My own opinion about heaven:
I agree with Laura when I say that I simply don’t know the answer. I always have better questions than answers. Growing up I took for granted the stereotypical Evangelical viewpoint: “You must accept Jesus in your heart to be saved… all others.. too bad so sad.”
Since then my theology has evolved – thank God – to be more inclusive. I grew up going to a church that had getting “saved” down to a formula. [insert mocking tone] If you did it right, God heard you and cleaned you all up from your nasty little sins, so you could start preparing for your real home – heaven! If not, to the firey flames you go! *dun dun duuun*
Okay, so I might be making light of all of this, but it’s because I have a hard time taking anyone serious who thinks they actually know who is in, and who is out. I like what Vic said - many will be surprised.
I watched the show with my Nana (grandma) - she’s about to turn eighty and has “been serving the Lord since 1952″. She’s been preaching almost as long, and is a woman who is Pentecostal through-and-through. In fact, every year since then, she has read the Bible (KJV only!) completely through at least once.
When the show ended, she suprised me. She turned to Katie (who is Jewish) and myself and said:
“I leave who goes to heaven to God… but I believe we’ll see people from every denomination, and every religion up there.”
Somehow that comforted me. If my Nana, who is a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher can say that – then by golly, so can I.
Tonight I watched the Barbara Walter’s special: Heaven – Where is it? and How do we get there? She interviewed Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Atheists, and as expected, got a myriad of different answers.
According to ABC’s website – 9 out of 10 Americans believe in heaven – with the vast majority believing they are apart of the group going there.
What precisely does it take to go to heaven? How inclusive, or exclusive do you think God is? How is the Good News a message of hope for all, if most people go to hell?
16 Responses to “Thursday December 22, 2005”
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Twitter: EstherCrawford
- @jeffreine that bridge gives me chills
- @jeffreine yep! and watched tv ... I'm pretty sure every night should end like that
- @soccerhaus it was pretty hilarious... then another couple came in and started making out too.. it never ended
December 23rd, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Heaven comes only by accepting Jesus, & by living for Him. He is the one true Savior, & we cannot go elsewhere w/o a relationship w/ Him. All other religions are false ….. Ephesians 4:4-10 speaks of Jesus, & of God, & how they are the only One to be worshipped, & the only One, true Saviors/Lords. In chapter 17 of 2 Kings (namely: verses 7-8 & 35-41), God tells us of when His people started to stray from Him b/c they were displeased w/ what He was doing & who He was/etc, & they started worshipping false Gods & starting false religions. The only true religion is that of our God …. & now, of our Savior, His Son, Jesus Christ. Saved by grace, not by works!! Praise the Lord, that He is One whom we can come to the cross, dirty gross w/ sin, & bow before Him, not having to worry about what we look like & what He will think. We are not worthy of anything … but He is. All should serve Him … What other religion has a Savior who has DIED for them? None. What other religion is REAL? None. Religion is dead … All that should be left is praising God & Jesus.
God bless you. :)
December 23rd, 2005 at 1:55 am
I have to say that I agree with FunHaterJames. There is just too much in the Bible, including preaching from Christ Himself about Hell and who would go there. The Bible specifically says that there would be certain types of people who would not see Heaven. Not that we are able to name persons specifically, but we can make assumptions based on scripture as to what types of people will not make it, unless of course they have repented and accepted Christ as savior. I think people often confuse judgment of indviduals and judgment of lifestyles. I’m probably going to stir up controversy for what I’m about to say, but the Bible talks about (AND THIS IS JUST FOR EXAMPLE, there are many other examples too, but I’m only going to use one) homosexuality as a sin, and that people who commit that sin will not see the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, I cannot judge a particular homosexual, but I do know that if someone continues to live in that lifestyle, promotes that lifestyle, and does not ever repent from that lifestyle that more than likely, because the Bible says so, that person will not be saved. The same goes for liars, people who lash out in anger, hypocrites, and people who suffer from pride or jealousy. They are all sins, equally as sinful, and we all have to repent for whatever our sins are, accepting Christ’s forgiveness and trying to live our lives under His grace as best we can, following in His will. There will be those who find grace and mercy that we may not expect or ever know about until it’s all said and done, but I think there is definitely a hell, and that there will be people in it.
December 23rd, 2005 at 12:58 am
FYI: nice phoentic spelling, but in print it’s Kvanvig. Just so you know.
This post is a little too profligate for my taste: good discussion should be a product of fair presentation. In any case, I say we’ve completely missed the point on heaven and hell. (Of course we humans are good at that.)
December 22nd, 2005 at 4:01 pm
I think the kicker for me in dealing with the Bible and heaven is that the Scriptures are not consistent. There’s really no way around that. If you take the text as it stands, you cannot come away from the Bible with one, single, unified voice crying out through the millenia (as I very often heard preached in my fundy days).
What I find in the Bible is a multiplicity of voices telling their stories of God and God’s interaction with them. But in truth, I think that now I’m much happier with it being that way anyway. If I saw only one voice, I’m afraid my God would be rather small and, well quite frankly, un-God-like. Maybe a little ‘g’ god as opposed to a big ‘G’ God (or for those who prefer Hebrew – ‘el’ instead of ‘elohim’). I think these different voices–whose stories do sound remarkably similar in so many ways–force me into developing my own story with God. To understand God not just afresh, but to understand God in the very particular way of being me, which is of course all I can be. It prohibits the idolization of God and makes me constantly seek after this Yahweh, this Elohim, this Jesus that calls me to ‘take up my cross’ and other insanely foolish things such as gaining honor through humiliation. That’s why I like the term ‘Scriptures’ so much. It implies a plurality of understandings, ones that the proselyte must wrestle and seek to claim as her own.
I guess that’s all just to say that, Sure there are verses that you can point to that don’t make universalism easy. But on the other hand, there are some that make exclusivism pretty difficult as well. That and the fact that hell is a particularly underdeveloped doctrine in the Scriptures, I’m okay with where I am. It’s just me doing the best I can trying to wrap my mind around this crazy God (elohim) of ours. Then again, maybe that’s my problem right there.
December 22nd, 2005 at 1:40 pm
RYN: Yes, I am a dinosaur. I love album art, liner notes, etc. It adds an important tactile component to the experience of hearing a record. I know it won’t be too long before pop music is all digital, and I’m sure I’ll adapt–but some part of me will always be nostalgic for the experience of unwrapping a new CD and poring over the liner notes while I listen for the first time.
December 22nd, 2005 at 12:22 pm
There is a lot of room between “I don’t know for sure who will go to heaven” and “everyone will go to heaven.” I can agree readily enough with the first, but definitely not with the second. The two “Scriptural pillars” are not really hard to reconcile. Just because every knee will bow at some point, does not mean that every knee will be rewarded for being a good and faithful servant. There’s far too much in the Bible about hell and punishment to just throw it all away as some kind of mean-spirited syncretist leftover fantasy. There is *damnation* for some people, unless you believe most of the Bible is mostly wrong.
However, God is completely free to save some people *through* Christ for whatever reasons he wants. “For man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” I have no doubt that God can see things that we can’t, and that somewhere in God’s mercy and justice there is room for people to be saved who don’t outright believe in Christ for salvation in this life. But the Scriptures do not remotely teach universalism. To convince me otherwise you’d have to do a whole lot of “Scripture tossing.” (I would listen though!)
December 22nd, 2005 at 9:17 am
Yeah…it sounds like your grandmother and I would agree that whatever salvation or “heaven” there is depends on the mercy of a God who can be trusted to do good. You can build a lot on that kind of agreement.
December 22nd, 2005 at 8:35 am
Salvation is not about “going to heaven.” We weren’t given fire insurance . Christ’s work on the cross has given us the opportunity to become the sons and daughters of God and to put on the likeness of Christ ((hence the term Christian)). Heaven isn’t the goal. The goal is, as the orthodox say, theosis which was defined very aptly on another website as ”union with God…Unhindered by sin, unbroken, communion, oneness, togetherness “one, like the Father and I are one.” Not the loss of my own individual person, but the joining of that person with the person of Christ, so that I can be what God intended humanity to be. Not alone. Theosis is salvation.”
December 22nd, 2005 at 3:54 am
I wanted to see that special too. I bet she didn’t interview any Eastern Orthodox Christians. Why not? Why aren’t we ever represented????
I agree with you Esther and so does the Orthodox Church. God will judge us at the time of our death. I don’t dare do his job. I am too busy trying to save my own soul to judge the soul of another. Saint Seraphim of Sarov said :
“Aquire inner peace and thousands around you will be saved.”
I have been told many times that I am not saved. The first time I ever heard someone say that someone had been saved , I was in th carpool on the way home from my AOG school. I was in the 8th grade and I thought the poor girl had some dread illness. So I asked “what did she have??” LOL
“Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner.” ~ The Jesus Prayer
December 22nd, 2005 at 2:02 am
I kinda wanted to see the special…but no one else in my family did…so we watched other shows instead…what did you think?
December 21st, 2005 at 8:03 pm
I like what you say about the whole gospel, because I’m still a big believer in evangelism–that is proclaiming the gospel. I just believe in the whole gospel rather than “getting a ticket to heaven.” To me that’s evangelism.
December 21st, 2005 at 7:05 pm
The best answer I’ve found to this question is: I don’t know. As a Christian guided by the family of faith and our sacred texts, I am required to stand between two pillars: one of universalism (Scriptures that speak of every knee bowing and Abraham’s covenant that all nations would be blessed through him) and particularism (Scriptures that speak of sheeps and goats). Quoting scriptures like “Jesus is the way” does not necessarily address the concerns of our Univesalist brothers and sisters in Christ because this Scripture does not say what or how to walk along this way. In fact, we can all be fundamentalists in how we use scripture. The fundy-inspired universalist might throw the Scripture back, “Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.” Scripture tossing never really helps move a discussion forward.
So standing between these two pillars of universalism and particularism as found in Scripture, I can only do what God has called me to do. God has not called me to save anyone–Jesus did this 2000 years ago. What God has called me to (and all the Pentecostal lovin’ readers of Acts rejoice!) is to be a witness. I can bear witness to this God. We–universalists and fundys–do this everyday.
This is part of the reason I find the Church-split over such an issue troublesome. All of the family of God does the same thing. We are witnesses to the redemptive Lord who brought justice, mercy and truth into this world. Having grown up Fundy, I am more familiar with this voice. So I have heard fundys right and left critique universalists as namby pamby christians who don’t do real “manly” witnessing because they don’t believe in hell. This is lieing–a breaking of the 10 commandments. When my own parent Christian tradition fails to understand parts of the family of God because we don’t respect them enough to listen and therefore we misrepresent the faith and theology of the universalists to our own churches, this is lieing.
For me, the heart of the issues arises in how we understand witnessing to take place. While the large AG church in Baltimore considered witnessing to be sending clandestinely Jews for Jesus into the tourist areas of Baltimore, universalists bore witness to God by holding a service this afternoon for the 83 homeless who died unnecessarily this year on the streets of Baltimore. This split in the family of God leaves us both lacking in bringing the whole gospel to the world. The fundys are focused on the death of Christ with their Anselmian pay-backs for sin and hell, and universalists tend to focus on the life of Christ in bringing Christ’s teachings to the world (See Bosch’s Transforming Mission). But the gospels see both. Among both the fundy and the universalist, the gospel suffers. If only we could bear witness to the whole gospel.
I’m sure God mourns the split that God sees among a people of like precious faith. We can all bear witness to who God is–no matter how we answer this–for me–unanswerable question of hell, heaven, inclusivity and exclusivity.
December 21st, 2005 at 5:00 pm
I think I’m with Argile, though (as a literary critic) I’ll probably have to phrase my beliefs in amateur’s terms.
In my fundy days, I always stumbled on the problem of why people went to heaven or hell. If it is purely God’s decision–Election–then why would a God of love choose to consign anybody to hell when it would be well within God’s power to save all? And if eternal destination is based on human belief–being “saved”–then why is belief itself so contingent? (i.e. why does it seem that most people arrive at their beliefs mostly as a result of their background and context?)
Hell just doesn’t make sense within the whole of Christian cosmology. I mean, at the heart of Christianity is the mechanism of a radical reconciliation between God and humanity, and between all humans–why would God choose to limit that potential reconciliation to only a relatively small portion of humanity–those lucky enough to hear the message and believe it? It always seemed cruel and petty of God to do so. I can’t worship a God whose love and mercy cannot extend beyond his own narcissistic holiness.
So yes, I suppose I’m a universalist. Heaven could never be heaven if there were anybody excluded from it. I know that God will do whatever God must do–or rather, that God in Christ has already done what must be done–to effect the final reconciliation of all God’s creatures. Anything less would be a tragic underuse of Christ’s work.
December 21st, 2005 at 2:53 pm
Hmm… Jesus said “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life, NObody comes to THE Father except through ME.”
I think that either Jesus must be Lord of All, or not at all. I believe Jesus is the only way to get to Heaven.
December 21st, 2005 at 2:23 pm
I saw that last night too. While pretty good, I felt like she danced around too much with the side stories, and that they distracted from the overall documentary. I also would have appreciated some liberal/universalist Christians on there. Although the section on the imam and the suicide bomber was exceptional. Back to your question:
I’m going to have to claim universalism on this one. As a philosophy student, I have come face to face with the noetic barriers for any person to have any kind of sound epistemological belief. Not that I don’t believe in truth or am a relativist or anything like that, but it is next to impossible to have a working, sound theory of knowledge. Therefore, if we are supposed to know the right things, i.e. which one of these religions actually points in the right direction, then I cannot maintain it as a basis for “salvation” while at the same time positing the existence of a just god (something I’d really like to do, but, hey, maybe there is no such thing).
Also, there’s a great philosopher Quanvig (I think that’s him, but I don’t have my books or notes with me) that talks about God and damning people to hell as well as bringing them to heaven. He points out that whatever reason God has for sending people to their eternal destinations, it must be the same reason for both heaven and hell. Given that I think God ought to be consistent with this kind of thing, I have to grant him this. He goes on to point out though, that if the motivation is justice, then all should go to hell because all deserve hell (whatever your view of hell may be, I don’t want to get into that right now). However, if the motivation is love, then all go to heaven because that is what allows “the saved” to get there in the first place. The only way that God could allow someone to go to hell under the motivation of love is if she chose hell over God. You’d probably have to drop some traditional beliefs about hell as well, i.e. the punishment thesis, and see it simply as existence apart from God rather than eternal torment. This is like what Lucifer says in *Paradise Lost,* “Better to reign in hell than to serve God in heaven” (paraphrased).
So that’s basically why I feel everyone goes to heaven. I’ve got some other reasons that bring me to the same conclusions as well, but I’ve already taken up enough of your space.
December 21st, 2005 at 12:59 pm
I ended up writing a huge response to your discussion question, so rather than have it taking the whole page(s) here, I made a blog out of it– good question! See you Saturday night!