When I became a Christian I was overwhelmed by the amount of different contradictory theologies, and for this purpose have remained nondenominational. I can't seem to find a single denomination that agrees with everything I see in the bible.
Anyhow, my intent here is not to start a fight, my intent is to understand where a very prominent false doctrine came from. When I first started getting curious about heaven I was met with the idea that all we do in heaven is sing forever around the throne. Bowing like the 24 elders in revelation. Thats it. This at times made me almost give up because it seemed like such an obvious downgrade from life now, as well as what life was originally intended to be in the garden of Eden. Humans werent made to praise nonstop, we were made to be creators. Anything but what we find in genesis is unappealing to us because its not what we were made for. This took me AGES to finally realize that this very common view is actually false. God himself tells us at the end of revelation "They will reign forever and ever". That is how the almighty signs off eternity. Us reigning. The word used for "reigning" also means to "have dominion". Sound familiar? Exactly.
So where does this idea of an eternal choir come from??? Cause I see it everywhere and its just not what the bible teaches...at all?! It also is illogical. Satan didn't spoil God's plan of a worldwide community of God following humans, creating, exploring, and inventing. We as Christians' always say that "Satan has already lost" but do we really believe it? Why do we then give him so much power as to say he foiled God's original plan, when the bible plainly says he did not.
Anyhow im rambling, ill close this off by saying I have done WAY too much research on this and I really can't find an answer on why this belief has infected our congregations, but it is really a disservice to the truth of the bible!
In this case, the idea of just singing forever and nothing else, is less an example of a "formal" teaching that arose in any single church tradition or denomination.
This is really more of an example of what happens when there just isn't much teaching going on, or at the very least, rather anemic teaching.
I spent the first ~20 years of my life with the idea that salvation, knowing Jesus, etc meant that when I die I go to a place called heaven, and that I will spend all of eternity in that place called heaven. In my mind I understood that to mean I would basically be a "spiritual" being of some kind. My body in the ground, turned to dust, and then the earth will be destroyed, and no more earthly matter. Now, I was aware that, in the Revelation it said "new heavens and new earth", but as I understood it through how I received it (whether intentionally taught to me by others, or just incidentally because I didn't understand properly) that new earth would be "down there" but I would be "up there". I would remain as a spirit with my "spiritual body".
This was tied also into the doctrine of "the rapture" which I was taught growing up. I was taught that Jesus would return and take living Christians into heaven, it would be instantaneous--I'd be walking around here on earth and then suddenly I'd go poof and be with God. So whether I died and went to heaven or Jesus came back and took me directly into heaven, I was going to exist in a spiritual state in a spiritual place forever--and I'd spend eternity in a golden land of clouds and angels, singing songs for eternity. Though, unlike you, I didn't see that as a downside at the time.
Then something changed that. At that time in my life I had really only interacted with other Christians who believed as I did on these things. It actually didn't occur to me that there could be other views at all among Christians, because I had never encountered it. I remember my pastor once mentioning that "we were pre-trib" and that there were some Christians who were "post-trib", but this was presented as "some Christians, a very small number, have this quirky idea different than what Christians generally believe". Imagine my shock when I'm just out of high school and going onto the internet and interacting with Christians from a highly diverse range of denominations and traditions--and most of them didn't share what I considered "normal".
My initial reaction was shock, followed by hostility--I was angry that there were so many "false believers" who denied "basic Christian doctrine" like the pre-trib rapture and that we're going to spend forever with the angels in heaven singing songs to Jesus.
In those early heated arguments I had, I was consistently asked to back what I believed up with Scripture. "Easy" I thought. Turns out, it was far from easy, in fact I discovered I couldn't back it up with the Bible. In fact, when I started looking at what the Bible said, and paid attention to what the words on the page said, and started seeing how certain expressions were used over and over again, the whole rug was pulled from under my feet and I realized the Bible said something very different. It didn't say that when I die I go and spend eternity in heaven singing songs as a disembodied spiritual being, it didn't say that Jesus will return to take me directly into heaven forever.
Instead the Bible said that there would be a resurrection, that even as Jesus rose from the dead bodily, so would those who believe in Jesus be raised. That when Jesus comes, He doesn't come to take Christians into heaven, but that He comes in glory, to judge, that at His coming there would be a resurrection, that Christ would judge, and God would set creation to rights--new heaven and new earth meant this created world mattered to God and wasn't just a temporary staging area where I am tested whether I would be one of the few lucky ones to get to go to heaven, or one of the vast many who would go to hell. This world mattered, God wanted to heal and save and redeem it, and God's answer to the problem of sin, death, and every evil was resurrection: Jesus Christ rose from the dead, we too would be raised, and God is going to set creation whole.
My initial shock at finding those things in the Bible was followed by a second surprise: What I was reading in the Bible, and seemingly only for the first time in my life, is actually what Christians have been saying and believing for two thousand years. It's what the ancient fathers of the Church said, it's in the Creeds of the Church, it's what the Protestant Reformers believed. Over and over, from the Bible to the early fathers, to the Creeds, and all the way to Luther and even later Protestants like John Wesley all believed and taught these things. And, in fact, most Christians around the world belonged to churches who still believed and taught these things.
-I- was the one who had been in the dark. I had been the one with "quirky" ideas that most Christians didn't believe. And when I tried to talk to people in my church circles about it--I talked to my dad, I talked with a youth pastor, I talked with friends--it was very unhelpful. For the most part I got blank stares, or "well I always heard this so that's what I believe"--when I mentioned what I read in the Bible or my astonishment about what Christians historically believed it wasn't well received.
So I kept wanting to learn more. I started reading a lot more--my Bible more, I taught myself the Greek alphabet so I could more easily look up Greek words in lexicons, I read Church history more, I read more early Christian writings. And the more convinced I became that there was a serious disconnect between historic Christianity and my personal Christianity up to that point in my life.
That got me into several arguments with Christian friends that I had spent years with in youth groups and other church activities as a kid and teenager. At one point I remember saying, "I want to believe what the Apostles believed and taught" and one friend of mine said, "It shouldn't matter what the apostles said or taught, just what the Bible says". A statement that still boggles my mind to this day, decades later. Granted we were just "kids" at the time, 19-20 or so. But that was, in a sense, a pivitol and important moment for me. Because I didn't want to just believe whatever was convenient for me to believe, I wanted to believe something that was true and real.
That was one of several things that set me onto a journey that led me to the church tradition I'm part of now. Though that isn't the point I want to make; the point I want to make is that I hear you. There are things that just seem to be believed, or said, and these are things that simply don't seem to have much basis in the Bible or in historic Christian teaching.
It's like a game of telephone, and things get repeated. And it gets repeated so many times that we sometimes just accept that's that.
For me though, what is astonishing is that when you look at the serious theology, that stuff has endured. It's not something that just showed up one day out of the blue, it actually goes back to the beginning, it's biblical, and its what has always been believed, always taught. Consistently. Those heavy deep things of the Christian faith are anchored and built upon a strong foundation--they aren't like those things built upon sand or loose gravel that collapse from a breeze or high tide. But last, endure, and remain. Like a north star that continues to set the course for all who sail.
-CryptoLutheran
