NT Wright’s writing on heaven is one of the fundamental turns in my own theological journey. The reality of heaven and God’s reign exploded in my life because I had grown up in a “rapture ready” type of mentality.

The books of the 90s were the Left Behind series. But before that it was the movies like “A Thief in the Night” and books like Late Great Planet Earth and TV shows that constantly talked about prophecy and the rapture. That was the water I swam in growing up. Songs like “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.”

Heaven was “up there.” Far away. Jesus sat on a throne “up there.” That was the goal. To get “up there.” We certainly weren’t interested in the other direction! “Down” was not what you wanted!

All of it was designed to very literally scare the hell out of people.

College and a constant re-reading of Revelation helped me out of the “rapture ready” mode, but it was NT Wright’s work that helped give me language on just how to think about heaven.

These words sum it up:

‘Heaven’ and ‘earth’, as I have often said, are not, in biblical theology, separated by a great gulf, as they are in much popular imagination. ‘Heaven’, God’s sphere of reality, is right here, close beside us, intersecting with our ordinary reality. It is not so much like a door opening high up in the sky, far away. It is more like a door opening right in front of us where before we could only see this room, this field, this street. Suddenly, there is an opening leading into a different world—and an invitation to ‘come up’ and see what’s going on.¹

¹ Wright, T. (2011). Revelation for Everyone (pp. 42–43). SPCK; Westminster John Knox.

The reality of heaven being seen as “just through that door” has changed my perspective radically. How I walk in this world, how I interact with people, how I view God’s reign… all of it… has been shifted. Worship is certainly different for me.

This is one of the major shifts theologically that has helped me in my walk here on this earth.