I just read Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo. A few of my family members recommended it very strongly. The main attraction is that Mr. Burpo’s son nearly died of acute, misdiagnosed appendicitis and survived to report that he had been to Heaven. Young Colton Burpo did not simply recover and start telling everyone about his trip to Heaven. Rather, he said some things in conversation that piqued the interest of his parents. They eventually began asking him questions and were astonished by what their 4 year old had to say.
The part of the book that was really gripping for me was the account Todd Burpo gives of the year leading up to Colton’s near death experience and his terror at nearly losing a child. My daughter was very ill during her first two years and I felt some of those fears, but not at the level of crisis which faced the Burpos. What Colton has to say about Heaven is interesting, but does not give me the sense of powerful revelation. He saw relatives in their young and healthy forms. He saw Jesus. People were wearing bright white robes with sashes. Jesus had a dazzling rainbow colored horse. There is a war between heavenly and satanic forces. The strongest evidence of Colton’s visit is that he was able to identify his great grandfather as a young man in a photo without ever having met him or really having knowledge of him. He knew who the man was and what he was called. Overall, though, the description of heaven did not strike me as ultra-surprising for a son of a pastor, even a very young one. Still, it is interesting. I read the book quickly and was eager to find out more as I went.
The problem, I think, is that there is something fundamentally wrong with human attempts to describe heaven and/or the things of God. I’m not saying it can’t be done at all, but it seems to me that other than through full-on revelation (as in the book of that name), the sublimeness of heavenly things can only be approached from the side or seen from the corner of the eye. A direct confrontation seems doomed to fall short. I felt that way to some extent about Heaven is for Real (a non-fiction account) and more so about the picture presented of the divine appearing by Jerry Jenkins at the conclusion of the Left Behind novels. When Jesus arrives in the story, he appears to everyone in exactly the same way with exactly the same message. It feels like the description of a heavenly voicemail attached to a hologram.
Second Corinthians 12:4 mentions the man who was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things he is not even allowed to mention. The most powerful sense of eternity I have ever experienced in reading outside of the Bible was in Walker Percy’s Lancelot (a dark book). A man has had a confrontation with evil which has left him a little insane and obsessed with harsh justice. He completes his book-long conversation with a priest-psychologist friend from his youth. During the course of the story, we observe (only in flashes) that the priest-psychologist is returning to his faith and his vocation. He will take a small parish in Alabama. His one-word replies (always the same word) to Lancelot in the final chapter made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He doesn’t describe anything. But the reader can feel the gigantic, looming reality which will explode forth just as the story ends. Out of the corner of the eye. Possibly inexpressible. The mystery remains a mystery until, all of a sudden, the image clears and we will see and understand and will know as we have been known. But not yet.
November 18th, 2011 | 2:34 pm | #1
Sort of surprised that there are no comments here yet. Or maybe not. It seems to me that nothing in Christianity is more poorly described than Heaven, or Hell. According to my faith, though, that is where everyone is heading, like it or not. In my fits of honesty, I would admit that I want Heaven to be all of the things I love her on earth, only eternally. And without boredom. The Bible does say that we will glorify God forever in Heaven, and that’s what we’re supposed to do here on Earth. I suppose that I’ll do a better job of it there than I do here.
When it comes down to it, I must say that I can’t even imagine what Heaven, or Hell for that matter, would be like. Perhaps no one else can either, really. I don’t dispute the accounts of those who say they’ve seen Heaven. I just haven’t read any 1st person accounts of Hell. Maybe you can leave Heaven, but not Hell?
Anyway, my early reading about 1st person afterlife accounts was shaped by Dante. Dante’s Hell was interesting, if polemical. The other two places were rather boring, I confess I skimmed them. They seemed colorless.
I don’t spend much time thinking about either place, I guess. I figure God has the whole thing under control, and he’s the Gatekeeper anyway. Nobody will get to go to Heaven or stay out of Hell unless He says so; so in a sense, for me, why get crazy over it?
November 19th, 2011 | 7:36 pm | #2
N.T. Wright, in his book Surprised by Hope, reminds us that, following a period after our deaths, we will be restored to bodily, physical life, but in an immortal state, and “the meek shall inherit the earth,” albeit an earth that has itself received an eternal, though physical, upgrade. The principal part of heaven where we resurrected beings shall live is the earth where we live now. God the Son, and the righteous resurrected, and the earth will all be both physical and eternal. Contrary to the Greek philosophies adopted by Christianity, immaterial beings, which we would be without resurrection, are less in God’s eyes than eternal material beings. That is why the Son went to so much trouble to ensure our resurrection. Christ demonstrated that an eternal physical body is not demeaning to God, but is in fact an aspect of his full glory. Yes, heaven will be like this earth, because it IS this earth.
November 21st, 2011 | 3:09 pm | #3
“I’m not saying it can’t be done at all, but it seems to me that other than through full-on revelation (as in the book of that name), the sublimeness of heavenly things can only be approached from the side or seen from the corner of the eye.”
But even with full-on revelation like St. John’s, we still only get a partial picture (hence all the confusion over interpreting something like the Revelation).
Whether it’s St. John, or this little boy, or anyone else describing heaven, we always have a finite person with a finite mind trying to grasp something infinite. This side of heaven, we’ll never fully comprehend it. We’ll have to wait to experience it ourselves.
November 22nd, 2011 | 10:10 pm | #4
I worked with a non-Christian who had a “near-death” experience. He told me that his disembodied spirit watched his friends jump into a public pool to rescue him, and that he afterward chastised them for jumping into the pool and swimming when it would have been faster to run around to the other side. But the most compelling part of the story was his experience of the spiritual world, which was brief and to the point. As he explained it, “There was no light at the end of my tunnel.” He knew in that moment that he was headed for hell. Until God sent him back.
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