Imagine there’s no heaven

Is it possible to believe in God without knowing that anything happens after you die?

Is it possible to live morally without the afterlife as a reward – or as punishment?

Is Christianity’s view of the afterlife absolutely pivotal, or is it secondary?

C.S. Lewis would say that it is possible to be a Christian without even thinking of heaven at all. In fact, for almost an entire year he followed Christ with no thoughts of heaven or hell really crossing his mind. 

“My training was like that of the Jews, to whom He revealed Himself centuries before there was a whisper of anything better (or worse) beyond the grave than shadowy and featureless Sheol. And I did not dream even of that.”

And Lewis has this to say in regards to my third question:

“There are men, far better men than I, who have made immortality almost the central doctrine of their religion; but for my own part I have never seen how a preoccupation with that subject at the outset could fail to corrupt the whole thing. I had been brought up to believe that goodness was goodness only if it were disinterested, and that any hope of reward or fear of punishment contaminated the will.”

This stands in diametric opposition to much American Evangelic thought. In good churches, children are brought up hearing stories about the magnificence of heaven. In bad churches, young children might be led through so-called “Hell Houses,” and explicitly told to turn or burn. Yet Lewis, often an icon in these same circles, is once more at odds with entrenched thought.

For Lewis, the point of Christianity, the reason to follow God, is at its core humanistic. Following God is the true end for all people, and is thus the only true way to the good life. No further rewards or punishments would be needed. Lewis said, “The commands were inexorable, but they were backed by no "sanctions." God was to be obeyed simply because he was God.” Obedience is merely the logical conclusion of belief.

Heaven (and hell) come only after this point. Once one realizes that the divine nature is what is to be desired above all else, then a desire to be in the presence of that nature would result in eternal happiness, while to be separate would be a veritable hell in every sense. But, as Lewis concludes, “It may well be that to think much of either except in this context of thought, to hypostatize them as if they had a substantial meaning apart from the presence or absence of God, corrupts the doctrine of both and corrupts us while we so think of them.”

All quoted excerpts are from Surprised By Joy.