There is No Way to Heaven. Heaven is the Way.

 There is no way to Heaven. Heaven is the Way. 

     Heaven is where God is, and God is omnipresent, being everywhere at once without limits and without end. He is at every single point in space and time, because these are dimensional vectors which move through Him, and not vice-versa. Thus, as God is always right here and right now, so also Heaven is also right here and right now because God is right here and right now. The question is whether or not we experience that through our union with Jesus Christ, or whether we turn away from it, shutting our own eyes to it, preferring our own self-imposed darkness to His Light. Heaven is experiencing His presence, really, whether in the body or out. 

      Our salvation, our deliverance through Jesus Christ, has less to do with being out of the body than right here right now, submitting to and cooperating with the Spirit of Jesus Christ with whom we are one. As Jesus Himself asked, what is easier? To forgive someone's sins, or to tell the disabled man to get up and walk? To illustrate His point graphically, He does just this. God doesn't hold our mistakes against us, we are the ones who shut our eyes to Him. He has said in the Scriptures that all a man need do to be forgiven is to turn around from the bad (wicked, evil, deranged, etc.) direction he is going. To come to his senses as the prodigal son, and come home. To open his eyes to the Light. But there still remains the problem of our common, inherited, human malfunction which colors everything we say and do, of which I have written copiously. 

     We have a malfunctioning survival system, probably the amygdala as it affects the hypothalamus, which makes everything we like or agree with, or everything we dislike or disagree with, a survival issue and we cling to the former and push away or try to destroy the latter. As a result, we are from our very brains, controlled by fear, aggression, and bodily cravings. But fear most of all. It colors everything we do, and it blocks us from experiencing the presence of God as we submit to that neurologically base fear and engage with it. 

     Why? Because "God is love," and the love of God and fear cannot co-exist in the same space because fear keeps us in an animal survival mode unable to focus on anything else but the perceived threats or survival necessities. As John also wrote, "love brought to completion tosses fear outside." So, we must choose to whom we will submit, our own malfunctioning minds and the fear which directs them, or to the Spirit of Christ and union with the God who is love. 

      Paul wrote about this repeatedly, and it formed the foundation of his entire understanding of discipleship as he said, "walk in the Spirit and you won't bring the cravings of the flesh to completion." God is most concerned about dealing with the root problem, this malfunction, and providing for us a means to bypass it altogether so that our words and actions ultimately originate with Him and not from our own malfunctioning devices. It is this malfunction, and dealing with it without destroying the individual with which God is most concerned. 

      Why would He punish someone with a mental or psychological disability because they have one? Why would He be concerned about making sure each and every negative action spawned by that disability be punished? What parent with a child who has a severe psychological or developmental disability would do that? The disability and the negative psychological effects on the person are punishment enough. The parent just wants the child to function normally and is ecstatic when they do. If human parents, themselves screwed up, are compassionate and loving enough to do this, how much more God? 

      It is our common malfunction which blinds us to His loving omnipresence. It is our inherited control by fear which condemns us to the outer darkness because we are terrified of opening our eyes. No, it's never been about "earning your salvation" or "doing good works to go to heaven." That's not even on the same page of understanding about either salvation or heaven as the authors of the New Testament. That stems from the old pagan understandings of entering the afterlife and facing a tribunal of judgment to determine which afterlife you have. The good going to Elysium, the neither good nor bad going to the fields of Asphodel, and the outright wicked going to Tartarus. The salvation which the New Testament teaches and the Way which Jesus and His Apostles taught were on a whole 'nother level or page from that understanding. 

       Those who are making their home in Him, walking in the Spirit, are already there in a fashion, as the members of a body attached to the Head. And so of course to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, because that person making their home in Him, walking in the Spirit, is experiencing being one with Him just as He is one with the Father as He prayed. Submission to and cooperation with Jesus Christ is the only Way, because Jesus Christ acting and speaking through us is the Way. 

      There is no way to Heaven, because Heaven, the experience of the presence of God, is the Way.