Where are our departed Christian loved ones anyway? I find it startling that we don't search the Scriptures for more of a definitive answer. We all speak of heaven but admittedly know little about it. We are unable to break free of the Hollywood version of what eternal life...or what heaven...is all about. Every once in a while we may read a Pauline passage that refers to the journey as involving two places...not just one destination of paradise. Are we all going to join the Christian departed in a state of sleepy unconsciousness until Jesus takes us home? Or does a middle state exist at all? Most of us were taught at a very young age that when a believer dies, he is instantly joined with Christ in eternity...no questions asked. Just the thought of a restful stop along the way is a painful sound to our Protestant ears.
For all of you that grew up as a Southern Baptist, you will be able to relate to the following conclusions concerning heaven.
1. It is a fuzzy place.
2. If you accept Christ you are in...even if you only half-heartily meant it in the first place.
3. Christ will be at the top of the stairway ready to give you a hug for believing in him rather than other religious leaders who teach that you must work for it.
4. This world matters but not really because it is going to be burned up one day.
5. Flesh is evil and enjoying the flesh is evil unless enjoyed through Christian marriage. Funny how marriage makes the flesh un-evil.
6. Because the flesh is evil...your soul is going to heaven to be with either a soul Jesus or a Jesus in bodily form. Who can really be sure of such things?
7. If there is a middle place along the journey to blissful paradise, it is only a type of sleep until God burns up the non-believers in true apocalyptic fashion. Duck!
8. Jesus will then be ready to take you to heaven where your ancestors and friends are already doing cartwheels. You will be instantly happy that you chose the Protestant Jesus over the Catholic Jesus or any other errant version preached from the church down the street.
9. You will be pleased to find that Jesus is tall, thin, and blue-eyed with sandy-blond hair.
10. Heaven will be a combination of everything you wanted to do but couldn't do on earth and a continuous, joyful praise to God. Although you won't admit it, your enthusiasm comes from the idea of playing ping-pong wherever you want and flying around anywhere you want.
I admit that I am being very sarcastic but there truly is part of me that resents not being told the truth as a child.
But here is what I have come to believe.
There is a middle place. It is not called purgatory. We do not have to work our way out of this middle place but we will remain in restful happiness until Jesus returns as Judge. (Even the most liberal among us must admit that judgement will have to come to those who took up the direction of evil and played it out in areas such as Rwanda and Dar fur)
Let's go ahead and call THIS place heaven...and refer to life after life...after death as the new creation. We'll keep our bodies but they will be made perfect. And this is why the hungry child matters. This is why the abused wife matters to us. We will be saved in our bodies and it will done in community. We will all enter the New Jerusalem together.
N.T. Wright adds that "it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else." And maybe that is why Jesus spoke so seldom about future life (Gehenna or heaven).
It's time that the Christian church take up the language of eternity that will connect us to the world around us.
2 comments:
Thanks for the post. You were missed.
NT Wright was on Steven Colbert last night. As I was reading your post, I was thinking, "I know what Richard has been reading." It is true, this idea of going directly to heaven comes from one parable where how you get to heaven is not the main point of the parable. People also think of the criminal on the cross being in paradise with Jesus. Both misread, but that is what I hear in the hospital a lot. Speaking of, I guess their is an emotional aspect to thinking like this. When a loved one dies, it is emotionally healing to think they are, as a family recently said to me, "at the feet of Jesus." I don't argue in such cases, of course. But if you are going to allow Scripture to guide you, then it is difficult to argue with NT Wright.
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