What Age Will We Be in Heaven?
Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.In my youth director days, working at a church and teaching students, I was often questioned about Heaven. The wisdom of children is in their curiosity, and there is nothing more indicative of that wisdom than their desire to know what life after death will be like. Adults–so used to life in this world–stop asking those questions even though they, ironically, are far closer to that great transition than the children are.
Of course, this lack of curiosity is exacerbated by how little we know. The special revelation of scripture, including 66 books written by 40 (or so) authors over a thousand years miraculously fits together to present one specific narrative about creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. It only gives information on a need to know basis (the vast majority of that message communicating the redemption part of God’s plan). This means there is little room given to satisfying wonderings about what life in heaven will be like.
Indeed, very few people have ever come back from death to let us know what is on the other side. When the most well-recorded chap to resurrect from the grave spoke out about it (Jesus), his words changed the whole world and he quickly became the most influential person in human history.
However, you will be happy to know that I am one of those curious types who continues to spend their time (time I should be working) thinking about what heaven will be like (and searching for images of it on Google Images, my favorite website). Here are a few of my thoughts:
First, my students often ask me if heaven will be boring. The image in their head is of spending an eternity sitting on a white puffy cloud in a shapeless white robe, playing a golden harp. They already struggle with their 30 minute piano lessons; an eternity of harp playing sounds more like hell than heaven. Certainly, a more accurate image of heaven would include every good thing we have ever experienced or enjoyed here on earth, but in its fullest version. It is, in fact, the new heavens and the new earth that we are talking about. That gives us something physical, something real, something with more colors than white and gold and more material than wispy cloud vapor and gates fashioned from pearls. Lewis’s vision of heaven in The Last Battle is an excellent contemplation on the matter (if not a little overly-platonic) if you are looking for one.
Second, I often hear the questions “what will we look like,” “how will we recognize each other,” and most interestingly to me “what age will we be?” Here are some of my musings on the latter. Fair warning, I have little to no biblical backing on any of this, but the cat can’t help but chase the mouse.
I may not have my science right, but I have been led to understand that the physical process which develops a four year old into looking like a 25 year old is not the same physical process that corrupts a 25 year old into looking like an 80 year old. The former occurs through healthy cell reduplication as the body follows the well laid plans of the DNA (or RNA?). This process makes a child look older over time. Yet, this is not the same process that makes an adult gain gray hair, wrinkles, or weakened bones. Those marks of aging occur as the cells trip up in their copying of information, The process is performed imperfectly due to corruption. So we have two different forms of “aging.” In a pre-fall world (or a heavenly one) the aging due to cell corruption would not exist, as it is clearly an effect of that fall, while the aging due to natural healthy growth would. That gives us heavenly bodies with an age of about 25.
But wait, there is more! What if the healthy growth of our bodies has also been cut short by the fall? What if our bodies originally had continued to change and grow beyond the body of a 25 year old? Here, we would continue to mature in our looks, but not in a way that led to corruption. You would still be able to see a difference between your 20 year old self and your 50 year old self, but the 50 year old, while different, would be far more beautiful. Here, “aging” never stops, but continues on to eternity, not as a source of corruption and death, but as a source of enhanced ability and ever increasing vigor.
I submit to you the story of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. If you interpret the timeline in the traditional understanding, then we are presented with a very odd story about Sarah’s beauty. In Genesis 12, and in Genesis 20, Sarah is considered so beautiful that the most powerful men of the city wish to marry her instantly. Even more curiously, Sarah seems to be 89 years old in Genesis 20. Abraham is well aware of her beauty as well as the danger it presents to his life.
What if Sarah had some of the pre-fall aging norms left in her genes? It's clear that she lived close to the age of those with incredibly long life. The genealogy in Genesis 11 has Shem, Noah’s son, still living during Abraham’s life. Perhaps, at that time, there were still those walking around who had less of the Fall’s corruption in their genetic reduplication, those who continued to mature in their looks well beyond the looks of a 20 to 30 year old. This would make someone like Sarah big news as soon as she walked into town. Her beauty would be something entirely different than the many younger women around her.
Might our heavenly bodies be similar? If so, imagine what humans would like one hundred or three hundred years into the eternal rule of Christ. Consider Lewis’s quote “it is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”
My hypothesis is, admittedly, some fairly flimsy conjecture when it comes to answering the question “what age will we be in heaven?” The reality is that we are likely as different now from what we will be then as a newly planted seed is from the tree which grows from it. We are as incapable now compared to what we will be then as a newborn is from the olympic athlete they will grow to become. And our world is as restricted and colorless now as to what it will be then as the world of the womb is to the child before they are born. We have yet to explore the heavens; greater things are yet to come.
Read more posts from Micah Bragg at micahbragg.substack.com
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