Tears in Heaven?
Will there be tears in heaven or not? This is a question that scholars have been debating for a long time. The positions on this are all over the map. Frequently, scholars bring in their beliefs on the existence of purgatory, the timing of the tears, people’s regrets on judgement day, and the way angels react to name a few things we have read. This blog post avoids all these topics, and reasons from a simple perspective. Then we state our conclusion about the answer to the question.
We will start by looking at an apparent contradiction in the Bible. When the apostle John was exiled on the island of Patmos (we will leave our view on the date of the exile for a later post), he saw a vision which included the place we call heaven. In one of the apparent contradictions of the Bible, he wrote in what we now know as chapter 21 verse 4 that there would be no more crying, and that God will wipe away all tears. If there is no crying, how can God wipe away tears when there should not be any?
We sing songs that are apparently embrace this contradiction. For example, we often sing the song called “No Tears in Heaven” (or the less well known “No Tears Up There”). We also sing the song “God Shall Wipe Away all Tears.” Ironically, all these songs cite Revelation as their influence.
As mentioned from the outset, we are going to do the “passover” on a lot of topics which many apparently consider relevant. There are some things which are relevant here however. We know that in Heaven our bodies will be transformed (Philippians 3:20), and the things that may seem impossible to us now are always possible with God (Luke 1:37).
We are going to go with the most extreme part of Revelation 21 that there will be no crying at all in heaven. In a separate blogpost we reasoned that we would be unlikely to recognize each other in heaven because then we would realize who made it who did not. We think it is inconceivable that there would be anything at all to cause us sadness in heaven, and that includes any reason for our tears.