About a year ago, while I was home from college for a few weeks, I sat at the kitchen counter talking to my little sister Sarah. My mom was cooking scrambled eggs, and I can't remember what we were talking about. Somewhere in the conversation, Sarah asked me, "Are you going to go to heaven?"
I looked at her, and with a smile said, "I don't know..."
"Yes he is going to heaven," my mom said, before Sarah could think about my answer. The conversation shifted to other subjects, mom finished the eggs, and we prayed before eating breakfast together. I doubt that Sarah has remembered it once since then, but I haven't been able to get that question off my mind.
In the last few months, I've had lots of conversations with Evangelicals. Their culture is the one that I was raised in, so I'm compelled to go back and talk to them, to hold ties to the world that I came from. Whenever someone asks me, "Do you think that you'll go to heaven or hell?" I try to cause them to think, by saying something like "Maybe, but I highly doubt it."
It is my answer that says, without saying it, "I want you to rethink your question."
But when my sister asks, it's different. She's ten years old now, so of course she'll spend more time thinking about the question, right? There must be some day in her future, when she begins to understand what life can be like, to live outside the boundaries of that binary eternity (heaven or hell?)… but until then, what do I say to her? What if she asks me again, in a different way? What could I tell her?
7 comments:
I'm just commenting to opt-in for future readings! The overdeveloped, analytical side of my brain wants to start trying to sound smart by asking about stuff like, "What is heaven really?" but I fear that mostly misses the point.
Can't wait to read more!
Hey Sam,
I want to take a second to respond to the analytical side of your brain.
Most people in the world will describe heaven as an unbelievably wonderful place where they will go when they die, along with their friends and relatives, and generally everyone who agrees with their worldview. I think that my version of heaven is no exception to this... but that's not really the heaven that I'm talking about in these stories.
The heaven that I'm writing about in these stories is the heaven that Biblical Christians talk about: the place that is reserved for those who place faith in Jesus Christ, by name, as their personal Lord and Savior. This is the heaven that I believed in for the first 17 years of my life, and the place that I was very excited about going after dying.
The main difference between the heaven of my Christian years and my current heaven is that my current idea of heaven doesn't include nearly as many Biblical Christians, and it has a lot more people of other religions.
But you're right. Talking about heaven is mostly missing the point. It's more important to be here now.
Will
An idea that was powerful for my currently understanding of "heaven" came from a book by Dallas Willard in which he points out that the use of the term in most of the new testament has a qualitative rather than locative sense. In otherwords, heaven (even in a biblical sense) might be more appropriately understood as a better (or maybe only different) quality of life rather than a location outside of the physical realm. (this is not to deny the fact that a part of the Christian worldview is certainly an afterlife, just that I think more carefully about the term when I read it now).
It also means that sometimes (and yes, I realize that this is probably somehow wrong and hypocritical in itself) I look at some of my friends who are so uptight and I think - man, are you even going to be able to enjoy heaven when you get there?
Heaven is a place for those who love God, not for those who just fear hell. You can learn more about heaven by knowing more about hell, I suggest reading a sermon by John Piper at desiringGod.org titled "The Echo and Insufficency of Hell, Part 2"
qualitypettags doesn't seem like a fitting username. i wish i would've read this back in september. but i am enjoying reading it now as much as i would've back then.
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