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“Heaven
is for Real”
This afternoon my wife and I went to
the movie “Heaven is for Real.” In this
movie and the book on which it is based, Colton, a four year old, relates his
experiences in “heaven.” These
experiences occurred during an appendix operation in which Colton almost died,
but in fact did not die. Some of these
experiences included: 1) seeing his father in one room praying (and mad at God)
and his mother in another room. The
parents had not talked about this 2) Seeing his “unborn” little sister that was
the result of a miscarriage (the parents had not told him of this) 3) Seeing
his grandfather and identifying his picture having never seen either 4) Seeing
Jesus and identifying a picture painted by another girl (also 4 when she had
her experience) as Jesus and 5) Seeing other things in heaven and seeing
angels. This is a sampling.
What the movie does is raise the vital
question: “Is heaven real?” Of course
as Christians, one might be quick to say, of course. But is that really our true belief? What is the real basis of that belief? If true, how does that change the way we view
life and its troubles? How does that
change how we live?
I
would submit that the gospel of John provides both challenges and answers. A most profound statement is “The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” After the crucifixion, we were told “He is
not here; he has risen, just as he said.”
John gives us six miracles that Jesus
performed: 1) Changing of water to wine (Jn. 2:1) 2) Healing of the nobleman’s son (Jn.
4:46) 3) Healing of the impotent man
(Jn. 5:1) 4) Feeding of the five
thousand ( Jn. 6:1) 5) Walking on water (Jn. 6:16) 6) Healing of the man born blind (Jn. 9:1)
and 7) the raising of Lazarus from the dead (11:1). John further tells us “these are written
that you may believe x that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of
God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (Jn. 20:31).
So….if
we believe in this we must believe that the son of God became fully human (Flesh),
lived with humans in the first century, was killed, and then was
resurrected. We must believe there is a
Creator God (John 1) and he had a Son who became human. While he was here on earth He did some
unearthly things that can’t be explained by any physical processes. This culminated by his raising a person from
the death who was already decaying (he had been there four days and had a bad
odor). Not only was this true but He
Himself was resurrected, not as some “ghost” but as a person who could eat a
breakfast of fish (John 21). This is
all “out of this world” narration.
What
are the implications for the questions I first posed? First, the basis of our belief in heaven is
belief in Jesus as the resurrected Son of God and the Creator of
everything. Belief in this implies belief
in what he said and what he did. What
did he do? He performed what we call
miracles. John records seven of these as
delineated above. All of these events
cannot be explained “rationally.” By this I mean there are no known physical
processes that could explain these events.
They are what we call “miracles.” Miracles are “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by
natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a
divine agency.” It follows if we
believe in Christ we must believe in miracles.
But do we, really? Those of our fellowship in the churches of
Christ were taught that miracles ceased after the apostles and those they “laid
their hands on” died. We were taught
that these “miracles” were only necessary during the initial spreading of the
gospel. But, can one find in the
scriptures where this is written explicitly?
Let’s say that the type of miracles done by the apostles can’t be
replicated today i.e. we have no apostle or those that they laid hands on. Does this mean miracles do not exist
today? I would submit, this is an
unwarranted conclusion.
Note that to believe in Christ one MUST believe
in miracles. If we not believe in
miracles why do we pray? What does it
mean when we are told the prayer of a righteous man “avails much”? Aren’t we praying for divine
intervention? Or is our faith only that
the human skill and reasoning of a care giver is successful? In other words, do we rely only on what man
can do? If so, that is not really a
prayer of faith. Those that have no
faith in Christ also hope that the skill of the care giver is successful. Do we do the same or does our belief that “God
can do anything (Luke 2) only hold for what happened in the first century? The real implication of the fundamental
basis of our belief is that God can accomplish miracles. If so, the consequence should be a fundamental
change in attitude in how we view life.
God can take care of all troubles.
Does this mean we will not have trouble or that they will not be painful? I think not.
Calvary was painful for Christ.
But, we can look beyond the pain to the other side. At the same time, we can petition God for a
miracle with the faith that he can, if it is his will, grant that miracle.
We should then be able to live life without
fear- as our understanding lets us know “perfect –or mature- love casts out
fear.” We are human so sudden tragedies
can cause us to be afraid—momentarily.
We can get angry, sad, troubled, trembling, but ultimately our belief in
the very fact of miracles—in the final analysis in the miracle of the Word
becoming Flesh, dwelling among us, and being resurrected – gives us hope.
Did Colton see Jesus, his grandfather, and see
heaven? Did two four year olds, one in
the U.S. and one in Lithuania, see the same Jesus? Colton identified Jesus from
the portrait the girl drew. We can try
to rationalize his story by random firing of neurons or hallucinations. But, if we believe in Jesus, we must believe
in miracles. If we believe Christ
answers prayers, we must believe in supernatural intervention by God in the
affairs of men. And, we must believe heaven
is real.
