In casual public discourse - even in what purports to be serious stuff, and written by otherwise-intelligent and well-informed people - people grossly misrepresent Jesus's promise of life eternal as a paradisal 'reward' to compensate Christians for the miseries of this mortal life.
Or as a reward for 'being good' in mortal ife.
Christian Heaven is thus falsely presented as a ludicrous, pathetic, or manipulated kind of wishful thinking.
Yet this is literally nothing like what Jesus is reported as saying in the Fourth Gospel.
Jesus says in that Gospel that we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven only via death, by being born again after death - resurrected to a higher form of eternal life, to become - indeed brothers and sisters of Jesus and fully divine ourselves. And this life eternal will be qualitatively greater than this life.
Nothing about a reward, nothing about a compensation, nothing about being good; instead it is a gift or a promise to those who have faith. And we must die to get it.
Death is necessary.
Apart from dying first; how do we get it? By following Jesus through death (as we recognise him as divine and our Good Shepherd, and trust him).
This life eternal entails love - it is implied that the Kingdom of Heaven is a life of love - Jesus describes this in some detail, like a web of love between himself, The Father, and the disciples.
Those who do not want love, who reject love; will not want life eternal, and will not have it forced upon them.
Those who regard this mortal life as all important will not want Heaven; those who believe or want annihilation at the end of mortality, disbelieve is Heaven, do not regard Jesus as divine nor as capable of offering us this gift.
All of these will exclude thenselves from Heaven, because of the different nature of their desires.
