Hi Paul Tending to agree with Joe here.... but a slightly fuller answer would be: It's tempting to say, go and read "Surprised by Hope" (NT Wright) and then "Virtue Reborn" (same author) The first is mostly about future hope, the second about some of the things we might do in the meantime. I'm saying this partly to indicate no originality of my own in my thoughts on this. There are promises made in the Bible about us "going to heaven" when we die. You could cite, for example, Philippians 1:18b-26 here - Paul firmly believes that if he dies, he goes to be with Christ. But, all the indications are that this is just a temporary state, and that our future hope is resurrection (which is "life after life after death", as Wright puts it). So, for creation, we have passages like Romans 8: 19-22 which talks of creations' liberation from bondage to decay, like Revelation 21 (the Holy City coming down out of heaven, a vision of Earthly dimensions and heavenly dimensions united), like 1 Corinthians 15:28 (God will be "all in all" - or as Joe puts it "a closer form of communion with the father than ever before"). Or, if you like, God's kingdom will come, on Earth, as in Heaven. The whole chapter of 1 Cornthians 15 gives the fullest description of our own resurrection, to live in this new creation where death itself is defeated... and the prototype for the description is Jesus himself, and his resurrection body (physical, but different to what we have right now). And, we will have jobs to do in the new creation (Romans 8:21 again, or 1 Cor 6:2, for example), so no floating round on clouds "just being spiritual" then! What to do in the meantime?.... anything and everything that will bring God's kingdom in now, that will implement the victory already won and anticipate the kingdom to come, all with the help of the Holy Spirit). This includes worship (bringing the world to God) and being creative ourselves in expressing the love of God to the world. It includes developing our own character (i.e. developing "virtue", not as in obeying an arbitrary set of rules but as in learning, through hard work, to live in a way consistent with and appropriate for the new creation). It includes announcing the kingdom and calling people to be part of it. And the greatest of all these is Love. I agree with Joe in that "everything which has been built in Christ will stay". There are hints of this in 1 Corinthians 15:58 (your labour in the Lord is not in vain) and also 1 Cornithians 3:10-15 (difficult passage, but it says that things which are not built of the right material will be burnt up, but only implies that things built with the right material will survive). But, it is all peering through the fog. I keep coming back to 1 Cor 13:12.

I agree wholeheartedly that a dualistic understanding, which sees certain jobs or activities as more spiritual and others as less spiritual, is not a helpful one but is prevalent amongst many of us - I think it's probably this same line of thinking that creates a kind of hierachy of believers (the overseas missionary is more spiritual than the pastor, who is more spiritual than the leadership right 'down' to the people who do ordinary jobs in the community who are not seen as being in full-time 'Christian work'). Mark Green in Thank God It's Monday has a whole lot of very interesting stuff on this. A significant challenge for us all I think is to live real lives of worship as in Romans 12 where it is quite clear we are being encouraged to offer our whole selves, including our physical selves, as sacrifices to God. This means that the teacher or the factory worker or the cleaner or the shop worker or the retired person or the housewife/husband can all lead lives of worship and be in full-time Christian work. You are right Paul to question where this is reflected in much of our worship - I think there are hymns where this can be seen but there aren't many modern worship songs that capture this. Having agreed that we should debunk the dualistic view, I do think that worship in church is 'special' in some way - A kind of holy (set aside) time where we come together as the body of Christ, where we publicly declare God to be our Lord, where we build a community to resource the kingdom of God, where people can take refuge, be fed and sent out to work with him. In the context of declaring God's Lordship over all that we are and do, I think that the metaphorical language of him being 'on high' ('in heaven above') and us bowing before him can be very helpful in establising our position relative to him whether or not we interpret scripture as saying that heaven is in a relative physical sense 'above us' as opposed to being just through the veil as the Celtic believers. Escatology is all very exciting but at the same time vexing, so I find it difficult to get a handle on the new heaven and new Earth notions, wrapped as they are in a good deal of mystery. However we are described by Paul as being partners with Christ engaged in the business of establishing the Kingdom of God on Earth. Maybe what we do between now and heaven is set about being God's partners in bringing about this new Earth?