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Why does earth even exist?

by James Barringer  
3/30/2010 / Christian Apologetics

One of my non-Christian friends asked one time, "If God is so excited about heaven, why didn't he just skip earth, take all of us straight to heaven, not have to send anybody to hell, and pat himself on the back for a job well done? Based on what you've told me about heaven and earth, it doesn't even make sense for God to have created earth to begin with."

I didn't have a good answer at the time. In fact, I went about six months struggling with the question, trying to explain the necessity of both heaven and earth. Honestly, it is very easy to adopt a head-in-the-clouds approach to Christianity, claiming that my problems here on earth don't matter much because earth doesn't matter much, as long as I have my hope of heaven. But if earth doesn't matter much, why does it exist? It has to matter, or else God wouldn't have made it.

This is, perhaps, my first draft of an answer. It won't be perfect, but it will hopefully get all of us thinking.

Did you ever play the board game "LIFE"? You spin the dial, move your little plastic people, get married, add kids to your little car, rack up accomplishments and cash, buy a house, and so on. At the end of the game, there are one of two retirement communities waiting for you - "Millionaire Estates," where you can go if you have more than a million dollars in cash, or the other one, whose name I don't even remember because nobody wanted to go there. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Imagine that the board game itself is, well, life, and imagine that the two retirement communities are heaven and hell.

Now imagine that you didn't have to play the board game in order to end up in Millionaire Estates. You just spun the dial one time and then moved your car straight there. That would be the most boring game in existence and nobody would want to play it. The ending would have no significance. Similarly, imagine the board game of LIFE, only without a twofold choice at the end of the game. No matter how well you do at the game, you all go to the same place. That, in turn, robs the game of significance. Skipping the board game and going straight to Millionaire Estates simultaneously devalues both the game and the ending.

In just the same way, heaven has significance because of the events leading up to it. If we didn't go through life, and just found ourselves in heaven praising God for eternity, it would be a slightly empty event. I'm sure we would be thrilled, but we wouldn't know anything about this God who we were praising, because we'd never seen him move or act, never seen his miraculous power, never felt our own hearts changing, never been forced to have faith in him through hard times. Heaven, if possible, would be less happy, less significant. Heaven only matters if there's something preceding it to give it significance.

Added to which, God already tried the "skip earth and go straight to heaven" thing with the angels, but that didn't stop a third of them (led by Satan) from rebelling against him. Can you imagine what heaven would be like if it was populated by people who didn't really want to be there? Most people on earth hate God enough as it is; how much more would they resent being in heaven, locked in for eternity against their wills? There would merely be another rebellion, just like the first one, unless God made it impossible for people to rebel, in which case people themselves might as well not even exist because their actions would be constrained and thus have no meaning.

Why, then, does earth exist? To give meaning to heaven. We willingly play the board game of LIFE because we hope for the reward at the end. We understand that there is something intrinsically fun about striving for a reward; God has made us with that desire, and board games are one way we express it. It's just that when the real game of life happens, and we have to die to self and pick up the cross and follow Jesus, it's a lot less fun than spinning a wheel and moving a plastic car.

But just as heaven would be void of significance without earth, so earth would be devoid of significance without heaven at the end of it. As I said earlier, most people don't enjoy playing a board game where nothing you do matters in the final result. God did not build us to enjoy meaningless actions. In fact, it is not Christians, but my lost friend, who must answer the question of why earth exists. If we were alive, and there was no eternal reward at the end except that a loving God had mercy on everybody, then life would truly be meaningless. Nothing we do here would have any bearing on the final result. It is earth that gives meaning to heaven, and heaven that gives meaning to earth. Either one without the other is only half of a truly fulfilling story.

There is another striking spiritual parallel. In the game of LIFE, you have a choice. You can buy the expensive house, but you might not have enough money to get the good ending. Alternately, you can make the wiser choice, doing without the best material things, in order to have the best ending. This shows that the game only makes sense when it is played in light of the ending. You can't make choices willy-nilly during the game and think they will have no bearing on where you end up. Real life works the exact same way. The sacrifices you make during your life - renouncing your own sin, getting out of the driver's seat of your life, and letting God have control - directly impact your ending.

We are left, of course, with the unpleasant eternal fate of the people who reject Christ, which is hard for many people to stomach. It doesn't need to be. Accepting Christ is as simple as confessing with your mouth that he is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him again on the third day. If you have a brain with which to understand this, then you are capable of accepting that teaching and thus securing for yourself the eternal reward we've been discussing. If you don't, well, you have nobody to blame but yourself. And that's the beautiful thing about the game, the thing that gives it significance. Your actions matter. Your choices matter. There is everything on the line and you have to rise to the occasion, be a clutch performer, come through when it counts. That's why life has significance, and that's why this earth matters. You didn't ask to play the game; your parents made that decision for you, and God when he blessed your parents with a child. Hate him for that if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you're in the game. What you do now is up to you.

As I have said, this is merely my first stab at an answer, but there you have it. Life is not about the destination, but about the journey, and it is the journey which gives meaning to the destination and vice versa. Earth without heaven or heaven without earth would not be a story worth telling, which is why it's not the story that God has chosen to tell.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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