Type “are you going to heaven when you die?” into an internet search engine and you will likely get a list beginning something like this:
- Are You Going to Heaven? an on-line film • ChristianAnswers.Net
- You Can Know For Sure That You're Going to Heaven!
- How to Know You Are Going to Heaven | Z3 News
- How can I know for sure that I will go to Heaven when I die?
- How to Know That You Are Going to Heaven As a Christian: 13 Steps
Pull up just about any list of “evangelical preachers” and
ask them what is the single most important question we humans face and it is
likely to be “are you going to heaven when you die?”
However, read the New Testament and you will find neither
the question nor even the idea that this is a central issue within the writings
of Jesus, Paul or any of the others.
The personal philosophy of so many people the world over is
that if you are a ‘good person’ you will go to heaven when you die and if you
are a ‘bad person’ you will go to hell when you die. I am sure many many people actually wish that
their expletive “go to hell” did in fact work like a curse: “I judge that you
are an evil person and that you deserve to go to hell, so ‘go to hell!’; preferably
now, via the needle or the electric chair”; and it happens as they have
spoken. Fortunately for us all, it
doesn’t.
Then, of course, there are others who generously suggest
that we all go to heaven, because all of us have some redeeming feature that
will get us over the line, no matter how terribly we have behaved on this
earth.
And, of course, when little children die as “innocents” they
become angels and fly around heaven with their wings amusing and pleasing God
and their relatives who have died and gone to heaven before them.
Where on earth did we get these ideas from? The answer is in the question: “on earth”. They are earth-bound ideas we humans have
cobbled together from all sorts of places and fastened securely to our own
world-view and to our ‘church teaching’.
And generally we pull together the ideas we like the most and ‘preach’
them to our family, our friends and our willing congregations.
We are also, generally, very good at proof-texting our views
from the bible when they are challenged, taking questionable ideas and
teachings and doctrines and making scripture repeat our philosophy and theology
back to us so that nothing in our world shakes too much.
This is all the natural flow-on of culture-christianities
from nations all around the world: enculturated religion, specifically designed
to comfort us on the one hand, and on the other hand, to not disturb or agitate us or get us to re-think our
pre-suppositions. It doesn’t much matter
what our views are so long as we hold them sincerely; because God who loves us
will tolerate our views and modify his actions and reactions to suit our
wishes, dreams and preferred outcomes.
At least it appears that’s how we think.
In other words, at the heart of our thinking is a god made
according to our wishes and imaginings; he/she will do what we say he/she should
do.
And don’t pretend it isn’t so. The very idea of going to heaven when you die
is a grossly misleading corruption of the truth and a redefinition of all – yes
all – the ideas involved in living
and dying, good and evil and heaven and hell.
It is a gross over-simplification to which we have added commercial
value and then sold as truth to a gullible audience; and it doesn’t much matter
whether we’re talking about “getting saved” or “being healed”.
We make repeated claims to being “christian”, yet our ideas
of much of what is involved in that are so wide of the mark that a
disinterested observer would be hard pressed to see any connection between what
the bible says and what we say it says.
Our ideas of God and Jesus and salvation and heaven and hell and right
and wrong are our own private constructs, proof-texted by bible passages
misinterpreted and taken out of context.
To many of us, the bible says what we say it says without reference to
what God himself thinks or what gifted teachers contribute to its
understanding. And many of us accept or
reject teaching based entirely on whether we like it or not; whether it suits
our personal philosophy or not.
Try to imagine how that would have worked for Jesus with his
first group of 12 disciples; pretty much everything he said was antithetical to
the Jewish religion they had all grown up with.
Imagine Peter and John and Matthew reinterpreting all Jesus said to fit
with either the system of the Pharisees or of the Zealots (or some private
mixture of the two) and then teaching and making disciples to their particular
interpretations. Under such a scenario,
the tree of the kingdom of God was dead even before its seed sprouted. The issue for these first disciples – the
point of being a disciple in the first place – was submission to the undoubted
and obvious authority of Jesus. “To whom
else shall we go” Peter said, “You have the words of eternal life”.
Not
so for many of us; our hubris has almost completely cut us off from seeing,
hearing, comprehending the truth. As a
result, many are “wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!” Woe to them, says Isaiah (5:21). King Solomon once said, “Do you see a man wise
in his own eyes? There is more hope for
a fool than for him.” (Proverbs 26:12)
And Proverbs 3: “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment
to your bones.”
So – coming back to the search engine list at the head of
this paper, it really doesn’t matter what these writers say as to the ‘steps’
involved (one has 13 steps for example) – the ‘answer’ they give. The real problem issue is the question
they’re asking; and it is a question born of our human self-centredness,
self-interest and self-preservation.
Self-interest leads us to ask the question of ourselves; and our sense
of common interest or superiority leads us to ask the question of others: “I’m
going to heaven when I die, are you?”
And to many, that’s all that matters. Every other question we ask or want to ask is
of lesser status than this one question; it’s the ultimate question. And for most people who are asking this question
of others, they have already answered the question of themselves – in the
affirmative. For example, a parent can
say to a child: “Sure, a career is important; choosing a life partner is
important; but they’re a lot less important than ‘do you know you’re going to
heaven when you die?’ I know I am, and I
desperately want you there with me.”
Self-interest from start to finish; and a terribly
simplistic, even childish, understanding of heaven and hell, life and death,
human relationships, work and labour.
And we are so maniacally protective of our ‘understanding’ that to
suggest we might need some correction leads to outbursts of protest about “the
bible says” and being “too theoretical; too academic”. This question is most often far more important
to us than ANY OTHER QUESTION, even the question, “is it God’s idea?” or “does
the bible really say that?”
“This is what I believe and you’d better get with my program
or you’re going to hell and we’ll be separated for ever.” This is the primary motivation for much
so-called evangelism.
What happens to you when you die is the central and paramount question;
I know the answer to that
question, so listen to me and do what I did;
I won’t be truly happy and at peace until you do.
But what if everything we ‘know’ about what happens when we
die (or most of it) is wrong?
If you are a nihilist
(from Latin meaning ‘nothing’, hence a belief that life has no meaning or
purpose and there is nothing after death), there is probably ‘nothing’ beyond
this point for you. For the rest who are
not nihilists, it might be worth considering what lies beyond this point.
If you have decided to read on, let me then ask you – plead
with you – to read a book; in fact, to read several books. Reading books has become tiresome and
irrelevant to many, but the truth is, whether you read digital versions –
eBooks – or printed versions, reading books is the best way in current
circumstances to learn. I say ‘in
current circumstances’ because, largely, teaching has become a lost and dying art
and the least-favoured occupation in modern church life. If you regularly ‘attend church’, chances are
you will receive little or no sound, solid teaching of the primary truths of
Jesus and the first apostles.
In my youth (1960s and 70s), this kind of teaching was front
and centre in my local congregation. Now
my children are the age I was then, and it has almost completely disappeared;
replaced by so-called inspirational talks or simply haranguing captive
audiences with trifle, nonsense and regurgitated opinions. Sure, there are exceptional congregations who
do hear sound, solid teaching, but these, few and far between, are surpassed
thousands of times over by noise factories, many of which operate better in
industrial estates than in residential neighbourhoods – in part because noise
is a measure of success these days.
If you do nothing else this month, read Surprised by Hope, Tom Wright, SPCK 2007, ISBN 9780281064779 [eBook
ISBN 9780281062584]. Following that,
read (with discernment) Erasing Hell,
Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle, David C Cook 2011, ISBN 9780781407250 [eBook
ISBN 9780781407533]. Before, after or
during this, read From Eternity to Here,
Frank Viola, David C Cook 2009, ISBN 9781434768704.
But before you do any of that, take note of two New
Testament principles that come to us from first-century history recorded by
Luke in Acts. First, Acts 15:28 – “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to
us...” Their decisions were not simple
votes or expressions of interest or ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’; they
lived with the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit given to them by Jesus and
faithfully promised to all Jesus-followers who would come after these first
generation disciples. The ekklesia of
Christ has within and among it the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:15-16) in
the person of the Holy Spirit. Astute
disciples and students of Christ defer to the Holy Spirit, as we see in Acts
15:28.
Second, Acts 17:11
– “They searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so”. Unlike
the Thessalonians, the residents of the next town on Paul’s road trip, Berea,
listened attentively to Paul’s teaching then tested what he was saying with the
scriptures they knew (our Old Testament probably).
This is both best-practice and standard practice for true believers:
when you hear or read a teaching, take care to 1) defer to the Holy Spirit; 2)
use the scriptures as a measuring line to test what you are hearing or
reading. And remember, these two things
are available to us because our heavenly Father cares; He cares enough that we
be led into all truth that He gave us the Son and the Spirit to open the
Father’s heart and the scriptures to us for our life and growth.
The Church – and the vast majority of Christians – have come
to certain beliefs, sometimes even enshrining them in statements of faith or
manifestos.
There is a ‘heaven’; sometimes visualised as in the bible
book of Revelation, sometimes visualised from some artist’s imagination – or
our own imagination for that matter. In
our imagination, heaven is the final resting place for all ‘good’ people; and
it is a place of joy, peace, happiness, pleasure and love, without turmoil,
war, sadness, illness, pain and hatred.
And certainly such a concept can be found in scripture.
There is a ‘hell’; again, variously visualised from words in
the bible or our own imaginations. And
hell is the final resting place for all ‘bad’ people; a place of endless
torment. Again, such a concept is found
in the scriptures. Jesus tells of a very
troubling place “prepared for the devil and his angels” in Matthew 25:41. Here it is called “eternal fire”; in
Revelation it is called “the lake of fire”
There is a ‘judgement’ after death (Hebrews 9:27). And this judgement is referred to several
times and in different ways throughout the New Testament. The Matthew 25 account above includes a
judgement inference. The graphic
depictions of this judgement throughout history are many and varied.
There is also a ‘resurrection’ prepared for all of us
humans. Jesus talks about two
resurrections in John 5:25-29 and there is no shortage of other references in
the New Testament scriptures. There is a
resurrection to life and a resurrection to punishment.
I am not questioning the reality of these things. If I become wise in my own eyes, I am no
better than a fool – as we saw earlier.
My concern – and it is a very large concern – is that in our manic quest
for simplicity, we have conflated all of the biblical ideas and references into
one hotch-potch of food-scraps only fit to be fed to wild beasts.
The New Testament nowhere says that you go to heaven when
you die, if by heaven you mean our romanticised notions. Furthermore, it is quite unspecific in terms
of timing, place and nature if we measure the scriptures by our
definitions. But as I said, we are
supposed to not do that. We can and should measure our definitions by
the scriptures (but not the other way around); and when we do so, our
definitions are found wanting – seriously.
When you read in the New Testament book of Matthew about
“the kingdom of heaven” do you do what most people do and mentally remove “the
kingdom of” and simply read it as heaven?
If you do, there is a very real probability that you will thereby
default to your prepared definition of ‘heaven’ and get Matthew entirely
wrong. Try reading the same parable as
written by Luke and you will read “the kingdom of God” where Matthew says
kingdom of heaven. Do you then say that
“kingdom of God” in Luke equals “heaven” in Matthew? Whole church belief systems are based on just
that – and it is patent error.
The “kingdom of God” is not the same thing as the “heavens”
through which Jesus passed when he ascended to the Father after his
resurrection; and it is not the same thing as the “heavens” in which Jesus will
appear in the days of his glorious unveiling; and it is not the same thing as
the “paradise” Jesus promised the dying thief on the day of his crucifixion.
At this point, let me refer to my other work “What is TheKingdom of God?” [Email me for a copy if
you need.] We need to understand that,
to the Jews of Jesus’ day, there were multiple ‘heavens’: a minimum of three. “The
heavens” (according to Dr Edward Robinson in 1837) are believed to be “the
expanse of the sky, the apparent concave hemisphere above us, which was
regarded by the Hebrews as solid.” (Robinson’s 1837 Lexicon, p. 599)
Robinson goes on to
say, “In common usage, it included the regions above the sky, where God is said
to dwell (Psalm 2:4) and likewise the region underneath and next to the
firmament, where the clouds are gathered and birds fly (Genesis 1:20, 26).”
Of the idea of “hell” we can say this: There
are three words translated “Hell” in the New Testament, Hades and Tartarus,
which are Greek, and Gehenna, which is the Greek form of the Hebrew
words Gee and Hinnom, meaning "the valley of Hinnom."
[Thomas B. Thayer in “The Biblical Doctrine of Hell” 1855]
Hades:
I agree with the old Orthodox scholar Dr Campbell that the Greek word
“hades” should never be translated “hell” for the basic reason that “hell’ now
carries its own inherited cultural and quasi-christian meaning and has lost its
true original meaning of, simply, the place of the dead. As Dr Campbell says, “hades” (Old Testament
“sheol”) “...signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the
goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery.” (Prelim. Diss.
vi, Pt. ii.)
Tartarus: Used only once in the New Testament, it
refers to that place of torment within
hades. Remember, hades, the place of
departed spirits characterised in the parable in Luke 16, consisted of two
‘compartments’: paradise and torment.
Gehenna: This speaks of a place of terrible judgement
and torment. It is a graphic expression
or description of horrible judgement. We
might today say of a person ‘he met his Waterloo’ meaning that person has met
his final, insurmountable challenge. In
like manner, the ancients might have said ‘he met his Gehenna’ meaning that
person has come face-to-face with his own terrible judgement. Although there is no apparent link between
Gehenna and “eternal fire” and the “lake of fire” mentioned earlier, there is
little doubt an inference can be made: Gehenna’s fire was continuous and
perpetual (‘eternal’) for many years; and it would often appear to be like a
lake of fire. There is a final judgement
place for “the devil and his angels”; I suspect that some people – people who
steadfastly refuse and reject the kindness and forbearance of God right up to
the last moment (see Romans 2:1-11) – will share that space with the devil and
his angels.
Take a look at Mark 3:28-29.
There is, according to Jesus here, one and only one unforgivable sin: to
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. In
this context, Jesus’ antagonists saw his work and attributed it to the devil
(an “unclean spirit”); that work was in fact a work of the Holy Spirit. In effect, the Scribes were guilty of
attributing a work of the Holy Spirit to the devil i.e. blaspheming against the
Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin.
I infer from this that some humans (at least these Scribes
and maybe many others who think and act in the same manner) will share the lake
of fire (that place of which Gehenna is both symbol and type) with the devil
and his angels (for whom it was specifically prepared).
But a
word of caution here: there is nothing in the New Testament to say that this
judgement happens immediately upon physical death. In fact, the judgement issuing in the lake of
fire seems quite clearly to be after the resurrection of the human race – which
may well be still in the future. If that
resurrection and judgement are still in the future, then so is the experience
of the lake of fire. So where are the
spirits of the dead between their death and their resurrection? In the scriptural model, in hades.
Some
assume that when Hebrews 9:27 says “it is appointed for men to die once
and after this comes judgment” it means that the judgement immediately
follows death. But even in our own
language we can say one thing follows another without inferring any length of
time between them, from one second to a thousand years. We can infer that the latter is the
consequence of the former without any implication of time at all. To say that judgement immediately follows
death is to say something the scriptures do not
say; it is also to disregard the usual meaning of the biblical idea of
hades/sheol – the place of departed spirits.
The ‘sleep of death’ implies the possibility of the
separation of the body from the spirit; and in old Jewish thought, the idea of
death (for instance when Adam “died” but continued living in Genesis!) was much
more the idea of separation. I think
death is the separation of body and soul from the spirit; and resurrection (for
those “in Christ” at least) is the re-connection of what Paul sees as the new
“resurrection” body with the Spirit.
Where is that spirit in the meantime? The scriptures are not absolutely clear, but
it is either in the “paradise” part of hades/sheol or “with Christ”, “in the
heavenlies”. But when it is time for the
resurrection, “...the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be
caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so
we shall ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
At this
point, I strongly recommend chapter 11 of Tom Wright’s book I mentioned
earlier.
Read Matthew 27, especially the latter part. Towards the end you will find this (50-53):
And
Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn
in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the
saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His
resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
To some extent at least, the paradise part of hades/sheol
was depopulated after Jesus’ resurrection.
Did you know that? It says it
happened to “many” “saints”; it does not say it happened to “all” who were
there. We are simply not told how many.
There are some things we do not know – they are not clear. What we do know is that, upon death, the
spirit is separated from the body/soul and goes to hades/sheol while the body
returns to the dust one way or another.
- CONTINUES -
No comments:
Post a Comment