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Why locating God in heaven changes so much
Locating God the Father in a created place called heaven was a revolutionary teaching then and remains so today.
This is the third in a series exploring the Jesus Prayer, often called The Lord’s Prayer. Whether Jesus is seen as a martyred political revolutionary, a great moral teacher, or the Anointed Son of God, many interesting ideas and teachings can be derived from this prayer taught to Jesus’ followers.
The previous post commented on the name Jesus taught his followers to use in addressing the object of their prayers: Our Father. From the perspective of Jesus as a revolutionary leader, this seems intended to link him and his mission with unprecedented intimacy with the God of the Israelites in an effort to secure wide support. As a moral teacher, this is a remarkable and revolutionary shift in the Jewish ideas of God from a political god tied to the land and the future of the nation, to a far more personal and intimate Deity — recollecting the intimate relationship with his creatures in the Garden. If Jesus is the voice of the Almighty in this teaching, then it signals something that is almost impossible to grasp — that the ineffable mystery that is the creator of this vast universe wants to be known by created beings and enter into a deep and very personal relationship with them.
