Q and A with Lisa Miller

Michael Orbach: Do Americans believe in heaven?

Lisa Miller: Emphatically yes. Eighty percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, up 10 percentage points from 1997. This is much different from Europe, where in some countries —  France, Belgium, the Netherlands — a third of people are atheists. Yet I believe that if they had to answer the question, “What do you believe about heaven,” most people would not have a clear answer.

MO: Do Jews believe in heaven?

LM: Yes! The last of Maimonides “Thirteen Principles of Faith” of course, is the requisite belief in the resurrection of the dead, a belief that at the end of time, the faithful will be resurrected in the World to Come. The Orthodox affirm this belief every morning in the Yigdal prayer. This belief in resurrection — and, by extension —  in living with G-d at the end of time, is a fundamentally Jewish idea, born around the time of the Macabbean Revolt (around 167 BCE), based on this verse from the Book of Daniel. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”

MO: I was riding in the car with a friend of mine and we were discussing your book. She tells me: ‘In my heaven, my dog is there; in my dog’s heaven, I’m there.’ Is there a problem with her statement?

LM: Certainly, your friend is not alone. 47 percent of pet-owners believe they’ll see their pets in heaven, and a cottage industry of online memorial sites has grown up around that belief. One of these, called Critters.com has posted a saccharine little prose-poem called “The Rainbow Bridge,” which describes the “joyous reunion” between an owner and a pet in heaven. Pollsters did not ask non-pet-owners whether they’d be annoyed by the presence of other people’s pets in heaven.

MO: Was late 1980’s pop singer Belinda Carlisle right — is ‘Heaven a Place on Earth?’

LM: Yes. Since ancient times, communities of monks or ascetics have lived together trying to emulate the activities of the angels in heaven. The Essenes were one such group. The Bible scholar Alan Segal, at Barnard College, told me that according to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes believed that when they prayed they were enacting “a replica of what’s happening in heaven, so exact that you’re never sure whether they think they’re in heaven or whether the angels are down on earth.” So convinced were the Essenes that their liturgies mirrored the singing of the angels that they did not excrete on the Sabbath, for that was not something the angels did. In all three Western monotheisms, prayer and song are thought to connect the faithful in real time to G-d in heaven.

MO: Why is the belief in heaven important?

LM: Lately, images of heaven in secular culture have grown very individualized. Like your friend with her pet, most people want heaven to be the realization of their greatest desires, a carnival of satisfaction. You can eat all you want, your friends are there, you live in a house with perfect plumbing; you are a great athlete or a gifted musician. The novel “The Lovely Bones,” by Alice Sebold, paints just such a vision. The problem with these visions is that G-d is nowhere. For centuries — until the past 150 years or so — the point of going to heaven was to be with G-d. Nothing else, really, mattered. In most contemporary visions, G-d is absent. This, I think, is a problem. Heaven does more than console or inspire in times of grief or hardship — though it does do that. It reminds us of what G-d wants from us, and it encourages to strive in that direction. Justice, truth, beauty — these are all heavenly attributes. G-d gives heaven its conceptual heft; without G-d, heaven is just a fantasy game.