the radio goes to hell again, part iii

And another problem with the theory that heaven is the place to go when you die if you have confessed Jesus as your personal savior....

The end justifies the means. It seems to authorize Christians to do whatever they want to do in the name of saving souls. It's like this trump card. I can make outrageous claims, beg, plead, cajole, pressure, exhaust financial resources, creatively interpret the truth, even lie to people because their situation is so dire (they'll go to hell and be tortured for a trillion years if they don't accept Jesus as their personal savior). It's all in the name of it being worse for that person to go to hell when they die than to suffer me right now and my antics.

This preacher on the radio the other day was saying that people give him this excuse when he tells them they need to evangelize: "Well, you can never know for sure who's going to heaven, so I'll just leave that to God." His response to these lazy Christians is, "It's true that we don't know who IS going to heaven when they die, but we can absolutely know who is NOT—it's the person who will not submit to your assertion that there is only one way to the Father." (Note for a future post: what a bizarre infatuation we have with "knowing for sure" - a very modern age philosophy to be sure. Like what? we can't live unless we know for sure?)

To me it's one thing if you are a true evangelist, if you have a passion for people to know Jesus, to be saved, as Rose said, "in every way a person can be saved". It's quite another if you have set up a hyperlogical scheme of prosecuting unbelief. And I'm pretty sure I smell some control issues and some power grabs there anyway.

But I have even a bigger problem than all the abuse....

My bigger problem with heaven being the eternal home of the dead is the whole idea of a reunion of the inhabitants (Christians).

I don't know if your experience is like mine, but there's all kinds of Christians who hate me, who do all kinds of things to hurt me, who snub me, who abuse me, abandon me, or who won't associate with me for whatever reason. And I know other Christians who have just been incredibly abused by other Christians, divorced by them, beaten by them, raped by them, murdered by them, you fill in the blank. Everything has been done. And to me, none of those are as bad as, "Well, we just see things differently, and so we won't be with you any more." I would rather you murder me.

And I just wonder, how does THAT work? So, I die and go to heaven because I did the legal transaction with Jesus while I was alive. And you die and go to heaven because you did the thing with Jesus while you were alive. And then, even though you won't talk to me here, and you have anxiety attacks that you might accidentally run into me somewhere, when we get to heaven, we're suddenly just going to be one big happy family? No wait. Not even one family, we're going to be ONE? even as Jesus and the Father are One?

If we don't go to heaven now and embrace each other now, what's going to be different after we die?

If the thing that's important is who's right, who's in the right, and who ought to submit to the other one, when is the magic moment? I mean is God going to come to along in heaven after we die and smack one of us on the head and say, "They were right. And so to make you one I'm going to put you in submission to them; you'll serve them for a trillion years, because, you know, you blew it. You had your chance. Yes, you're in heaven, but they were right. And now you have to admit that and they get to gloat for a trillion years."? I mean if that's what it is, how does that work?

It seems to me that Jesus was more concerned with, "Settle things quickly. Do it now. Don't wait. Life does not begin after you die. Life is now. Let the dead bury the dead. You live."

I don't know. I guess us plain folks don't see all the story.