I heard a wonderful quote from Alisa Childers on her podcast with Natasha Crane (Unshaken Faith – I recommend it), that went something like, “We don’t want God letting sin into heaven because then heaven would just be another version of what we already have.”
This goes to the heart of why we bother with Christianity at all. I mean, if everybody gets a pass, then, let’s eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow…we get more of the same.
But we don’t, do we? Because we know. We know that there’s something wrong – that the world isn’t quite right. That it’s spawned the likes of raving totalitarians, school shooters, mass murderers and rapists. There’s got to be some kind of justice, doesn’t there? If God is a God of love, then there’s got to be some kind of accountability for the wrong. Some line that cannot be crossed without consequences.
Our problem here is that we think we get to be the ones who decide where that line lies. But where are our lines (because they’re not entirely the same between us…not even close in some cases, actually)? I’m sure Hitler thought he had the right idea when he drew his line with the Jews on the other side. “But I’m not Hitler, right?” I’m good with everyone…except maybe rednecks. And gun owners. And anti-abortion activists. I mean, they’ve got to be held accountable for the irreparable damage they’ve done, don’t they?
Let’s not overestimate our sense of right and wrong. I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t rise to the standard of judging the entire human race. And if we can’t admit we’ve blurred the lines ourselves at times (at the risk of adding the label “liar” to the pile of accusations against us), how can we rely on our judgment to account for the rest of the world?
Ah, but the sum of us all will come up with something, won’t we? Why not? I’m sure it’s as easy as something like confirming a Supreme Court justice — the ones who literally get to decide what’s right and wrong for all of us — right?
But we know that’s not how it works. Not when it comes to something so important as what going to heaven really is. Childers was on to something: if God allows for sin in heaven, how could it be tolerable. Remember, this is eternity. If a simple dripping of water could create the Grand Canyon given enough time, how could sin be tolerable for an eternity?
Thankfully, a heaven that is anything less than perfection isn’t in the book for us. On the contrary, we can expect a heaven of such beauty and wonder that the words of a book can’t even describe it sufficiently in human language. The best we can get is “streets of gold and gates of pearl,” but it is so much more than that. It is a place that far exceeds the greatest memory we have ever had in our lifetimes. It is the very place where we will once again walk with God and see, face-to-face, the very one who gave himself so we could be there. We should not settle for just another taste of earth. We should look forward to something infinitely more than that.
If you’d like to know how, just ask.