limited, but that does not mean we cannot anticipate and imagine the wonders of heaven in light of them. Indeed, we ought to, in some sense, have as great a grasp of what heaven could be like.

There is a saying that has made the rounds in the recent past: “Don’t be so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good.” However, we argue that this statement is exactly backwards. We would change this statement to say, “Don’t be so earthly minded that you are no heavenly good.” This is, in our view, a much more biblical sentiment (Matthew 16:23, Colossians 3:2). Thus, it behooves the believer to seek as robust a view of heaven as biblically possible.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism proposes a question to consider:

What is the chief end of man? The answer: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

What does it mean to “enjoy” God forever? John 17:3 says,

“This is eternal life, that they may know you the One true God and the one you sent, Jesus Christ.”

The question becomes then, how does one truly know someone? Is it only by talking to them and reading about them or are there other factors at play. I recall one time driving in my hometown with a young lady that our family had embraced as one of our own. She was not our biological child, but she was, at this moment in her life, our child in another sense. As we drove to a grocery store to get ingredients for a dinner I would be making that night I showed her some places that I used to hang out. I vividly remember saying,

“sorry, that’s probably boring you to you” and I’ll never forget her response, “No, it’s not boring I want to know about where you grew up and the things you did, please keep telling me.”

When we endeavor to know someone deeply, we want to know about them, yes, but we also want to experience the things that made them tick, we want to consume every part of their creative work. We want to see videos of them in choir, look at paintings they created when they were younger, read short stories they wrote, go to the places they once went. To truly know them we want to experience their handiwork. Of course, that is not all we want to experience. There is a relational component to that mix as well. The young woman didn’t want to know about my childhood so she could write an academic essay on the early stages of my life but because she cared enough to want to know the important things about who I was and what I did. In the same way this desire to know our heavenly Father should ache within us. Not just to know facts about him and his handiwork but to know him through his handiwork. While it would take only a finite time to know me and the things I did and the works of my hands it would take an eternity to know the same thing about my Father in heaven.

What if…

What if knowing God, in part, is to explore and know the works of his hands, not merely through a textbook but experientially. For now, we know in part, then we’ll know in full (1 Cor. 13:12). Knowing God fully includes exploring his creative work. Read Psalm 19 and ask how could we maximally experience this knowing of the heavens?

“God calls us to follow him in an adventure that should put us on life’s edge. He’s infinite in creativity, goodness, beauty, and power. If we’re experiencing the invigorating stirrings of God’s Spirit, trusting him to fill our lives with divine appointments, experiencing the childlike delights of his gracious daily kindnesses, then we’ll know that companionship. To be in his presence will be the very opposite of boredom.”

We simply must shed the shackles of our finite thinking concerning what it means to live in God’s presence. Of course we will worship God (Rev. 19:1-8; Isaiah 6:3) but to properly be able to worship it would stand to reason we must experience the fullness of God’s goodness and delight in the works of his hands (Psalm 92:4-8). This requires the ability to explore all of God’s goodness to bring him the most praise. We do not have the time to explore what that means in all arenas of discovery, however, I believe Anthony Hoekema’s summarization would suffice:

“The possibilities that now rise before us boggle the mind. Will there be ‘better Beethovens’ on the new earth? … better Rembrandts, better Raphaels? Shall we read better poetry, better drama, and better prose? Will scientists continue to advance in technological achievement, will geologists continue to dig out the treasures of the earth, and will architects continue to build imposing and attractive structures? Will there be exciting new adventures in space travel?... Our culture will glorify God in ways that surpass our most fantastic dreams.’”

At the risk of neglecting incredibly interesting topics such as music, the arts, and others we want to zoom in on the last portion of Hoekema’s wondering.

“Will there be exciting new adventures in space travel?”

What if?

Let’s explore! Let your mind wonder, not far from scripture but towards the ultimate edges of what seems to be really real and possible at this moment. Because what seems impossible now could be possible with the Creator of the Universe by your side. First, let us consider Christ and his glorified body as it is the first fruits of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20) and it seems that believers will receive a similarly glorified body at the consummation of time (Phil 3:21; 1 John 3:2). In his glorified body Jesus seems to have capabilities that we would consider impossible in the present age. Jesus came and stood among the disciples even when the doors were locked (John 20:19-20) and again he seems to dematerialize from one place to the next at his own volition (Luke 24:31-37). If this is the case, and our glorified bodies have some similar capability then could it not be the case that this mode of movement would be available not just on earth but anywhere in the universe?

What if?

“Some people will say, ‘To imagine that God would populate worlds with new beings is just science fiction.’ We may have it backward. Science fiction is the result of mankind’s God-given sense of adventure, wonder, creativity, and imagination. It emerges from being made in God’s image. Like everything else undertaken by sinful humans, science fiction is often riddled with false philosophies and assumptions that glorify mankind and ignore God. But this shouldn’t cause us to dismiss its glimpses of what an infinitely creative God might fashion across the broad expanse of the new heavens and the New Earth. Is God’s imagination less than that of his image-bearers?”

Not only that, but if the new creation is indeed “all new” as is declared in Revelation 21 then perhaps our ability to withstand radiation, the vacuum of space and various other elements would be altered. Could we survive on the surface of Venus so we could observe His handiwork and come back to glorify Him because of it? Could we visit another star system? Another galaxy? Imagine worshipfully exploring the entirety of the universe! Think of the vastness of space and having all of eternity to explore it. For though we might travel at the speed of thought, it would still take an eternity to discover and understand the whole of the universe.

We unfortunately must accept that today, the practicality of space travel is little. With our fastest probe, even the closest star–Proxima Centauri–is out of reach. Proxima Centauri is roughly 4.25 LY (light years) away from us, and though that is small in comparison with the size of the universe, it is an astonishing 25 trillion miles away from us! It would take our fastest probe over 6,600 years to traverse the distance, much longer than any human lifespan and a comparable amount of the existence of human civilization! But what if? What if in the new creation, in our new bodies, we can traverse that distance in an instant? Imagine visiting the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune. With today’s technology it would take 260 days, three quarters of a year. But perhaps we could travel this with the speed of thought. Imagine exploring the stars throughout the Milky Way, our galaxy. There are at least 100 billion scattered throughout our galaxy, and we might be able to visit them all! What would be impossible at the speed of light in this life suddenly becomes possible, if not probable, at the speed of thought in the eschaton. But even at the speed of thought it would truly take an eternity. What if we could explore the opposite end of the universe? Would we see things never seen before by mankind?

Imagine speeding through the 93 billion LY of our universe, flying by the hundreds of billions of galaxies soaking in the beauty of God’s creation only to return and share with Him our gratitude for His glorious display. We get to sit at the feet of the master artist after intimately observing His work! If all things are to be made new, then imagine what the universe will look like after the creation of the new heavens and the new earth. Will our galaxy be the same? Will all the dying stars be revived? Will the star factories, nebulae, create stars faster and more beautiful? Though the light of the stars will truly not compare to the light of the Son, will they be all the more radiant? All the more beautiful in the new kingdom of God? Imagine the universe expanding forever without the decay of entropy. Imagine the creation of brand-new planets and galaxies. Or imagine the perfect stasis of the universe. Perhaps the expansion will stop, and God will perfectly sustain all things as they are after the renewal of all things. We cannot know now but we may know then! In fact, we would argue that it is more probable than not that we will. So, the next time someone tells you that the idea of heaven for an eternity sounds boring, perhaps direct their gaze to the stars, His handiwork, and ask them if they like Star Trek.