Saturday, September 29, 2007

the radio goes to heaven again

So this morning Dr. Ed Young, whom I believe is the father of Megapastor Ed Young, is preaching a series on heaven, “the realm of eternal rewards". Not heaven the realm of God. Not heaven the realm of holiness. Not heaven the realm of goodness. But heaven the realm of eternal rewards.

And his interpretation of heaven is that it’s the place and time where you get all the rewards. It’s like a homecoming where you get recognized and rewarded.

He told a story about a missionary in years gone by who was on the same boat as the President of the United States whenever he arrived back from an overseas life in mission work. And there was all this fanfare for the President, and when he and his sick wife get off the boat, there’s no fanfare, nobody there to meet them, so he goes back to his hotel room to pray about that, the bitterness (which was a good idea). And God says to him, “but you’re not home yet.” Which is a moving story. And…it’s true. You’re not home yet. Why are you worried about not getting the praise of men? You’re not home. Your only home is me. But I don’t think that’s the way the doctor was looking at it. He was talking about it as in “You’re not home yet, because you haven’t died, you haven’t got your castle in the sky.”

So today he’s talking about heaven. The same heaven the other radio preachers have been talking about—the one that is for dead saints. And he brings up the story Jesus told of (bizarre enough!) the owner of the vineyard at harvest time who goes out and finds the workers. He finds the first workers and he promises to pay them a day’s wages, and then he goes back into town, makes another round and picks up some more workers, and he goes back into town to get even more workers, and he goes back into town however many times. The last crew he picks up an hour before sundown, and they come out for an hour and do the work, and he pays them a denarius. He pays them all a denarius. And then the first workers, who got paid last, so they got to see everybody else and how much they got paid, as if to RUB IT IN THEIR FACE, the owner of the vineyard pays them a denarius, one day’s wages, just like he promised them. He gave every single person the same exact reward.

And so this guy, Ed Young’s application of that, Dr. Ed Young, is…everybody gets heaven.

Everybody gets heaven.

So, you may serve your life faithfully for 30 years as a Christian, as a believer, 50, 100 years, and then some guy just accepts Christ at the last minute and gets in, and he’s going to get the same reward. He’s going to get heaven, too. He’s going to get to go to heaven. And you’re going to go, “Dude, how come he gets heaven, the same as me?”

He actually told a story about a man to whom he had witnessed for 10 years, trying to get him to accept Christ, and the guy “played games with God,” and “played games with the church”, and wouldn’t accept Christ. But then he got cancer, and 3 months before he died, he actually accepted Christ. He said the guy lived an incredible 3 months for Christ. He was a man of influence, and he used his influence and lived a great 3 months, whatever that means. But for 3 months? That’s all? He gets to go to heaven, too? (Note: I noticed that he didn’t say there was a guy on death row who just raped and murdered a handful of women, and he accepts Christ from the chaplain right before they throw the switch, but he did mention that there was this guy, and he was a “man of influence”, for 3 months. I wonder if he would have told about Jeffrey Dahmer, to whom it’s said that Dr. James Dobson witnessed and he accepted Christ while on death row…)
Anyway, the story of the workers in the field has nothing to do with the afterlife and the place where you go to get rewarded.

Oh! Before I go on… His applications were 3. He said this parable teaches you how to work for God: (1) You need to “invest” in God. The first guys, the ones who ended up bitter, came and worked their contract, whereas the later ones came out and just freely worked. They didn’t have a contract. They just trusted in God’s goodness. (2) You need to “prime the pump”, which is like a corollary to investing in God and trusting in him. Prime the pump because if you will work sometimes without having a guarantee on the table, it will come back to you and pay you dividends. (Prime the pump I think refers to giving in faith when you’re not receiving anything, in the hopes of a future return—I think he was referring to story #2 on this page) (3) And finally, it was this idea of not working for God in a contractual relationship, but trusting that God will reward you with what is—what he called—fair.

Ok, the parable is not about rewards. At all. I know us plain folks don't see all the story, but the doctor is looking at it backwards, from the reverse angle, from the same angle as the religious people Jesus was trying to reorient. Jesus is not trying to say, “You gotta trust God, and this is how it goes. You just gotta trust God and he’ll give everyone what is fair, because everybody deserves the same thing. You all get to go to heaven.” But this is how this parable gets filed. This parable gets thrown in to the conversation about heaven (the realm of rewards after you die), and it’s part of where this theory of heaven comes from. “Look, it’s all just about, did you say yes to God (in Jesus), and if you did you go to heaven and that’s perfect. That’s all. That’s the ultimate.” But that’s not at all what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus makes clear what the story is about. Jesus says this parable is about greed. Envy. The master comes to these people at the last and they complain. They say, “We worked the whole day, and we only got paid the same as them.” And the master says, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what is mine, or is my generosity making you envious?” As the KJV says, “Is thine eye evil because I am good?” It’s a stark contrast, isn’t it? Maybe even ironic. Certainly tragic.

Jesus is not trying to teach people what it’s like to die and go to heaven and get fairly rewarded. Not at all. What he’s trying to teach us about is how heaven is. Now. Heaven is like a generous vineyard owner. God is generous. And if you don’t take to generosity then you’re not going to take to heaven. So, if you’re concerned about the unfairness of God in dealing with people (he’s too generous), then you need to check and see what’s going on with your greed, your evil eye. And if you’re quite ok with your greed, the message of this story to you is that you’re going to miss out on heaven. If you’re not happy with the generosity of God, you’re not happy with the way heaven is. You’re not understanding God. You’re not abiding in heaven. You’re not inheriting eternal life.

The whole thing is about the generosity of God. This is how God is. This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. It’s like generosity. Do you like that? No? Then you don’t really want to inherit eternal life. You don’t really like the heaven that is available to you, even now. Jesus would say, the reason you don’t like me is because you’re greedy. You don’t like that I’m coming and offering something to sinners. This is the source of your woes, not the Romans.

One final observation. There are only a couple of places where I read about Jesus saying, “The kingdom of heaven will be like…” Mostly he said, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

1 comment:

MJ said...

I am so thoroughly sick of the 'we have it right" people. Like anything that belongs to Jesus would be characterized by this haughty and elitist attitude. I just read an article about Brad Pitt and it was talking about the reason he left the Southern Baptist Church in which he was raised. What he was really responding to was the haughty "we have it right" people, the "life is all about worship" folks and I felt badly. But Brad Pitt is a one of a billion people that leave the church for this reason, we just happen to know about it because of who he is. I want to shout from the roof tops..."I know you are not fond of liberals, people, but they are reacting against your bullshit. Why not see that the reason these people have gone in the other direction is because they see you as self absorbed elitist assholes who wear God like a super heroes cape...Well you know what? You can't fly and you aren't saving anyone. What you are doing is getting lost yourself."

Heaven is "live free or die" and frankly, I am not buying that from people who sell shackles.

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