Here’s a haunting question, is heaven a real place?

It’s either the most simple or the most complex question imaginable, and one that has tantalized religious leaders, philosophers and average, everyday mortals ever since we, as a species, first realized that none of us will be here forever.

And, for whatever reason, it’s also a question that has been asked — and, allegedly, answered — in a spate of books and movies released during the past few years that purport to tell us what heaven is like.

Among them: The 2010 bestseller “Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back,” about a child’s visit to heaven (it was made into a 2014 movie starring Greg Kinnear); “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife,” in which a physician recounts what he says he experienced during a weeklong coma; and the best-seller “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven,” in which a then-6-year-old boy describes what he says were his heavenly experiences.

More recently, in the inevitable pop culture coda, critics have rebutted the circumstances of neurosurgeon Eben Alexander’s story. And, in January, Alex Malarkey, the young author of “The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven,” admitted he had made up the story’s circumstances.

Although the current crop of heaven-oriented books and films largely have taken a Christian, or at least Christianish, perspective toward heaven, what happens after we die is something just about every faith tradition addresses in one way or another. Why, by whatever name and whatever theology, has heaven been such a popular topic lately?

First is simple curiosity and the hope that there’s more to our existence than what we experience here.

“One of the philosophical causes of this is: This is our life. Is this all that we have?” says Dr. Aslam Abdullah, director of the Islamic Society of Nevada. “We think that, somehow, we do not want to believe that this is all we have, so we want to project ourselves in a new world, a new life, and we do not know what that life will be.”

Religion and faith can answer questions about heaven in ways human experience and observation can’t. And because religious beliefs and human experiences are so varied, each believer in whatever comes next probably will answer the question in his or her own way not just now, but at the time of his or her death,

“It’s quite possible that our own experiences and our own theology at times impact our own consciousness, and at the time of death, that consciousness becomes much more expressive,” Abdullah explains.

“It’s interesting that the word that is used in Islamic literature is Janna. It means something that is hidden from experience and from our eyes. So we are longing for eternity, and because most of what we learn tells us that … once we leave this world, this is the end, basically, this idea that there is a life after this one gives us much more meaning in this life and gives us much more meaning of our actions in this life.”

“We look at our finite life and we want to know there’s more to it than today, particularly for people who are suffering through illness and tragedy,” says the Rev. Robert Stoeckig, pastor of St. Andrew Catholic Community in Boulder City.

Particularly in times of illness or tragedy, “it’s a logical question to ask,” Stoeckig adds, and, at such times, the answer can tie in with the concept of “heaven as a refuge. When we think of people who have been through trauma many times, they might just want a place where trauma doesn’t exist anymore.”

Even absent individual pain or suffering, scary times can make answering the “what is heaven?” question seem to be even more urgent. Rabbi Felipe Goodman of Temple Beth Sholom notes that many of the current wave of heavencentric books came in the aftermath of a deep economic recession and continue to be read today amid scary times.

“I think people need to think there’s hope,” Goodman says, and reading or watching positive messages about heaven can offer that sense of hope.

The Rev. Mark Wickstrom, senior pastor of Community Lutheran Church in Las Vegas, agrees that “the more bad news we have around us and the more we hear nothing but bad news, it’s nice to have some kind of hope.”

“I think when world affairs create anxiety, we turn our attention toward an anxiety-free state,” Bishop Dan Edwards of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada says. “I would think that, basically, an anxious world condition would cause us to turn our eyes upward.”

Not that mass-audience books and films necessarily offer more than, at best, a one-dimensional notion of heaven.

“Most people don’t have a very biblical understanding of (heaven), and that’s fair enough,” Wickstrom says. But while, for example, the New Testament’s Book of Revelation offers a few glimpses, the point for most believers is “not so much trying to describe a place as it is trying to be in the presence of God.

“So I think when people say the Lord’s Prayer — ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ — we can have tastes in this life of what heaven is deemed to be, and that’s encouraging. We have those moments when we can be inspired or feel particularly close to someone, or act in a caring way, or (have) kindnesses taking place in our life.”

Wickstrom recalls visiting a parishioner in hospice early in his career and talking to a hospice nurse.

“My comment to the nurse was, ‘This must be a depressing job, because everybody dies.’ She said, ‘Actually it’s not, and I chose this line of work because I died.’ ”

The woman explained that she died briefly when she was 20, during childbirth, and described what she experienced during that time, telling Wickstrom that it was “warm and positive and bright. Those were the words she used: Warm. Positive. Bright.

“She said, ‘The reason I chose hospice work was that, I’m a midwife for the next life.’ So that gave me a whole new insight, as a 28-year-old pastor, a long time ago.”

The current spate of mass-market books and movies about heaven also might have been birthed out of a continuing shift among many Americans away from organized religion and toward a more individualized sense of spirituality.

“In a way, the culture has shifted away from some of its trusted institutions like religion,” Stoeckig says, and some people — particularly those who might describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” — are “trying to find a container that will hold what they haven’t found in institutional religions.”

In such cases, count heaven among the notions they explore, although through more secular, noninstitutional sources.

“When people don’t know where else to look for it, then they’ll turn to movies and books, whereas institutional religions would have a different way of approaching (heaven),” Stoeckig says.

The Rev. Matt Metevelis, a chaplain at Nathan Adelson Hospice, has noticed that the readers of mass-market books about heaven are “usually family and friends that are not involved in church, and they kind of hold on to it when they don’t have a religious community.”

Metevelis says discussions of heaven “come up quite a bit” in his ministry, although “not as much as one would think.”

He suspects that’s because although discussions of heaven can be “wonderful, imaginative, academic discussions,” many of the patients the hospice serves “have been struggling for a long time. A lot of them, what they fear is pain more than death.”

“It’s funny. When I took this job, I thought there would be a lot of discussion about the afterlife. But the majority of work I do is with the people who are trying to find a sense of meaning in the midst of their suffering.”

So, Metevelis says, “I think I’ve had that discussion (of the afterlife) more with family members than patients.”

As a hospice chaplain, Metevelis has heard what he describes as an “incredibly diverse” range of beliefs about what happens after death.

“I’ve heard about transmigration of souls, I’ve heard about reincarnation, I’ve heard the entire spectrum of beliefs, and they don’t always match up with the religion they put down on that paper,” he says.

But, continues Metevelis — who is, himself, an ordained Lutheran minister — “my attitude is, I just help people find whatever it is that is meaningful to that person and that will provide them with a sense of peace they need.”

Stoeckig hasn’t read any of the current crop of books about heaven. How would he respond if a parishioner who has were to ask him what he thought about them?

Stoeckig says his response would be along the lines of, “I haven’t read the book but I’m glad you read something that made you feel good. Then I’d ask them, ‘What, specifically, struck you, that you feel excited about this book?’ Then, I’d try to enter into a conversation that might relate and talk about the wider breadth of Christian tradition (about heaven).”

Stoeckig says mass-market books could provide a “threshold experience” that might prompt a reader to then delve more deeply into Christian beliefs about heaven.

“It’s just like, more Christians come to church on Easter than they do every other Sunday of the year,” he says. “I always think of those as opportunities to remind people that there’s a big (literary) treasury there that you’re very welcome to dip into.”

“Faith is a journey,” Stoeckig adds. “I’m always hopeful that those books become an entry point into a bigger journey, and aren’t just a be-all and end-all in and of themselves.”

Contact reporter John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280.