I would just like to start out by stating that I have much respect for the likes of Jaclyn Glenn, T.J. Kincaid (The Amazing Atheist), Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist), and all the rest. I am inspired by your commitment to spread what you believe to be the truth about God and religion based upon the evidence available to you and your perception of that same evidence’s value. It takes a lot to put yourself and your ideas out there, and you guys do it fearlessly and with unique styles.
I would also like to
apologize in advance because you guys are all fundamentally wrong about a
crucial piece of the Christian worldview—and it concerns the nature and reality
of Heaven. (Did you really expect anything different from me? I didn't think so.) So, following is a brief list
of common misconceptions/mental farts concerning Heaven (which y’all willingly—and
eagerly, I might add—perpetuate). I will
be clarifying exactly what Christians believe concerning this portion of the afterlife and those misconceptions. So let’s get to it, shall we?
Let’s start here. I must make a desperate plea to all atheist,
agnostic, and non-theistic persons out there on the Internet, in print media,
wherever: stop listening to the Fundamentalists and Protestants (but especially
the Fundamentalists)! Fundamentalists
give all Christians a bad name. Pretty much no serious Christian takes them
seriously, or even particularly likes them (at least, I don’t).
Fact of the matter is that it’s easy to rip on the Fundies for their
views on Heaven (and just about everything else)! (And you’ve all figured this out, and that’s why you do what you do: easy prey.) It’s like taking candy from a baby! They are not intellectually prepared for the hard
scrutiny to which you all mercilessly subject them, and I applaud you for your bluntness. Good on all of you for
calling them out!
Now the bad news: I
challenge you all to take on a real
Christian intellectual. Try John Lennox
(professor of mathematics at Oxford), Peter Kreeft, (philosopher at Boston
College), or Trent Horn (Catholic apologist), then tell me you think Heaven is
a bunch of B.S. Until then, let’s stick
to what the true Christian church—the Catholic Church—says about Heaven, shall
we?
1. Faith Alone?
Your typical
Fundamentalist Christian will claim that it is his faith in God that will get him
to Heaven, and that it is your (the unbeliever’s) lack of faith which will invoke His ire and get
you sent to Hell where “you’re going to burn in eternal hell-fire for ever and
ever and torture and pain and misery” as I believe Jaclyn Glenn once said.
Fact of the matter is
that they are just plain wrong. It is
not just faith that will get you into Heaven. Furthermore, what really befuddles me is why atheists do not simply reference the Bible to shut the Fundies up. (Because—and I hear this constantly—atheists, agnostics, and skeptics have read that thing cover-to-cover, found every conceivable flaw and inconsistency therein, and know so much more about the Christians’ holy book than even the Christians themselves do!)
Point-in-fact: even a cursory reading of the Bible will show, very clearly, that the only place the phrase “faith alone” appears in Scripture is in the Book of James, and it there that it is explicitly condemned! Therefore, it is evident at least that our salvation comes *drum roll, please!* not by faith alone! It does, however, come principally through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and secondarily by faith and works, which are only made possible by God’s grace. So yeah. Catholics: 1, Fundies, Protestants, and atheists/agnostics/skeptics/non-theists: 0
Point-in-fact: even a cursory reading of the Bible will show, very clearly, that the only place the phrase “faith alone” appears in Scripture is in the Book of James, and it there that it is explicitly condemned! Therefore, it is evident at least that our salvation comes *drum roll, please!* not by faith alone! It does, however, come principally through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and secondarily by faith and works, which are only made possible by God’s grace. So yeah. Catholics: 1, Fundies, Protestants, and atheists/agnostics/skeptics/non-theists: 0
2. God is a dick who is going to send me to Hell
against my will!
.jpg)
Again, wrong. God is a just judge, yes. A just judge gives us what we deserve,
right? Well, we merit what we have
desired our entire lives. Lives centered
on pride, hatred, lust, disobedience—ourselves—merit us Hell; lives centered on
humility, kindness, love, obedience—God—merit us Heaven. The upright life merits Heaven; the
dissolute life merits Hell. We reap
what we sow; it’s really that simple.
The basic fact of the matter is that God will not give us what we do not
deserve, and what we deserve is what we’ve been telling God we’ve wanted our
whole lives, by how we’ve lived our lives. Unbelievers have been
telling God all their lives that they reject Him by their thoughts, words, and deeds in this life. They will
separation from God. In Eternity, we
simply get what we have ultimately willed our whole lives. The atheist merits eternal separation from
God—Hell—while the Fundamentalist, no matter how misguided his Christian worldview, merits
eternal communion with God—Heaven. God, terrifyingly enough, will give us what we want. How's that for a great dad?
3. Yeah… I’m pretty sure I’d rather be in Hell. It sounds like waaaaay more fun.
This is always an amusing one. I’ve heard the argument made that Hell would be preferable to Heaven because there would be lots of cool people
down there (e.g., famous atheists like Darwin). In Heaven, it would just be a bunch of
whack-job Christians with no brains praising a God that’s pretty much THE definitional standard of THE ultimate douchebag. I have also
heard some atheists say that in Heaven, your mind would simply break down; because for real though: how long until you
ran out of things to do up there? For how long can you really play board games, if you’re being honest with yourself? 100 years? 1,000 years? How long, the atheist demands to know, before you degenerate into a pile of mush and your very self just gives out from the mental
strain of simply existing for so long?
At least in Hell, the atheist argues, I can chat with all the God-hating intellectuals. I just have to fight through the agonizing pain long enough to strike up a conversation with Bill Nye, maybe, and hope that he takes a fancy to me and agrees to chat about such-and-such. In Hell, they argue, we would only last a week—if that. They point to real-life scenarios where people break down from torture, and they extrapolate that out to the far more severe pains of Hell and draw the conclusion that we would somehow “get out of” the torture and misery of Hell, simply because we would not be able to handle it after a certain point.
Again, sorry to
disappoint, but let’s just think this through briefly. The atheist is willing to concede (for argument's sake) that Hell exists. He then demands that all the same old Earthly rules apply there. He is willing to believe that his mind will
just “give out” after some finite period of time in Hell because it will have been too much for him to handle by Earth’s standards. This makes
absolutely no sense! There is no such
place as “Hell” on Earth, right? Yet, the atheist is
willing to believe that all the same rules of torture and breaking points must apply
in Hell as they do on Earth, even though Hell is perhaps the most otherworldy thing
that we can imagine! What part of “eternal torture” are they not grasping? The very fact that we even posit a Hell (a place of which there literally is no compare and which, by definition, flies in the face of all that we currently know is possible, or even likely, about the natures of pain and time itself) presupposes that things probably don't work quite the same way there; but hey, I've been wrong before.
4. You are all just robots in Heaven!
4. You are all just robots in Heaven!
Nice try, but again,
false, as are all the rest. This seems
perhaps the most plausible, however; I will grant them that. I mean really: who would want to spend Eternity worshipping God? He sounds like
a narcissistic asshole, right?
Wrong. In Heaven, we will worship God, first, because
that is what we have willed to do our whole time on Earth—our lives were a
prayer to and kind of active worship of Him—and second, because He is worthy of
worship—in fact, the only thing worthy of praise and adoration. He is every perfection
desirable. He is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.
What better thing to worship than the Being who literally is Perfection
Itself?
I do not lose my will
in Heaven. The choice to sin, odd enough
as it seems to us now, is not a choice: not really anyway. If only we knew, really knew, what we were
rejecting when we sinned (our Ultimate end and joy), the suffering we caused Christ, and the damage we do
to ourselves, we would never do it. Sinning is a denial of our very selves, who we were made to be. We reject the Designer's plan for His design when we sin. In
Heaven, this is made plain to us. We
will not sin for utter love and adoration and rapture of God. Our choice to sin will be as stark to us now
as our choice between eating our favorite meal in the company of our oldest and best
friends... or getting mugged. Or to have sex
with the person of our heart’s deepest longing (our spouse)... or to step on a
rusty nail on a cold November night. It will
be a no-brainer! The
deck is so stacked against sin and so in favor of God (infinitely more in his
favor, actually) that sin loses every time—as it should.
Furthermore, we retain our freedom of will for sure, but we will also gain a new kind of freedom: freedom from sin. The heavy rod of our taskmaster (Satan) will have been shattered, and we will no longer be subject to the various pressures and weaknesses and failings of Earth and our previous mode of existence. We will have gained true freedom: freedom to be ourselves, the people God has called us to be from the consummation of the world, a place where God's will is done perfectly 1. because we all yearn and ache to do it (because we had prepared ourselves on earth) and 2. because we are truly free now to to do it always. We will have gained interior freedom, a freedom that eliminates a divided mind, will, and heart. Doing the will of God will be what is always done because it is the only thing worth doing—or even possible. (Selfishness and disobedience seem like options, but in the Face of God, they melt away to nothing.)
I hope my atheist friends will reconsider their stances on the afterlife and consider seriously what I’ve written here. I hope they will look into some solid Catholic literature and live up to their call to intellectual honesty that they so strictly impose on all the rest of us. I await their replies!
Furthermore, we retain our freedom of will for sure, but we will also gain a new kind of freedom: freedom from sin. The heavy rod of our taskmaster (Satan) will have been shattered, and we will no longer be subject to the various pressures and weaknesses and failings of Earth and our previous mode of existence. We will have gained true freedom: freedom to be ourselves, the people God has called us to be from the consummation of the world, a place where God's will is done perfectly 1. because we all yearn and ache to do it (because we had prepared ourselves on earth) and 2. because we are truly free now to to do it always. We will have gained interior freedom, a freedom that eliminates a divided mind, will, and heart. Doing the will of God will be what is always done because it is the only thing worth doing—or even possible. (Selfishness and disobedience seem like options, but in the Face of God, they melt away to nothing.)
I hope my atheist friends will reconsider their stances on the afterlife and consider seriously what I’ve written here. I hope they will look into some solid Catholic literature and live up to their call to intellectual honesty that they so strictly impose on all the rest of us. I await their replies!
0 comments: